By: E&P Staff Forbes.com has an interview up today with Alberto Ibarguen, former publisher of The Miami Herald and current president of the $2 billion John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Currently, Ibarguen is directing a multi-year plan to spend $100 million on 130 projects dedicated to new media and the future of news, ranging from projects on community-financed reporting and media "test kitchens" at universities to a new journalism institute in India.
Ibarguen lamens the loss of local reporting by newspapers. "The fact is that new media lends itself more easily to national and international news than local news," he says. "For the first time in our history it's easier for a high school student to learn about the crisis in Darfur than it is to find out about corruption in their local City Hall or what the school board wants to teach."
He discusses some of the projects the Knight Foundation is working on to fill that gap, among them Spot.us, a site run by 25-year-old David Cohn that invites journalists to pitch their stories to the public. The public then pledges small amounts of money until enough is contributed to fund an investigation of, say, why local businesses are closing in a neighborhood in San Francisco.
Check it out,
here .
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