A little over a year ago, we announced a grant to Public Radio Exchange to create an accelerator for public interest media. Today, Matter announced the six startups that form its inaugural class. We helped to establish Matter because we saw an opportunity to channel some of the entrepreneurial tech energy towards journalism. Last spring Corey Ford assumed leadership of the project. Shortly thereafter KQED, one of the leading public media organizations in the country,  joined the project as a partner. Last week, Matter started its first class with a “bootcamp” for its cohort. These six companies are more advanced that I would have anticipated a year ago – one already has an app available and another has a partnership with a news publication. I’m eager to see how the projects and entrepreneurs grow over the course of the Matter program, which concludes June 13 with a Demo Day. The six companies are:

• ChannelMeter: Provides a new way to keep track of YouTube video/channel statistics.
• InkFold: Brings the newspaper experience to iPhone. (Available in the App Store.)
• OpenWatch: Provides Android and iOS applications for recording media
• SpokenLayer: Translates web-based text into narrated audio
• Station Creator: Allows you to take any shareable content video (YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, Facebook, etc) on the Internet and create a 24/7 Internet TV station.
• Zeega:  A community of makers passionate about creating immersive experiences that combine original content with media from across the web. (A 2011 Knight News Challenge winner, you can see Zeega up close at the Knight booth at SXSW.)

If you’re interested in Matter, here are three ways to engage:

• Become a mentor. Matter is *not* a closed-door black box. To the contrary, the accelerator’s success will depend on the ability to leverage a community to help these six projects reach the next level. So, if you’re in the Bay over the next few months and what to contribute, please reach out to Jigar Mehta, Corey Ford or Jake Shapiro. 
• Attend the Demo Day on June 13.
• Apply to join the second class when Matter opens for applications later this spring.

To follow up on any of the above, hit up the Matter team at [email protected]. By John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation Related: “Matter, A For-Profit Media Accelerator Backed by KQED, Knight and PRX Debuts First Class” in TechCrunch, “Matter Accelerator Announces First Class of Media Startups” in All Things D, “Media accelerator Matter reveals its inaugural class of six startups” in The Next Web and “Matter, a media startup accelerator, picks first class of six media tech companies” in GigaOm