Hot on the heels of last week’s Knight News Challenge winners, two foundations have released details of journalism projects to receive funding.
New Voices – a project from the University of Maryland’s interactive journalism institute – has awarded funding of $17,000 each to 10 citizen media start-ups.
The recipients include: Cool State Online, a Californian project to set up micro bureaux covering news from the Asian and Latino communities; The Appalachian Independent, an online newspaper for the rural community in Maryland; and Family Life Behind Bars, a site where the families of prisoners can share information and experiences.
The progress of the winners (listed in full in a press release) can be viewed on the New Voices website.
Meanwhile, University of Central Lancashire journalism lecturer Andy Dickinson is to receive funding from journalism lab Sandbox for a project mapping the movements of local reporters in their communities.
Reporters from print, radio and TV would be equipped with GPS devices to monitor their movements on a normal working day, explains Dickinson in a blog post.
“The project would then attempt to develop a matrix that visually demonstrated when and where the news agendas of local communities and those of professional media organizations coincide, with a view to examining the range of elements that lead to this juxtaposition.
Conducted in this way the research can explore ‘randomness’, and ‘proximity’ to breaking news as a value that impacts news agendas (and says something about reseources too).”
Congratulations to Andy – we’re already looking forward to the results.
Just to say that Sandbox isn’t a journalism lab, more a social/creative/facilitation set-up. They have a great track record in a lot of social and business projects outside of journalism.
Apologies Andy – amendment made.
Hadn’t come across Sandbox before, looks very interesting.
Good luck with the research.
Not sure how productive this is going to be.
With groups like Trinity slashing staff numbers and making people redundant, I would be astonished if most journalists who remain will get the time to stray from their screen/desks and phone.
Perhaps a study into what journalists do after they have been made redundant, would be more instructive?
How many are successfully making the transition to web-based content, how many are still able to use their journalistic skills in a new capacity, how many are leaving on or off-line journalism completely, etc, would be illuminating?
There would be lots of data and lots of interesting case studies….
Perhaps I should suggest it to the NUJ?