Think you've got journalism's next big idea? Get to know Elspeth Revere, the MacArthur Foundation's media maven

The most important woman in Chicago journalism attended the landmark Chicago Journalism Town Hall in early 2009 and sat quietly in back. Few people knew she was there or who she was, but the noisy room would have gone stone silent in an instant if she'd stood and said something like, "Many of you have some very interesting ideas, but this is what the MacArthur Foundation is willing to pay for."

Consider the Chicago News Cooperative, which launched a few months after the Town Hall. I was among the luminaries on the Town Hall panel, and my enthusiasm for the CNC would have left founder James O'Shea two bucks shy of a cup of coffee. The interest of Elspeth Revere, conversely, has led to grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation totaling $1 million. Without them the CNC wouldn't exist.

Revere is the MacArthur Foundation's vice president for media, culture, and special initiatives. Her job is to put serious money in serious hands, and here's where some of the foundation's money has gone on her watch: To support investigative journalism: $600,000 to the Center for Investigative Reporting, $750,000 to the Center for Public Integrity, $500,000 to ProPublica. To support public radio and television: $1.2 million to Public Radio International, $1 million to PBS's NewsHour, $300,000 to the Third Coast International Audio Festival. To support documentary film: $1.5 million to P.O.V., $290,000 to Chicago's Kartemquin Films, $1.1 million to the Bay Area Video Coalition. To support new media and technology: $430,000 to a University of Michigan research project "on credibility assessment in the participatory Web environment," $450,000 to a Tribeca Film Institute project "to aggregate, digitize, curate and make available independent media content for online distribution." Then there's the ongoing $1 million a year grant to Frontline, the long-running documentary series from WGBH in Boston that touches all the bases.