Big News for New Assignment: Reuters Gives $100K

I announced today at PressThink and the Guardian’s blog, Comment is Free, that Reuters is giving $100,000 to NewAssignment.Net. The money will underwrite the costs of hiring our first editor, who will start in early 2007. There’s reaction already from USA Today’s tech blogger, Angela Gunn.

It’s heartening to see one of the old-line news organizations put up some funding for this thing. Believe me, all but the most head-in-sand among us journalist types know our industry’s got to change. A lot of us are looking forward to it — it’s an exciting time to be telling the news and the possibilities are invigorating, if you’re not scared to death (and sometimes even if you are). But journalism, like too many other industries, is in many respects too hidebound to generate revolutionary change from within…

Which has something to do with this grant, I’m sure.

From Editor & Publisher’s coverage:

Reuters says it will have no editorial control over the site’s projects, and it will not hold right of first refusal for any of the stories that the site is covering.

We felt it was best to keep it clean.

Jason Boog at The Publishing Spot: “In the surprise marriage of the year, a big time newswire just hooked up with a band of citizen journalism upstarts….”

Here’s paidcontent.org’s coverage.