Knight, MacArthur and Chicago Community Trust Team Up for New Media Grants

A dozen groups pursuing new-media ventures in Chicago received a combined $500,000 from the Community News Matters program, a project supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Grants went to both for-profit and non-profit groups, and included established entities like Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which got $30,000 to fund graduate students' efforts to help develop two community news ventures, and brand-new ventures such as the Chicago News Cooperative, which will use its $50,000 grant to develop coverage of City Hall. The grant recipients include:

• Columbia College Chicago ($45,000) for a joint effort with the Chicago Tribune to cover news in the Austin neighborhood on the city's West Side.
• Gapers Block Media LLC ($35,000) to boost neighborhood news coverage at GapersBlock.com.
• Loyola University Chicago ($45,000) for a partnership with Benito Juarez Community Academy to train student journalists to cover the Southwest Side neighborhood of Pilsen.
• South Suburban Publishing LLC ($30,000) to train citizen journalists in Markham to cover news for www.southsnews.com.
• Chicago Assn. of Hispanic Journalists ($30,000) for a new Web site to promote local Latino journalists.
• Chicago Youth Voices Network ($60,000) to engage several hundred youth journalists in reporting on Chicago teens.
• Community Media Workshop ($45,000) for a news-tracking effort and an ethnic media news service.
• Chicago News Cooperative ($50,000) to provide enterprise coverage of Chicago.
• Northwestern University ($30,000) for grad students to help develop two local community news ventures.
• Better Government Assn. ($60,000) to train volunteer monitors to report for a new virtual town hall Web site.
• Beachwood Media Co. ($35,000) to enhance technology and content to create a sustainable business model.
• Brad Flora ($35,000) to upgrade software used by WindyCitizen