IWMF Announces 2012 Winners of Women Entrepreneurs in Digital News Frontier Grants
Washington, D.C. – The International Women’s Media Foundation announced today three winners of its 2012 Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital News Frontier grants. Each will receive $20,000 to launch new media enterprises, coupled with professional development opportunities.
The winners were selected from nearly 140 proposals by entrepreneurial women journalists in 33 states. Their start-ups showed innovation in delivering the news and a clear plan for sustainability beyond the year-long program.
“We were impressed by the caliber and diversity of this year’s proposals,” IWMF Acting Executive Director Elisa Lees Munoz said. “We continue to see a dearth of seed funding and training for aspiring women entrepreneurs, and we are pleased to provide these much-needed resources to three exceptional winners.”
The winning start-ups are:
Computational Platform for Investigative Journalism, a hub for data-driven reporting, tools and training, started by Knight Fellow and Agencia EFE senior correspondent Teresa Bouza.
Real World STEM, a video-based webzine engaging teens in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) reporting, conceived by freelance journalist Rebekah L Fraser.
Symbolia: The Tablet Magazine of Illustrated Journalism, a tablet-focused visual journalism enterprise combining investigative reporting with comics and illustration, created by media strategist Erin Polgreen.
Along with grant funding, Bouza, Fraser and Polgreen will receive pro-bono coaching to support their development as digital news entrepreneurs.
Participating in this year’s judging were: Maria Balinska, 2011 IWMF grantee and founder, Latitude News; Eve Batey, editor and publisher, San Francisco Appeal; Ben Metcalfe, founder and CEO, Swordfish Corp; Neal Mohan, vice president of product management, Google; Andrew Nachison, co-founder and managing director, We Media; Shazna Nessa, director of Interactive, Associated Press; Mike Orren, founder of Panlocal LLC/Pegasus News/The Daily You; Jeanne Pinder, 2011 IWMF grantee, founder and CEO, ClearHealthCosts; and Julia Reischel, 2011 IWMF grantee, co-founder and publisher, Watershed Post.
The IWMF’s Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital News Frontier grant initiative, launched in 2011, is supported by the Ford Foundation.
Founded in 1990, the IWMF’s mission is to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide. The IWMF network includes women and men in the media in more than 130 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.iwmf.org.
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