Today Automattic, the parent of WordPress.com
announced a new venture with partners Spirited Media and News Revenue Hub and £2.4 million in funding for the first year. The project will use the WordPress.com cloud platform. Funding comes the Google News Initiative ($1.2m), The Lenfest Institute for Journalism ($400,000), ConsenSys ($350,000), and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($250,000). An additional $200,000 source is yet to be announced.
The project aims to tackle the technical complexities for smaller news startups. Called Newspack by WordPress.com, the platform is squarely aimed at local news. One of the partners Spirited Media runs local news site in Denver, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.
“Local news organizations are struggling to find sustainable models for journalism — a crisis that has very real implications for democracy,” said Kinsey Wilson, President of WordPress.com and a former senior executive at NPR and The New York Times. “We’re joining with industry leaders to bring technology, publishing and business expertise together in a single platform that can be shared by news organizations across the globe.”
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