Maria Balinska, Liza Gross, Gene Robinson, Julia Reischel, Lissa Harris and Jeanne Pinder (left to right) • Photo by Anthony Tilghman

The International Women’s Media Foundation selected three U.S.-based digital news media projects to receive $20,000 grants.

The 2011 winners of the Global Digital News Frontier grants -- funded by the Ford Foundation -- include:


Clearhealthcosts.com, the brainchild of former New York Times veteran editor and reporter Jeanne Pinder, features a curated collection of health care pricing information in a consumer-friendly, community-oriented, interactive website that combines reporting, user-generated content and databases to illuminate this largely opaque market.




Latitude News, conceived by longtime BBC editor and producer and recent Nieman Fellow Maria Balinska, explores connections between Americans and the rest of the world and promoting a deeper understanding of how the U.S. fits into the global news narrative. 



NewsShed -- a spinoff enterprise of Julia Reischel and Lissa Harris’s regional news aggregator The Watershed Post -- offers self-supporting news websites for small rural towns in the Catskills. This has become a sustainable model of online-only local journalism in underserved and economically depressed communities.

The award winners were selected from more than 100 proposals from a diverse array of entrepreneurial women journalists.  Key grant criteria included innovation in delivering the news and a clear business plan for achieving sustainability beyond the year-long grant program.

“Promoting women journalists’ professional advancement -- in both traditional and new media -- is a central tenet of the IWMF’s mission,” Liza Gross, executive director of the IWMF said. 

“These grants, combined with training the IWMFoffered, helped women to succeed in new media entrepreneurship, an arena where their numbers have been sorely lacking,” IWMF Advisory Committee Chairman Merrill Brown said.  “Each of the winners offers an innovative way to deliver the news, and they are truly at the forefront of the digital media frontier.”

Limited access to credit and training, coupled with cultural stereotypes and outdated perceptions, threaten women's full participation as entrepreneurs in the digital media. Men currently receive 95 percent of all venture capital funds and almost 75 percent of training in starting a business.

These IWMF grants are a step to ensure that three female journalists are given the right match of support and skills to thrive in digital entrepreneurship. In addition to the grants, this unique program will offer ongoing support in the form of pro-bono coaching to turn ideas into viable business ventures.

Winners of the three $20,000 grants were selected by a committee made up of members of the IWMF Board of Directors and experts from the news media, digital media and business management consulting sector.