Media Street, formerly known as Cut Media, was set up by Jack Rutter and Jonathan Lloyd to develop a web application to run hyperlocal websites.
The Media Street application now supports a flagship site covering the King's Road in London, and sites for Fulham Road and Notting Hill Gate have also been started.
In its Knight application Media Street says it hopes to use the grant to "jump-start the completion of the Media Street software" and to fund the launch of other sites with the recruitment of a local community editor.
It adds that the project will aim to improve the delivery of news and information by being able to pay and provide local journalists with digital skills and tools to cover community issues.
According to a Tweet by the Knight Foundation around 300 entries made it through to the next round of the challenge, which is now in its fifth year. The challenge was part of the Knight Foundation's plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for innovative ideas for developing platforms, tools and services for community news.
"It’s great as a UK startup to be through to the next round of the Knight News Challenge," Jonathan Lloyd told Journalism.co.uk.
"Media Street seems to fit the community category like a glove so we’re excited about completing the next set of questions for our application. Since we applied back in November, we’ve grown sales and added new features such integrating with Yelp to show reader reviews on local business pages."
As part of the next round Media Street now has to answer five further written questions, such as how the startup will measure its progress and how people will learn about what they are doing.
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