New River VOICE Goes Non-Profit, Names Advisory Board

The New River VOICE, the region's first non-profit news source, has announced the formation of its first editorial advisory board, a seven-member group made up of professional journalists and communicators. Additionally, the Freedom Foundation of Southwest Virginia (FFSWVA) has been incorporated as a non-profit community organization that will begin to serve as publisher of the New River Voice.

The VOICE, which publishes online, has been using a combination of professional journalists, students and citizen journalists in producing its stories.

The FFSWVA has applied for its 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status from the Internal Revenue Status and is awaiting the application to be processed. The New River VOICE (online at newrivervoice.com) is a Web publication based in Radford that serves the New River Valley by offering news, features, and opinions about the people, arts, culture, and politics of the area.

The editorial advisory board will provide advice and expertise in numerous areas such as media law, ethics and credibility, interactive media and journalism for the Web, writing, editing, nonprofit journalism, publication management, environmental journalism, and political journalism.

The board includes Valley Business FRONT editor Dan Smith; Bill Kovarik, a professor of communications at Radford University; Jenn Mackay, a journalism professor at Virginia Tech; Patrick Beeson of the Scripps Interactive Newspaper Group in Knoxville; Melissa Chessher of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications; Patsy Sims, director of the MFA in creative nonfiction program at Goucher; and Russ Walker, executive editor of Grist.org, a Web magazine.