so far some very interesting comments, i especially want to thank @newsmary, @hemmysphere and @davidwilcox who have already come back with some good questions and things to think about.

Primarily, what is the ‘foundation’ to actually do? When I first started thinking about it a year ago it was to be a small fund to give to developers to get an idea off the ground, move something from a sketch to something to show people and grow. Much like the awesome foundation does but with a domain focus on well, news. I had written a post about wanting to re-imagine what I wanted my news to be and thought that one possible way to get there was to get new code written, outside the big news organisations.

But, something @newsmary said via twitter made me think today. It was about the cost, I had put in a figure based on the awesome foundation again, meaning each month there was £1000 for a worthy project. If that was cheaper though and more people took part and they could direct the funding as they ‘needed’ would that produce something more interesting?

That is what I wanted in the first place, something to help realise my vision on what news was, would in fact a new news foundation in fact be a facilitation route for people to get the news how they wanted?

For example, some people may feel perfectly well served by the mainstream media for most of their news, but the local news is just not reported. What is happening with the local council. The only story they get is the quarterly paper from the council itself. They may feel a use in a subscription to create more local news.

Someone else may prefer the more long form investigative pieces of work, maybe they want briefings on world events?

Then others are quite happy to fund what is, in essence a news organisation that is not owned by any single individual?

Both @newsmary, @hemmysphere and @davidwilcox have rightly pointed out that some discussion on what is needed or wanted is the right next step, should we get a group of people together to start working out what such a foundation would do, before we commit to people putting money into the pot (thanks @hemmysphere), we should connect with the work that @davidwilcox has been doing and @newsmary is also right, that the price has to be right for the people who need this kind of thing, those not already happy and served by the existing media structures.

So, my next step is to get that discussion going. If you want to take part then leave a comment or find me on twitter @marksimpkins.