What we are trying to accomplish here

Every so often it's important to ponder our mission and refocus. I promised you I would post this, so here it is, straight from the grant document.

First, here is the big picture from Knight :

The Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge Initiative seeks…

• New ways for people to communicate interactively to help people better understand one another in geographic communities, share know-how and generate passion in solving local problems;
• New ways for people to use information, news and journalism in geographic communities to imagine their collective possibilities as communities, and to set and reach common community goals;

• New ways to dig for news and act on it in geographic communities, including new ways to collect, prepare and distribute information, news and journalism that reveals hard-to-know facts, identifies common problems, clarifies community issues or points out practical courses of action.

Now, here is what Dr. Dianne promised we would deliver:

"... an effective, efficient and replicable system with the capacity to generate and execute entirely new approaches to and examples of participatory community news."

"... original and relevant models of news production, format and distribution, and it will make those models available to individual, independent and industry news producers

"... an entirely new form of participatory community journalism, one that is scalable, replicable, affordable and effective. Deliverables may adopt any digital format or approach – from a Web site, to a news application, to an immersive media simulation or platform. But they must be adaptable and relevant, useful to real people and real communities."

"... Most important, the project will generate new approaches to community news production and delivery, which will be made available to all news producers across the country."

Think about it. Ponder it. Print it out and put it inside your AP Stylebook under your pillow and grok it.

And first one to send me a link with the real origin of the word "grok" wins. ;-) (hint: it ain't Steve Jobs!)