Most Livable City in U.S. Launches Local Online investigative News Service

By John McCormick  

This online news service (scheduled to go live this Summer) is, according to the web site, "an on-line initiative to preserve and strengthen the delivery of local news and information ... offering in-depth reports on key issues impacting the Pittsburgh region and cultivating broad community involvement.

The initiative forms part of The Pittsburgh Foundation's mission to encourage civic engagement and promote 'vibrant democracy,' and was started by the Foundation with the support of a $253,000 grant from the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The project has received additional funding of $325,000 from The Pittsburgh Foundation.

With its start-up funding requirements now in place, the on-line news initiative will transfer to the management of Pittsburgh Filmmakers group, one of the country's largest and oldest independent media arts centers. "We are part of a bold and innovative movement across the United States to safeguard investigative community-oriented news," according to a spokesperson for the group.

"The media landscape, particularly the newspaper industry, has changed dramatically in the U.S., especially over the past decade," said Grant Oliphant (The Pittsburgh Foundation's President and CEO.) "Pittsburgh is fortunate to still have a strong newspaper presence, but even here the resources to undertake deep investigative journalism are increasingly scarce.
"Our new on-line initiative is intended as a much-needed resource that I believe can serve as a trusted and reliable source of information for our community to ensure that our citizens continue to be well-informed about important issues."

Pittsburgh is still thought of by some people as the dirty steel city, but that time is decades in the past. Today Pittsburgh is a vibrant arts, educational, computer science and robotics center which was recently voted one of the top cities in the world and the best larger city to live in out of the entire United States.

http://pghfilmmakers.org/

Pittsburgh Filmmakers I 477 Melwood Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15213

John McCormick is an investigative reporter, /science/medical columnist and finance and social commentator, with 17,000+ bylined stories. He lived in Pittsburgh for several years and still lives and works out of his ranch in west-central Pennsylvania. Contact John through NewsBlaze.