New Voices Seeks Proposals for Citizen Media Ventures

"New Voices, a program to seed innovative citizen media ventures around the United States, has issued a call for its first round of grant proposals. New Voices is funded with a $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, part of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

New Voices will help fund the start-up of twenty hyper- local news ventures over the next two years and will support them with an educational Web site.

The program is seeking new ideas for distributing news and information to hyperlocal geographic communities or communities of interest. In particular, it is looking for news ventures that offer the promise of being self-sustaining.

Nonprofit and educational institutions are eligible to apply. Funding is available for start-up news initiatives only. Ongoing efforts are not eligible to apply unless they are proposing a new venture. Funding is available for print or electronic news initiatives, including online, cable, broadcast, narrowcast, satellite, and mobile efforts.

Each project may receive as much as $17,000 in grants.

Eligibility guidelines and application forms are available at the New Voices Web site."