This is just marvelous, stunning news:
San Francisco financier Warren Hellman will invest $5 million to develop a nonprofit journalism venture that will provide regional news coverage online and feed stories to media partners including KQED and possibly the New York Times.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/BUA719SBDH.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0S7HKIjUw
I agree with Tom Formeski who posted http://bit.ly/4DqzaA on Monday-
“If news journalism has to wait for handouts then it will never be a healthy industry.
We need innovation in news media and innovation means new types of media formats and also new types of business models. I meet innovative media entrepreneurs all the time.
For example, Shareen Newman publishes a very innovative site called http://www.FormerFatChick.com. It’s a unique media-rich site and she is exploring some innovative business models with corporations and health-care providers.
We need people like Mr Hellman to help fund some of our existing media entrepreneurs such as Ms Newman, to help them get off the ground. A $50k grant to Ms Newman would go a long way and potentially pave the way for others. That would be a much better use of Mr Hellman’s money.”