Former Merc columnist Dan Gillmor, who was part of the now-defunct Backfence community journalism start-up, says in a Chronicle op-ed that community foundations should fund news-gathering projects. Ideas he suggests include:

• Provide seed funding for a network of local blogs and other community sites combining a variety of media, adding journalism training for the people involved.

• Pay the salary of an investigative journalist at a local newspaper. …

• Help get local and regional governmental data online in ways that anyone, not just database specialists and professional journalists, can easily use for a variety of purposes.

• Fund local media-literacy education for this media-saturated age.