By MARK J. SCARP, SABEW staff

PHOENIX, June 16 – SABEW’s digital/web coordinator and his former professor have won a $90,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge to develop a mobile web application permitting users to launch an idea and enable it to be shared with others.

CitySeed was developed by Cody Shotwell, who in December received his master’s degree in mass communication from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Cronkite Professor Retha Hill.

Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University

“Cody has been a great addition to the SABEW staff and he is an excellent idea guy,” said SABEW executive director Warren Watson. “We are so pleased that he and Retha have won this challenge.”

“CitySeed” gets its name from the application’s ability to let one user “plant a ‘seed’ of an idea” for others’ use and benefit, according to Shotwell and Hill’s description of the project.

“For example, a person might come across a great spot for a community garden. At that moment, the person can use the CitySeed app to ‘geotag’ the idea, which links it to an exact location,” they wrote.

“Others can look at the place-based ideas, debate and hopefully act on them. The project aims to increase the number of people informed about and engaged with their communities by breaking down community issues into bite-size settings,” they said.

Shotwell’s duties at SABEW include upgrading its website, sabew.org, and instituting new member communication tools, including an electronic newsletter that is scheduled to debut this summer.

The foundation announced the winners today at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., where Challenge winners past and present gather to exchange ideas and collaborate.

This year’s winners will receive $2.74 million as part of the fourth round of the five-year international contest.

The challenge is “a contest that funds ideas that use digital technology to inform specific geographic communities,” according to a statement issued today by the foundation.

The Knight Foundation has reviewed 10,000 applications filed with the Challenge, and funded 50 projects totaling $23 million. According to the foundation, nearly half of this year’s winners are private enterprises, up from 15 percent in 2009.

For more information about CitySeed, visit www.painteddesertmedia.com; http://codyshotwell.com. Shotwell and Hill are on Twitter at @codyshotwell; @rethahill

For more information about the contest and the winning projects visit www.newschallenge.org.