Kansas University’s School of Journalism and six other schools across the country were recently awarded a $230,000 grant to create a joint project.

“It’s an exciting opportunity because it was a national competition and a chance for our students to be able to work with the best students from other schools,” said Ann Brill, dean of the journalism school.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation recently announced 25 first-year Knight News Challenge winners that had all proposed ideas for using digital news and information to help build communities. The foundation has funded the contest for five years with $25 million.

KU will join students from journalism and communications schools at Ithaca College in New York, Michigan State University, Kansas State University, Western Kentucky University, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and St. Michael’s College in Vermont.

The groups will create “incubators” at each school to foster creative thinking and create projects to solve digital news problems.

A group of KU undergraduate and graduate students will travel to Ithaca, N.Y., in June with the school’s multimedia newsroom coordinator, Patrick Lafferty, to begin work.