With great sums of money comes great responsibilities to explain how the funding is used.  That’s the way it works when it comes to foundations.  So, Poynter NewsU sent along its first “annual report” to the Knight Foundation in June 2004, a little more than 15 months after receiving our first funding.

• Conducted a survey of journalists [2,500 responded out of 12,000 sent] to better understand the potential interest in e-learning, the types of courses that would valuable and the technical capacity of those interested in online training.
• Developed and presented the “meet NewsU” presentation to various journalism groups, including the National Council of Journalism Organizations, the Knight Foundation Chairs in journalism, and a meeting of the foundations that support journalism activities.
• Built staff of two Interactive Learning Producers and hired a recent college graduate to fill a one year internship position.
• Explored more than 10 learning management systems (LMS) intended to handle course development, asset management, course listings and registration, course delivery, class communications, and student testing and tracking.
• Installed a LMS offered by eCollege on a trial basis in order to better understand NewsU’s technical needs. This trial period also provided NewsU an opportunity to beta test two faculty-led online courses offered to members of AAJA.

An interesting note in the report stated “more than 275 users have registered with NewsU, prior to the offering of any e-learning courses or any advertising or marketing effort. These are journalists who discovered NewsU on their own and have told us to keep them aware of course offerings.”