The Sunlight Foundation would like to extend a hearty congratulations to the 2011 winners of the Knight News Challenge just announced today at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference. They are an impressive collection of folks and we are excited to see such innovative ideas gain the support they need to expand.

Among the many winners we're particular thrilled to see some familiar faces. Waldo Jaquith, a Sunlight mini-grant recipient for his work at Richmond Sunlight in 2008 getting video online from the Virginia legislature, got funding for the State Decoded platform to make state codes easier to use and understand. DocumentCloud, a great tool to annotate documents for journalists that has won News Challenge funding in the past, is a Sunlight favorite whose lead developer is a two-time winner of our Apps for America contest. We're also big fans of ScraperWiki, a collaborative approach to building web scrapers to free data that has huge potential for journalists and others to sniff out interesting data. We look forward to learning about all the winners of this year's challenge and will certainly look forward to integrating them into our work.

It's so incredibly exciting to see the new ideas for open government and engaging citizens that have won these awards this year. Our community is getting bigger and better every year.

The Knight News Challenge is an initiative that promotes projects around the globe to transform journalism through innovative new tools and has funded over 75 projects with $27 million over the past 5 years. The Knight Foundation provides grant support to the Sunlight Foundation and we are proud to continue our partnership.

A roundup of what we're noticing in the Reporting Group as we dig into government data and disclosures:

5 day tracking: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is top spender over the last five days, with $23 million reported spent. National Republican Senatorial Committee is next ($9.7 million). Top outsider over the same period: Conservative group Crossroads GPS, which doesn't disclose donors, at $3.9 million. Pennsylvania Senate gets largest portion of spending over same period ($5.5 million) while the candidate most expensively mentioned is Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. ($3.2 million). Details here.

Fading: Over the past five days, the National Republican Congressional Committee has reported spending just $1.6 million. Rival DCCC has reported spending more than $22 million over the same period.

Dark money: Who benefits most from Super PACs and other groups that don't disclose their donors? What races are they targeting? Who are the biggest spenders? Find out soon at the Reporting Group site.

Be sure to check out our Follow the Unlimited Money tool--updated hourly!--to get all the latest info on outside groups.

Drug money: RightChange.org, a 527 running ads in nine Senate Races and 17 House races, is funded almost entirely by Fred Eshelman, owner of a pharmaceutical firm.

In other news: It's not just all elections all the time (though of late it's felt that way). We're also working on public facing apps for the Knight Foundation (details here) and looking at health care data. GAO reports on an issue we've been frustrated with: reliable, complete reporting of ownership data for health care facilities, including nursing homes (the subject of the GAO report).

Can we have Gus instead? Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., a two-term blue dog who was once the Washington Redskins quarterback before losing the job to the more popular journeyman Gus Frerotte, is considering challenging Rep. Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, should Democrats hold onto the House, Politico reports. Being a leader means raising money, so here are Shuler's top donors in today's Politiwidget:

Daily Poligraft: Contractors brace for austerity, Politico tells us. Original here.