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[Forwarded by Steven Clift <http://publicus.net>, consultant
to the Markle Foundation for Web White & Blue. Please contact
the foundation directly with questions or comments.]
Contact:
Julia Moffett
The Markle Foundation
212-489-6655 x 337
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web site: http://www.markle.org
Stuart Fischer
Robinson Lerer & Montgomery
212-484-7758
MARKLE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES 5-YEAR, $100 MILLION INITIATIVE
AIMED AT USING THE INTERNET AND OTHER NEW MEDIA FOR PUBLIC BENEFIT
Led by Zoë Baird, The Markle Foundation
Will Make Grants and Investments in Four Key Areas: Children's
Interactive Media, Health Care Information Technologies, Policy
Development, and Interactive Public Engagement
Initial Partners Include Oxygen Media, Thirteen/WNET, Oxford
University, America Online, Internews Network, University of Texas,
and International Rescue Committee
New York, NY, July 26, 1999 - The Markle Foundation will invest up to
$100 million over the next three-to-five years to help ensure that
public needs are served by emerging communications media and
information technologies, it was announced today by Zoë Baird,
Markle's President. Emphasizing the potential of the Internet and
other new media to improve people's lives, Baird unveiled plans for a
significant increase in Markle's spending as well as four new areas
of focus for the Foundation, and initial partnerships with several
nonprofit, academic and commercial entities.
"New communications media are shaping the future of our politics, our
culture and our economic relationships. The next few years represent
a unique opportunity to develop these emerging tools for the public's
benefit," said Baird. "This is a critical time, while the industry
is still in flux, to try to realize the potential of new media to
meet public needs. We intend to operate with a sense of urgency,
working in collaboration with other nonprofits, academic
institutions, government and the industry itself."
The announcement is the result of a comprehensive review of the
current communications landscape begun when Ms. Baird became Markle's
president in 1998. The examination has led the New York-based
Foundation to identify four key areas of public need in which it will
concentrate:
- Public Engagement through Interactive Technologies, which will
encourage the use of communications technology to help people
actively pursue knowledge and participate in democratic society.
- Policy for a Networked Society, which will work to enhance the
public voice in the consideration and resolution of domestic and
international policies that are surfacing in this new communications
environment.
- Interactive Media for Children, which aims to enhance the potential
for children to benefit from using interactive technologies. The
program also aims to expand public expectations for what these
technologies can do to enhance children's lives.
- Information Technologies for Better Health, which will work to
improve the ability of patients and consumers, and those who treat
them, to make use of information technology to improve their health
and health care.
In addition, the Foundation announced the creation of an Opportunity
Fund to support public interest initiatives that fall outside these
primary program areas and to ensure that intellectual and financial
resources are available for unanticipated projects.
"Zoë Baird and the terrific Markle Foundation team have an
opportunity to have a significant impact on the role communications
technologies will play in our lives," said Lewis W. Bernard, the
Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation. "This is an
important time in the evolution of the industry, and we are therefore
making a serious commitment to provide the resources necessary for
the course the Foundation has charted."
A private, nonprofit philanthropy, the Markle Foundation is the
largest grantmaking foundation concentrating exclusively on the field
of communications media and information technology. According to the
announcement, Markle will pursue its goals through a range of
activities, including analysis, research, public information and the
development of innovative media products and services. The
Foundation will also create and operate many of its own projects -
using not only grants but also investments and strategic alliances
with non-profits and businesses.
Among the grants and investments announced today:
· A $4.5 million investment in a project with Oxygen Media for
research and experimentation in converging media. Markle has made a
program-related investment of $3.5 million to create a partnership
with Oxygen Media for the development of the Oxygen/Markle Pulse,
which aims to enhance the influence of the audience over the creation
of content. The Oxygen/Markle Pulse will track and measure women's
attitudes, needs and values to engage them as active partners in
informing Oxygen's content online and on cable television. This
information will also be widely distributed to the public. In
addition, Markle is creating a $1 million Experimental Fund for
Converging Media with Oxygen for the creation of new programming,
tools and technologies that might not otherwise be developed on a
strictly commercial basis.
· A $200,000 grant for Web White & Blue, for the Markle Foundation
and partners to broaden access to national and local election
information during the 2000 elections. Markle created the Internet-
based Web White & Blue campaign in 1998 with Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government, America Online and numerous other
commercial and noncommercial sites. Markle and America Online and
others will partner again to help citizens find election information
through Web White & Blue 2000.
· A $400,000 grant for Thirteen/WNET to support New York: Learning
Adventures in Citizenship, a curriculum-based Internet project that
will use the Web to teach children about their responsibility in the
community and the ability to act on it. The project is being created
to tie in with filmmaker Ric Burns' "New York," an upcoming five-part
documentary on PBS.
· A $140,000 grant for the College of Communications, University of
Texas at Austin to create a research agenda addressing the potential
for interactive technology to meet children's cognitive, social,
emotional, and physical needs.
· A $76,500 grant for Oxford University to support the Programme on
Comparative Media and Law. The Programme studies policy and
regulation strategies that nation-states create in response to media
globalization, and the implications of these strategies for democracy
and human rights.
· A $157,000 grant for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to lay
the groundwork for dialogue and development of Chinese media law,
including the publication in Chinese of Western legal scholarship on
free speech and communications law, and support for an international
symposium on these issues in China.
· A $50,000 grant for the International Rescue Committee to develop
and implement Child Connect, a software-based program to reconnect
refugee children with their parents, and the Kosovar Family Finder,
which uses database technology to provide refugees with location
information of displaced family and friends.
· A $500,000 grant for Internews Network to develop and apply for a
license for an interactive, 24-hour live television channel on two
major Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) systems. It will be
integrated with the Internet and dedicated to quality international
affairs programming. The opportunity to pursue such a channel is the
result of a recent FCC ruling that DBS operators must make available
four percent of their channel capacity to public interest
programming.
The Markle Foundation (http://www.markle.org) was established in 1927
by John and Mary R. Markle. After concentrating on traditional
social welfare and academic medicine, the Foundation changed its
focus to mass communications in 1969. In recent years, Markle has
supported major policy conferences, on-line policy simulations and
debates, and research on subjects as varied as political advertising,
effective interactive learning and international media law. It has
helped establish beneficial new services on the Internet, invested in
companies creating educational multimedia products, and spearheaded a
broad investigation of the potential for universal online e-mail
access in the United States. Previous Markle grant recipients and
partners have included CNN, The Children's Television Workshop,
Infonautics, Crossover Technologies, M.I.T., The RAND Corporation,
Carnegie-Mellon University and The Brookings Institution.
# # #
Contact:
Julia Moffett
The Markle Foundation
212-489-6655 x 337
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web site: http://www.markle.org
Stuart Fischer
Robinson Lerer & Montgomery
212-484-7758
EDITOR'S NOTE:
OXYGEN MEDIA AND THE MARKLE FOUNDATION TODAY ISSUED A RELATED PRESS
RELEASE REGARDING THE OXYGEN/MARKLE PULSE
^ ^ ^ ^
Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net
Minneapolis - - - E: [log in to unmask]
Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183
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