[MGP-Forum Announce] Grant Opportunities for Community-Focused Journalism Innovation

[Benjamin Melançon]

Dear MGP2006 Participants,

If you've been watching the MGP2006 Summit Participant News ticker below 
all content at MGP-Forum.org, you already know about the Knight Brothers 
21st Century News Challenge.

If you don't know yet, the Knight foundation's very open grants are a 
chance to get money to do what many of us are trying to do anyway: 
"improve the flow of journalism, information and news in the public 
interest" and "transform community life."

Read all about it and see the simple application here: 
http://www.newschallenge.org/

I'm interested in working with anyone who would like to collaborate on 
grant applications for initiatives involving a news site that stakes its 
legitimacy on democracy, openness, and transparency.

On a fully open news site and e-mail list the most important messages, 
as rated by random juries drawn from people in the network, would get 
the widest distribution.  This would allow news from all different 
sources to have a level playing field.  The site would also let people 
tie proposed ideas and actions to news articles, in a larger network of 
"People Who Give a Damn."  The premise:  if everyone who cared about 
something actually knew about everyone else who cared, people would be 
able to work together to change things for the better a lot more often.

That's People Who Give a Damn's vision, and we'd love to hear from 
anyone else who thinks they might share it, has an interest in open 
source software in particular Drupal, or a talent for grant-writing.  I 
can be reached at b at pwgd.org or 1-508-737-0582.

A network like that isn't worth anything without solidarity, and I want 
to mention again:  three days to pledge a monthly donation to save The 
NewStandard - http://newstandardnews.net/

[Note: Announcement posts had not been registering on the web site.  I 
apologize, the problem has been corrected, and all earlier posts to this 
e-mail list are being added.]