Seed funding available for media start-ups from Walkley Foundation

The Walkley Foundation for Excellence in Journalism, a leading media industry body, is offering $40,000 in seed capital for up to six media start-ups seeking to innovate with how journalism is created and distributed.

Founders with projects exploring new ways to create and distribute journalism are welcome to apply.

This is the first year the initiative has been run. Walkley Advisory Board member James Kirby told StartupSmart they had kept the criteria flexible this year so as not to rule out any really new ideas.

“We haven’t made it in anyway prescriptive,” Kirby says. “We want to back any business approach to producing journalism, or even just distributing it, as a key part of innovative process in journalism is how you run it through the system is important. Distribution channels are changing rapidly and social media is the new route towards the public.”

Kirby adds recent activity in the broader start-up investment community was good news for new thinking in media.

“In recent times the venture capital and private equity side of Australia has come alive. I expect it’s enlivening finance in all areas, and should hopefully enliven finance for new media ideas,” Kirby says, adding the success of new companies such as BuzzFeed must be alluring to investors.

Kirby says while it’s not the biggest pool of seed capital, they’re seeking ideas that need a bit of capital and a platform to start developing.

“We want to enable some new ventures to get off the ground, especially those that may be too early or too experimental for conventional financers to consider at this point.

Applications close January 29.