Also, from your post:

Another new research effort announced recently was the Knight News Challenge. In June 2014  they will award $2.75 million, including $250,000 from the Ford Foundation, to support the most compelling ideas and projects that make the Internet better. In a recent post they address the concerns of funding and folks taking your ideas (scooping):

To be clear, the Knight News Challenge thing is a competition, the "recent post" above is an entry in the competition, not a post from Knight. (I think the entry is great and my endorsement of it is what you noticed.)