A JSK blog? What would boss think?

The name sounds a bit stuffy, but the concept is great. PBS and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today announced the MediaShift Idea Lab blog.

The blog will feature 36 wide-ranging innovators reinventing community news for the digital age. Could they run this blog out of business?

Each Idea Lab blogger won a grant in the Knight News Challenge to help fund a startup idea or to blog on a toic related to reshaping community news. The writers will use the Idea Lab to explain their projects, share intelligence and interact with the on;line community.

Knight Foundation's News Challenge contest awards up to $5 million annually to individuals who innovate community news using digital technology. The contest, housed at http://www.newschallenge.org, is open to anybody, anywhere worldwide.

"I'm excited to be showcasing some of the most innovative ideas by people who are actively reinventing community news," said Mark Glaser, executive editor of PBS MediaShift and MediaShift Idea Lab. "New media thinkers such as Jay Rosen and J.D. Lasica will be blogging regularly, as well as academics like Henry Jenkins from MIT, alongside commercial media figures such as Ian Rowe at MTV. It's a lineup of new media heavyweights experimenting and thinking about how local communities can be served as we move from print newspapers toward online and citizen media." Glaser added, "Not only will the bloggers be writing about their philosophies, they'll be giving real world examples of what it's like to create innovative web sites and projects themselves."

Eric Newton, vice president of Knight Foundation's journalism program, said, "The digital revolution is turning journalism upside down and inside out. We think the Idea Lab will help innovators and journalism leaders find their way to a better future."

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation supports ideas and projects that create transformational change.

Click on the headline to read the full story in a news release on the PR newswire.

Or better yet, check out the Idea Lab blog.