Hey, Knight News Foundation can you spare $200,000 – NewsBloom.org: An Open Sources Newsroom

By Christopher Spencer

I’ve been getting some silent but much-appreciated encouragement to apply for a Knight News Challenge grant from the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation. Thank you for the encouragement.

Today, I finally did. I asked for $200,000 from strangers only eight days before the final deadline. We shall see what happens.

The foundation wants to encourage innovative news models that use open source media and work with a local community. I think NewsBloom.org fits nicely in that category. I first heard about the grant on one of the journalism blogs I like to read, PBS’ MediaShift, and knew I wanted to make a go of it.

The idea of NewsBloom.org jelled for me over time to the concept I presented online to the Knight Foundation. For me, it’s a compliment to the work done at Ozarks Unbound, not a competitor.

So here’s the basic concept of NewsBloom.org:

“NewsBloom.org: An Open Sources Newsroom is a (1) collaborative workspace, (2) a training center for bloggers and (3) a nonprofit that fosters emerging news-oriented blogs in Arkansas and beyond through access to a joint advertising agreement between its members.

(1) Collaborative workspace: NewsBloom will be a physical location in Fayetteville, Arkansas where post-print journalists and community bloggers can work together in an open newsroom format. Each person will pay rent for monthly space or a daily fee, much like a traditional co-working space. The informal interaction fostered between these private and even for-profit blogging entities will be enhanced under the NewsBloom model.

(2) A training center for bloggers: NewsBloom also serves as an educational resource, bringing people in from around the region to learn to do community journalism online. Instruction will include basic journalistic ethics, some Internet design and programming and how to do video and audio capture for the web. WordPress or some other open source software will be the standard software. The classes will be dictated largely by members who will decide what classes they most need.

(3) An advertising structure will be established by NewsBloom that includes its members. This will function like a joint advertising agreement. The financials will be transparent and allow bloggers to receive a share of advertising revenue based on their page views or some other objective criteria. This will not preclude members blogs from seeking their own advertising.

NewsBloom is not a news site. It’s a nonprofit organized to foster the creation of news sites in the immediate Northwest Arkansas area and beyond.”

I applied under the open category, so you can review the entire application here if you would like.

Also, I can make adjustments to my application until the deadline. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. NewsBloom is much less about me and much more about those who blog locally online and those who read the news they produce.

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