J-source seeking expanded support for its work from individual and corporate funders

The Canadian Journalism Project (J-source.ca) is appealing for individual donations to support the online project, which covers journalism issues and news from across Canada. Until now, a large part of J-source's revenues came from support of the Canadian Journalism Foundation. 

Now, the CJF is stepping back somewhat and the work of the organization will be spread out to various journalism schools and support is being sought from  a wider variety of sources. According to an open letter from Christopher Waddell, director of the school of journalism and communication at Carleton University:

The project started as a collaboration among the country's leading journalism schools and organizations, managed and underwritten by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. While the Foundation will continue to provide substantial support, we are restructuring the project so that the various elements of J-Source and ProjetJ will be housed in and supported by several journalism schools. The English editorial centre will be at Ryerson University in Toronto, the French equivalent in Quebec City under the aegis of Université Laval; the publishing and business centre of the entire project will at Carleton University in Ottawa. In addition, there will be regional or specialized bureaus at journalism schools such as King's College in Halifax, UBC in Vancouver, Mount Royal University in Calgary and Western University in London. This unprecedented collaboration by Canada’s leading schools will provide a bigger and richer selection of multimedia information and commentary than ever. A business plan for the revised venture projects self-sustainability by 2017. 

To help get us there, the project has already received financial support from Ryerson, the RBC Foundation, the CJF and John Honderich among others. A campaign is underway to raise funds from Canada’s major media companies and the unions that represent workers at many news organizations. To date Torstar and Transcontinental Media have indicated their support with more joining in the coming weeks.

A crowd-funding project is being launched through Carleton University, which will provide tax deductible receipts. The J-source/Project J has about 5,000 subscribers who receive its weekly newsletter.