By Joe Grimm

Kick-start your creativity.

You have no doubt thought, felt or heard that for journalists to be in the news media driver’s seat, we need to develop new ideas ourselves.

That takes brainpower, capital and entrepreneurship.

But where does inspiration come from?

It can come from other creative minds.

Many people, including some journalists, are hanging out on the Web, writing or talking about their ideas in hopes of attracting small startup funds to help their projects.

Because this all happens in Web space, the ideas are public, and so are the amounts being sought, the donors and the popularity of the ideas. Of course, much depends on how savvy the creators are with social media, but let’s not overcomplicate things.

Check out Kickstarter.com.

Kickstarter projects can be searched by type or location, and some of the proposals are very detailed. Here are a few related to news content:

Newsmotion won funding it sought as “an innovative platform for civic media, public art, and original documentary reportage.”

Here’s a citizen journalism project by Anne Medley, an adjunct faculty member at the Diversity Institute. She is working with Tunisian PaCTE to foster a free press there.

Baltimore Brew set a Kickstarter goal of $15,000 and called itself a “daily news website that gets behind development deals, tracks campaign cash, features outsider artists and offers gazpacho recipes with equal verve.”

Aubrey Ann Parker of Traverse City, Mich., is soliciting $4,500 for a solo project in which she would document, with words and photos, a 129-mile, five-day run across Palestine by American and Palestinian amateurs.

Run Across Palestine from Stone Hut Studios on Vimeo.

Because this all happens in Web space, the ideas are public. So are the amounts being sought, the donors and the popularity of the ideas. Of course, much depends on how savvy the creators are with social media.

Use Kickstarter’s creativity to kick-start your creativity. You might enhance your own ideas or see something you want to support.

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.