We’ve finished our initial review of U.S. and International Knight Fellowship applications for next year — the first under our new orientation — and boy, has it been enlightening.

For starters, we had a record number of people applying, a total of 298. That’s up from 254 last year and 215 the year before that. The increase in U.S. applications was even more striking: 166, which nearly doubled last year’s total of 88, and was 30+ more than we have ever had before. (International applications were down, from 166 last year to 132 this year, perhaps reflecting our announcement of our program changes less than 30 days before the application deadline.)

We know that some of this increase in U.S. applications is due to the economy — over the last couple of decades, the number of our U.S. applications inversely tracks the economy. When the economy’s good, our applications go down, and when the economy is bad, our applications go up. There’s no reason to think that’s not at work here, too.

But that’s not the only factor. In analyzing the U.S. applications, we estimate that about one in five were from people who probably wouldn’t have applied under our earlier format, or who wouldn’t have been considered eligible (for various reasons) if they had applied. That tells us that our efforts to cast a wider net for potential fellows has worked.

And, wow. People really took seriously our focus on journalism innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership, and our new expectation that they come with a coherent proposal that will lead to a tangible result. We were highly impressed with the range of ideas, the thought that went into them, and their potential value to journalism. Because we’re still in the selection process (interviews are later this month, with the selection itself in early May), I’m not going to cite specific projects, but when we do, I think you’ll be impressed.

To a sobering degree, however, the applications graphically portrayed what is happening in the craft and business of journalism. We had only 31 applicants from U.S. daily newspapers, which represents fewer than 20 percent of the total application pool. As recently as three years ago, more than half our applicants came from daily newspapers. By contrast, 61 U.S. applicants (slightly fewer than 40 percent) had the word “freelance” somewhere in their job description. Last year it was 28, and the year before, 21. Both those measures indicate the way journalism is moving.

It was disheartening — and worse — to read application after application from journalists who have lost their jobs in the last few months or will be in the next few months. This was especially striking in the realm of foreign correspondence, where so many news organizations have drastically reduced or eliminated outright their foreign bureaus. We counted seven foreign correspondents who fit this description, and another 13 people based in the U.S., which works out to one applicant out of every eight. This included some very good journalists who have done outstanding work in the past and have lots of good work ahead of them, if they can find a place to publish or broadcast it. Very tough, and a reminder that there are huge impacts on individual journalists and the quality of journalism. Stay tuned as we move through the selection process.