I wasn’t aware that was an option. 

Two locals who did, and have been working to reverse the never-ending journalism death spiral, are among nine Knight Foundation grant winners. 

Springfield-based Katrin Verclas, co-founder of  MobileActive,won $200,000 for the won $200,000 for the Mobile Media Toolkit, which will offer mobile-based media production tools, including video and audio recording, distribution to social media.

Roxbury-based artist John Ewing won $40,000 for Virtual Street Corners. Ewing plans to project citizen
journalists’ video newscasts on life-size screens to encourage interaction between residents of Roxbury Brookline, which are nearby geographically, but less so socioeconomically.

The winners were announced at the Future of Journalism conference at MIT — which, obviously, is being twittered to within an inch of its life at #KNC09, and at #FNCM09, and — just in case — at #kncmit.