Five Year Funding of Finnish Injo Fellowships

The Innovation Journalism Program at Stanford University will get more Finnish fellows for next five years. Helsingin Sanomat Foundation and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, have agreed to pay the necessary fees, travel expenses and living costs for three Finnish Innovation journalism fellows per year for six months, starting February 2008. The total sum of money invested for five years is approximately 700.000 euros.

The announcement was made in Helsinki on Sep 20 by the President of the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation Heleena Savela (on the photo).

The five-year funding by the leading Finnish private media foundation and the government innovation foundation is another milestone for the growing recognition of the concept of innovation journalism and the program at Stanford. The success follows the work of Seppo Sisättö and Turo Uskali in spearheading innovation journalism in Finland.

The Finnish Injo-grants are aimed at professional journalists, who have worked at least five years. Journalists can apply the first three fellowships from the Foundation until 31 October 2007.

According to Foundation, by the end of September 2007, the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation has awarded grants in the amount of 3,329,470 euros. In all, 31 projects and undertakings are given support. The Foundation will further provide some one million euros in grant money this year.

Links:
http://www.hssaatio.fi/en/grants_announcements.html
http://www.hssaatio.fi/apurahat_ajankohtaista.html (in Finnish)
http://www.sitra.fi/en/About+Sitra/sitra.htm (Sitra)