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New Investments In Citizen Journalism

The Sunlight Foundation today invested a nice chunk of change in the future of citizen journalism. The group announced its latest round of "transparency grants," and most of the money will be going into the blogosphere.

The Center for Citizen Media, which is led by new media pioneer and blog afficianado Dan Gillmor, will receive $25,000 for an election-focused citizen journalism test in one congressional district.

"The site will include in-depth biographical and political information on candidates, audio and video archives, campaign finance profiles, first-person reports, links to articles, etc.," the foundation said. "This project is designed to serve as a model for possible nationwide implementation in hundreds of districts in 2008."

Another $10,000 will go toward NewAssignment.net, a project announced earlier this year by New York University professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen. The donation matches the $10,000 gift already made by Craig Newmark, the entrepreneur behind the Craigslist online classifieds service.

The foundation described the project, whose target launch date is 2007, as an "open collaboration over the Internet among traditional reporters, editors and large groups of reader-reporters can produce high-quality work that serves the public interest, holds up under scrutiny, and builds trust." Rosen cited as an example the "Exposing Earmarks" project against federal pork-barrel spending that began last month.

Two smaller grants -- $2,500 and $1,600, respectively -- went to state-based political blogs in Kentucky and Connecticut.

The Kentucky blog, Bluegrass Report, has been at the center of a couple of controversies over the past several months. Late last year, blogger Mark Nickolas attempted unsuccessfully to get a press pass to cover the state legislature. (He eventually received one by landing a columnist's gig at a traditional newspaper.)

And this summer, Nickolas complained that a blog ban on state-owned computers was politically motivated, specifically at his blog. He has filed a lawsuit to overturn that ban.

The Connecticut blog, Connecticut Local Politics, was among those that took center stage this year in the run-up to the Aug. 8 Democratic primary between blog-backed challenger Ned Lamont and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Lamont won that race and now faces an indepedent challenge from Lieberman, whose campaign just launched a blog this week.

Posted by Danny | 12:25 PM

Comments

Uh... Gillmor is getting more money, to set up ANOTHER "local blogging" venture? After he walked away from the last one?

There are a lot of people plugging away out there in local journalism. To spend the lion's share on a 'name'... well, meet the New Boss.

Mister Snitch! | 09.07.06 07:24 PM

What a load of crap - citizen journalism.

The people who work in media are citizens of which ever country they were born in.

This is just another 2 dollar blog dressed up to look like it ain't media. But that's right it is media - just not bad media. And let's see bad media is mainstream media. Which for some reason doesn't include News Limited, National Review, American Spectator and all the other approved media of the stupid blogsphere.

three dollar man | 09.07.06 11:02 PM

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