Knight Foundation

Cross-posted from infoneeds.org It's a stunning reference from Darcy Ohman, President and CEO of the Community Foundation serving Richmond and Central Virginia. The concept is that you have a partial idea, or a hunch, that needs to be combined with another hunch to form a fully-developed, great idea. Sometimes patience and thought will get you there just fine, allowing the fragments of ideas time to incubate, but generally your great idea will occur thanks to the combination of your hunch with someone else's hunch. To get to that point, you need to place yourself in environments that foster good collaboration. Author and big thinker Stephen Johnson argues that while the web can often be a distraction, it can also be a fantastic collaborative environment for the development of great ideas. Johnson has created a terrific video that comes from his really good book, Where Good Ideas Come From. A post from the 2011 Media Learning Seminar. At Knight Foundation's Media Learning Seminar, community and place-based foundation leaders meet with journalism and technology experts to explore the topic of community information needs. Follow the event on Twitter at #infoneeds and @knightfdn.

Cross-posted from infoneeds.org Texas Tribune is one the best examples of a nonprofit journalism model, an initiative that Steve Waldman seems to have in mind. It's a nonprofit, community-initiated Web site that banks on donations to finance a perceived void in state political coverage and public interest journalism. It has poached journalists from the newspapers that apparently didn't cover state politics and public policy well enough in the first place. TexTrib is real proud of its stories, so it is making them available to any of those pokey, newspaper armadillos to use for free. There's no advertising and no plans to charge for content. The model assumes funding almost exclusively through philanthropy, gradually transitioning to an equation where earned income from events and premium products support the philanthropy. The nonprofit startup scares the boots off the patrician press barons in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio who are scaling back staff, coverage and investment as circulation and ad revenue slip-slide away. For the beleaguered news industry, a nonprofit competitor funded by the most engaged and affluent audiences is yet another serious threat to survival. TexTrib's founder, John Thornton, has emerged as the leading evangelist for the non-profit, philanthropy model for news. An earnest and energetic capitalist who's the general partner of high-flying Austin Ventures, he's seeded TexTrib with...

Cross-posted from infoneeds.org Steve Waldman's talk at the MLS luncheon reminded me of the old Woody Allen joke: 'This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Journalism is crazy sick, says the FCC's media doctor. Waldman thinks place-based foundations should step up with non-profit media initiatives to fill the gap in community journalism. 'Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs.' Laughter for Woody's joke. Mock applause from one attendee in response to Waldman ending on an optimistic note. Waldman, the co-founder of News Corp.'s Beliefnet.com and a former national editor at US News & World Report, has been tapped by the Federal Communications Commission to oversee the regulatory agency's initiative to assess the state of media in challenging economic times and make recommendations designed to ensure 'a vibrant media landscape." His report on the state of journalism in our communities was sobering. The journalism business has been reduced by half or more. Half the number of reporters, half the coverage, half the revenue. And sinking fast...