Wow. This really could have an amazing impact right here in Chicago!
3 in area get grants from journalism foundation
(Crain’s) — Three Chicago-area residents have been awarded a total of $2.1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to help fund new journalism products and programs.
Adrian Holovaty, Rich Gordon and Geoff Dougherty were among the more than 15 winners who collectively received more than $7 million in grants from the Miami-based journalism foundation.
Mr. Holovaty said he plans to use his two-year, $1.1-million grant to create a community news Web site called everyblock.com. The washingtonpost.com staffer and 2005 member of Crain’s “40 Under 40” said he will hire a team of roughly five programmers to develop software that will aggregate local community information from various government and community Web sites. His main challenge will be developing a program that recognizes all the many different ways data is stored on the Internet and making sure that what works in one city can work in others.
“It’s pretty ambitious,” he said of his concept. “It’s going to be a tricky process.”
Mr. Gordon, an associate professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, plans to use his two-year, $639,000 grant to create an academic program that melds computer science with journalism, according to the Knight Foundation Web site. He was not available for comment.
Mr. Dougherty, who received a two-year, $340,000 grant, will use his grant to “put together one of the largest citizen journalism networks in the country.”
He plans to use the money to hire up to 30 journalists to cover 30 of Chicago’s neighborhoods with the intent of expanding the staff to 75.
“This is a huge leg up,” said Mr. Dougherty, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and CEO of PublicMedia Inc. “We can run a pretty good program with the money Knight gave us.”
Posted by sinergi at May 24, 2007 03:43 PM