Advisory Board Comments
on 2005 New Voices Applicants
“The 2005 New Voices grantees were selected from a diverse and deep pool of 243 applicants. Citizen volunteers want to start up Web sites, blogs, community radio and television newscasts, podcasts and fledgling publications to provide news and information for their communities. Young people, minorities and immigrants were often in the vanguard of the ideas. The projects selected were innovative, involved citizens in hands-on ways, and held out the promise of being prototypes for others. It was humbling to read of the need and encouraging to see the aspirations.”
—Jan Schaffer, New Voices director
“In this media-rich age, everyday citizens are as concerned as they’ve ever been with the quality and quantity of information that is available. They have news about their communities of like-minded people and they want to share it; they long for news that they aren’t getting now. Many more than 10 organizations richly deserved to be funded. New Voices is meeting needs for intensely local information. From recent immigrants to long-time rural or urban residents, people feel left out of the news.”—Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on the Press, Leadership and Community, University of Kansas
“Reading the applications was like peering into the future of citizen journalism, where small groups with similar interests gather to disseminate news via the web, local radio, neighborhood television networks and homegrown newspapers. The ideas are stunning in their simplicity and yet huge in their impact on the future of journalism.”—Donna Reed, vice president, Media General
“I’m deeply impressed by the new wave of civic innovation online. People are capitalizing on technologies like blogs, wikis, and streaming audio files to create excellent, original sources of news, information, and opinion for their communities. Young people and minorities are often leaders in these efforts. The 10 New Voices projects were selected from a very competitive field of 250 applications. They are impressive and diverse and should catalyze a significant movement.”
—Peter Levine, deputy director, CIRCLE
“I was impressed by the variety of ideas and the hunger to explore how technology can help communities produce and share news and information or work more closely with local mainstream media. There was passion in what these community news ventures said they wanted to accomplish.”
—Bruce Koon, executive news editor, Knight Ridder Digital
“The committee ... emerged from the process confident that the goals of the project will be well-served by the work the geographically and ethnically diverse applicants have proposed and encouraged by their apparent understanding and appreciation of how communications technology can serve them as tools to help build strong communities and to reach shared cultural and economic objectives.”
—Charles B. Fancher, Jr., president, Fancher Associates, Inc.
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New Voices is an initiative of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. 