The Chicago Community Trust is scattering half a million dollars in seed money to support 12 innovative local journalism projects. It’s a new program, Community News Matters, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($250,000) and the John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation ($100,000) as well as CCT; spokesperson Vivian Vahlberg says satisfying all 86 grant applications would have required $5.7 million. “The amazing thing is there were so few dogs among the proposals,” she tells me. “So many good ones, so many interesting ones.”
