New Voices

The New Voices project has launched its companion Web site,
J-Learning. It is a how-to site for community journalism with training in Web site creation; basic HTML; page design and layout; use of photos, audio, video and animation; using databases and surveys; law and ethics; advertising and marketing; and fundraising and e-commerce.

See press release

		Going Fast: Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive. A digital literacy guide for the information age. • Download PDF • Order Hard Copies (credit card payments now accepted)

		Geanne Rosenberg of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism created a Knight Citizen News Network learning module and accompanying Q&A blog focused on helping professional and citizen journalists avoid potential legal pitfalls. • Read article New Voices grantee Learning to Finish created a calculator that allows users to see projected graduation rates for individual school districts, states, and the United States as a whole. It measures the likelihood that a 9th grader will complete high school on time. Check out The Finish Line Calculator. • Article Hartsville Today has released its "cook book," a guide for citizen media sites based on the experiences and lessons learned in the first year of the small-town South Carolina site. Download the PDF version (1.1 MB). • Article As the 2005 New Voices grantees make progress recruiting volunteers, launching Web sites and building studios, they bring promise of citizens media outlets to their communities. • Article MSNBC, the BBC and other traditional newsrooms are eliciting reader responses on their Web sites to capture news moments from a citizens' lens. • Article • Read more Spotlights

New Voices is a pioneering program to seed innovative community news ventures in the United States. Through 2008, New Voices is helping to fund the start-up of 40 micro-local news projects with $12,000 grants; support them with an educational Web site, and help foster their sustainability through $5,000 second-year matching grants. New Voices is administered by J-Lab at the University of Maryland and supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

2008 Application Deadline has Passed

Winners will be notified in mid-May.

New Voices projects are training citizen journalists and helping to provide local news and information in communities where there is little available news.

--Jan Schaffer,
J-Lab Executive Director

Saint Paul City News Desk is now posting its features on YouTube. Partner project and 2005 grantee Twin Cities Daily Planet is also posting the videos on a special video section on its Web site, with the latest video appearing on the home page.

NewCastleNOW.org posts photo slideshows of events they cover, including a local film festival and a park opening, as well as photos taken for feature stories, like the one about a town resident’s famous ferns. See the slideshows.

Greater Fulton News in Richmond, Va., has also launched a YouTube channel to house its student- produced video, including this feature on a local soul food cart.

2007 Grantees
• Vermont Climate Witness, Burlington, VT
• Northwest Community Radio Network Collaborative Newscast, Seattle
• Saint Paul City Newsdesk, St. Paul, MN
• NewCastleNOW.org, Chappaqua, NY
• NeighborMedia, Cambridge, MA
• Bilingual Interactive Environmental Journalism, Reno, NV
• Anansi’s Web, Gary, IN
• Greater Fulton News, Richmond, VA
• The Eminent Domain, Brooklyn, NY
• News Desk on Access SF, San Francisco

Check Out the Previous Grantees

2006
• List of 2006 Grantees
• 2006 Grantee Progress Reports

2005
• List of 2005 Grantees
• 2005 Grantee Progress Reports

© 2004-2005 J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
New Voices is a project of J-Lab, a center of the University of Maryland
Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Site design by Hop Studios.