Category: News

The Obama administration introduced its plan to distribute $8 billion through grants to developing broadband projects by September 30, 2010. Though information regarding eligible recipients and other details remains unknown at this time, funded organizations will have two years to complete projects. From non-profit organizations to Telecom, the stimulus package has attracted interest from those eager to help the government spend their money. You can read the entire story at the Washington Post website…….Continue Reading Obama plans to pour $8 billion into broadband development

PBS' Frontline and Frontline/World have partnered with UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program and ProPublica to launch an online investigation into the world of bribery. Foundations such as the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Shell and the MacArthur Foundation funded the project that will exist as a site entitled, "The Business of Bribery." The investigation will take place over 10 weeks and include video, reports and in-depth interviews. You can read the Editors' Web Blog here…….Continue Reading Foundations bankroll site on ‘The Business of Bribery’

Philanthropist Eli Broad once expressed interest in buying the LA Times. Though he said Monday night that he has "regained [his] sanity since then," he also mentioned that newspapers should not be in the business of earning profits. "If several foundations are involved there is likely to be journalistic freedom," he said at a forum in New York. You can read the full article on Reuters here…….Continue Reading Broad wants his foundation and others to own the LA Times

The Guardian has launched a new API that is playing to immediate mixed reviews. The API (Application Programming Interface) will allow all of the Guardian's content to be repurposed, but in a way that it hopes to advertising revenue. In the Guardian's Open Platform API, partners can build their own applications in exchange for carrying Guardian advertising. Guardian columnist Jeff Jarvis calls it a great deal but another digital leader, Dave Winer, begs to differ. You can read the full story on the Guardian website here…….Continue Reading The Guardian launches API ‘Open Platform’

Against all the indictment of micro-payments from the new-media crowd comes this from Google's Eric Schmidt: For Web audiences in the 2 million to 20 million range, he told PBS' Charlie Rose, "you can imagine that you'll have micropayments, not advertising, where you'll pay a one cent, three cent, five cent for a view. And those tools and techniques are being developed now in the industry and I think are likely to be successful." You can read InfoValet's analysis of Schmidt's comments here……Continue Reading Google’s Eric Schmidt: micro-payments will have a future role

Who would have guessed? The New York Times launches its "Local" Web site covering five communities in Brooklyn and the New Jersey suburbs. It's The Times' first big foray into citizen journalism and exploration of the Web's "hyper-local" space. You can read the article on Wall Street Journal's blog. Postscript (07/12/10): Unfortunately, the NYT experiment has not shown the success that the paper was hoping for, and has been shut down it's New Jersey division since the blog post was first published…….Continue Reading New York Times goes ‘Local’

The New York Times' David Carr isn't giving up on his idea of newspapers forming a pay wall around their content. His recommendation: A bit of good, old-fashioned collusion. You can read the New York Times article here…….Continue Reading Newspaper tonic? Good old collusion

Like many news-based magazines, Mother Jones is struggling to find a business model that survives both the recession and the digital revolution. Is its non-profit model the way of the future? You can read the article in the New York Times here…….Continue Reading Mother Jones: the case for non-profit news

Kindle2 has gotten mostly favorable reviews as a reader of books and newspapers, but mixed reviews as a changemaker for the news business. Steve Rubel is unmixed.  He thinks it may be the news media’s last, best chance at salvation. You can read Steve Rubel’s blog here…….Continue Reading Rubel: Kindle could save the news

The demise of the TV analog signal has given stations more digital channels than they know what to do with. But a New York City station, WNBC, thinks it has one answer: Creation of 24-hour local news channel. Creators think they can reach an audience of 5.7 million. You can read the artciel in TV Week here…….Continue Reading At WNBC, an all-local news channel