Peter Griffin - Future News

Peter Griffin has written a great piece about the Scoop Foundation Project for his futurenews blog - the introductory section only repeated below, so to read it in full please go to Future News.

Peter provides a great explanation of what we have in mind and his views on the challenges, opportunities and threats inherent in a project like this accord very closely with project initiator Alastair Thompson.

Scoop Foundation – how it could work

Media entrepreneur Alastair Thompson and journalist Alison McCulloch were on Media3 [SCROLL BELOW] last night outlining their plans for a public interest journalism venture – the Scoop Foundation.

This is an exciting development for journalism, though will be greeted with a measure of scepticism.

Respected journalist Bernard Hickey last year attempted a similar venture on a smaller scale, but it did not attract sufficient financial backing and failed to get off the ground.

The challenge for the Scoop Foundation‘s founders and supporters – of which I am one – is to get this thing over the line and operational – hopefully within a few months.

Here’s what the Scoop Foundation has in its favor:

• Support from a range of experienced journalists and people with online media experience.
• Ability to leverage off the Scoop infrastructure – from its offices, staff and technical resources to advertising on its website and potentially through the Scoop Cartel ad network. Scoop is providing $100,000 worth of in-kind services per annum.
• Established relationships with the likes of AUT University’s School of Communications Studies, the Pacific Media Centre and my own Science Media Centre.
• Nothing like this exists in New Zealand and there is a wealth of overseas experience to learn from and apply where appropriate.