A leader for a major public affairs journalism project at Temple University in Philadelphia began his role last week. I was excited to find in February that Neil Budde, whose claim to fame is being the founding editor of WSJ.com, would be the CEO of the new, temporarily-named Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network. Everyone closer [...]

A feature story covering the as-yet unreleased Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections API-based online tool ‘License to Inspect,’ its inspiration and hope was published on Technically Philly Monday, a story I reported and wrote during the last couple months. It is the last major feature of the Transparencity grant project I’ve been leading, and [...]

As part of its agreement with FCC to take over majority stake in NBC Universal, Comcast pledged to, among other things, bolster local news. A half dozen NBC local affiliates, including Philadelphia, announcing a request for proposals to partner with nonprofit news organizations is just that. I’d sure hope attention is being paid by WHYY [...]

If all the timing was right on track, some time this month or next, a CEO might be named for a new collaborative nonprofit news and information project being initially funded by the William Penn Foundation. As first shared here, the deeply invested regional foundation put an initial $2.4 million onto the table to form [...]

A surprisingly fairly comprehensive take from Net News Check on the Philadelphia media ecosystem, including the William Penn Foundation investment, the WHYY Newsworks initiative, Philly.com and others, like Technically Philly: In addition, journalists set free as the city’s newspapers spiraled into bankruptcy have founded independent Web sites, said Chris Satullo, executive director of news and [...]

In this month’s Philadelphia magazine, former CityPaper news editor Jeff Billman covers the forthcoming William Penn Foundation-funded news institute at Temple University and notes its roots in Technically Philly’s News Inkubator pitch: …Quality journalism costs money to produce; these sites need both enough readers to attract advertisers and somebody to sell them ads. And that’s [...]

On behalf of Technically Philly, I have started work on a six-month, William Penn Foundation-funded journalism project called Transparencity, covering the open data movement in Philadelphia, as was announced this morning. Conducted in partnership with the Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University (which is chaired by my college honors thesis adviser), the project’s focus [...]

The William Penn Foundation board of directors has pledged a three-year $2.4 million grant to Temple University to incubate “a new organization designed to strengthen our region’s capacity for professionally-produced public interest journalism,” as described by strategic consultant Michael Greenle. “This will fund journalism, support other outlets and find and cover gaps in coverage,” said [...]

The movement is already afoot, put on most prominent display by the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture, but I crave more. Last Wednesday, I was waiting to meet someone in the food court beneath the giant Comcast Center in Center City Philadelphia. Then people started singing, as you can sort of make out in [...]

Smart people are making calculated investments in Philadelphia’s journalism community. The local NPR affiliate here is getting attention for its NewsWorks online news campaign. The William Penn Foundation is moving ahead with its mission-orientated drive toward increasing public affairs journalism in the region. New ownership for the Inquirer crew can mean some fresh ideas. Independent [...]