The Online News Association announcement.
The ONA page dedicated to New Mexico News Port.
The story in public broadcasting’s Current.
Partner site, News Mexico In-Depth.
The American Journalism Review not only covered the announcement, they were partners in covering the Journalism Interactive conference where the grants were announced.
University of New Mexico Communication and Marketing release. 
We also put up a Storify account of the announcement, featuring some of the tweets that day.
The winners of the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education were announced April 4, 2014 in College Park, MD.
http://journalists.org/next-gen/challenge-fund/
http://journalists.org/next-gen/challenge-fund/winner-university-of-new-mexico/
New Mexico News Port is named a winner of the “Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education” at the 2014 Journalism Education and Digital Media Conference in College Park,MD. April 4, 2014. (Photo by Kate Nash)
Welcome aboard. This is your News Port captain Mike Marcotte.
Our team here at the University of New Mexico (Communication & Journalism Dept) just got word from the Online News Association that our project, the New Mexico News Port, is one of the inaugural winners of the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education.
We’re thrilled, of course.
One of our early slides depicting the collaboration concept
It means that on this site we will build a unique — and potentially transformative — service.
The idea is simple in concept but challenging in its overall ambition. We plan to open up a “collaboration hub” to increase local news quantity and quality — to increase usage and engagement — and to experiment with news in the digital age.
Many partners are invited to participate. In fact, it’s an open invitation to everybody. Our starting partners are 1) KUNM, 2) KNME, 3) The Daily Lobo.
The News Port is a fun name for what otherwise would be called an innovation laboratory. We are creating a space, managed by an editor, where students and professionals work together. We’re not only interested in doing journalism, we’re also interested in the technology and the practices of journalism, its distribution and its public effects. We’ll be researching this as we do it.
This is why we’ve also invited other departments at the university to play with us. The ARTS lab and the UNM School of Engineering, for example. Moreover, we’re interested in how our project can contribute to UNM’s “Innovation Academy.”
Our lab can be seen as UNM’s unique approach to a national trend in journalism education — toward a “teaching hospital model.” There’s been a lot written about this, and funders certainly seem keen on it.
For more about our project, go to the About Page and you can read the entire proposal.
We hope you enjoy the ride!
CJ375 Reports 