News

In line with the holiday season, Steven Pearlstein of the The Washington Post, details company gift giving and charity programs: Charity That Defies Economics (free registraton required or use www.bugmenot.com

This has been a tough week for Fannie Mae. But whatever you want to say about the company, its foundation has consistently been on the front lines of corporate giving in Washington. This was a record year for Fannie’s Help the Homeless Program that enlisted more than 110,000 people for various walkathons and raised $6.5 million for local programs. And Fannie employees rallied around the Hope for Henry Foundation, created by employee Laurie Strongin in memory of her 7-year-old son, who died two years ago from a rare genetic illness. This month, the Henry Foundation provided computers, Gameboys, portable CD players and the like to kids undergoing cancer treatment at Georgetown University Medical Center.

UPDATES:  after reading  "Dear Henry, Letters To My Son" recent entries, I’m off  to watch Mary Poppins with the  family…

The Washington Post had an interesting column by writer Leslie Walker on ‘citizen journalism’. You can read more about the article here. The article mentions the advertising opportunity for local, grassroots supported websites. For me, much of this article sounded like earlier days of online community building. Someones gotta crack the local ad model, why shouldn’t it be homegrown news sites?

Leslie also mentions the old Sidewalk business model. Consumer generated news and newspapers feel more genuine than Sidewalk did. Instead of trying to market a brand, there’s actually some value being delivered! I think a forerunner of the local community was the Blacksburg Electronic Village — the community network for Blacksburg, Virginia.

BTW, The Media Center’s Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin are up for an award for The Fast 50 (Fast Company magazine’s search for "ordinary people doing extraordinary things").  The nomination: We Erased the Lines Separating Media and Society.

The Media Center has been involved in participatory journalism for some time through vehicles like the ‘We Media’ project, CYBERJOURNALIST.NET, and the MediaMorphosis conference.

eBay Acquires Minority Interest in craigslist
More proof that doing good things is good business. available domains .