"Foundations are making more media and journalism grants not for the sake of media alone, but because they are finding they need a healthy news ecosystem in order to achieve their strategic goals." With this in mind, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the William Penn Foundation have pub ... lished this booklet as a resource for use as a starting point for organisations interested in making media, journalism, or community-information grants. The booklet is divided in two primary sections - the first containing key points that a user is encouraged to know, the second a short list of suggestions on how to get started. A final section of "Additional reading" is included at the end, as well as a link to the Information Needs website for further resources." (Communication Initiative) more

"In July 2010, World Journalism Education Council gathered more than 400 journalism educators from about 50 countries for the second World Journalism Education Congress in South Africa. There was broad recognition that social media has become a major force in the field that cannot be marginalized an ... d that Africa has become a world-class incubator for media innovation. At the August meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Eric Newton carried these ideas a step farther, laying out the “four transformations” for U.S. journalism programs. Journalism schools are: 1. Becoming better connected to other university disciplines and departments, expanding the definition of what it means to be a journalist; 2. Playing an increasing role as content and technology innovators; 3. Emerging as promoters of collaborative, open approaches and models; 4. Becoming news providers that understand the ecosystem of their communities. In the digital age, journalism schools are trying to engage more deeply with the people we used to call the audience. These transformations are even more urgently required in the field of media development. In the future, media development projects will originate in an ever-widening pool of university departments. These will include law, public health, library science, computer science, international relations, visual design, and even architecture and urban planning, where striking advances in mapping applications are taking place. Nonetheless, programs that specialize in data will also require skills from the traditional journalism toolkit: verification, story-telling ability, and contextualization. Academia could be an ideal setting for this exchange of ideas, a meeting place between core values and technological innovation. Universities could also provide a space for frank discussion about the limitations of technology and the means to discern when new technologies offer concrete benefits to the user and when they constitute a distraction. These questions are even more critical in resource-poor societies in the developing world. To achieve these ends, more coordination is needed, both within and among universities, to serve as a critical bridge–between North and South, between technologists and humanists, between social media and traditional journalism." (Conclusion, page 23) more