Poynter Receives Carnegie Corporation Grant for Transformation Project

A $50,000 grant will help The Poynter Institute track efforts by news organizations to sustain quality journalism.

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St. Petersburg, FL (PRWEB) May 12, 2009

The Poynter Institute today announced it has received a $50,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to help track the economic and technical transformation of the news industry.

Karen B. Dunlap, Poynter's president, said a new Transformation Tracker project is a three-year initiative aimed at helping the media industry better organize its efforts to sustain quality journalism in the future.

"Despite the difficult economic conditions in which news organizations are operating," Dunlap said, "a lot of new ideas are being tried - some are good, some not so good. But all of them offer lessons to those working to keep journalism alive.

"Poynter is in a unique position to chronicle those lessons, make them readily available and gather together individuals and organizations interested in creating, executing or funding the most promising new strategies."

The Transformation Tracker project has three components. The first two offer Poynter the opportunity to write the story of journalism's transformation:

  •     An online center (http://www.poynter.org/tracker) where users can search a catalogue of ideas and efforts aimed at creating, sustaining and promoting journalism. David Shedden, Poynter's library director and online columnist, maintains the site.

  •     Two blogs: The Biz Blog (http://www.poynter.org/BizBlog) by Poynter's Rick Edmonds tracks business trends for startups as well as established media; NewsPay (http://www.poynter.org/NewsPay) by Poynter's Bill Mitchell provides studies of projects and strategies, of lessons learned in successful and unsuccessful efforts.

The third component calls for Poynter to host two more conferences by the end of 2009 that target specific issues in the transformation. Each conference would bring together 15 to 20 participants. Earlier this year, as part of the project, Poynter hosted a conference entitled, "Nonprofits and Newspapers: Possibilities and Challenges."

"People have actually begun speaking aloud," Dunlap said, "about whether a day could arrive when we could be without journalism - one of our democracy's truly essential components.

"Poynter is working to ensure that day does not arrive, and we're delighted that Carnegie Corporation shares our concern. We invite others to join us."

About The Poynter Institute:
Serving journalism and citizens in the interest of democracy, The Poynter Institute was founded in 1975 in St. Petersburg, Fla. It is one of the nation's top schools for professional journalists, media leaders, journalism educators and students. Poynter offers training throughout the year in the areas of online and multimedia, leadership and management, reporting, writing and editing, TV and radio, ethics and diversity, journalism education and visual journalism. Poynter's News University (http://www.newsu.org) offers newsroom training to journalists and journalism students through interactive e-learning modules and links to other journalism education and training opportunities. Poynter Online (http://www.poynter.org), the Institute's Web site, is a daily destination for news and information about the media industry.

CONTACT
Jessica Sandler, marketing manager, jsandler @ poynter.org
Phone: 1-888-POYNTER (1-888-769-6837)

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