Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation announces awards.

Founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation invests in the future of journalism by building the ethics, skills and opportunities needed to advance principled, probing news and information.

"The current financial challenges facing news media pose a threat to journalism," said Bob Ross, president and CEO of the foundation. "The grants announced today will help many nonprofit organizations provide a source of news and information to citizens throughout the country."

Grants were awarded to organizations for projects addressing the foundation's core areas of focus.

$100,000 to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting for a bilingual investigative journalism website focusing exclusively on corruption and waste in Florida government.

$100,000 to the Online Journalism Project for first year expenses of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, an investigation-oriented health, safety and medical news website for Connecticut.

$100,000 to the Capitol News Connection to launch Report It, a self-sustaining social reporting platform, creating high impact, user-driven investigative stories.

$100,000 to the Watchdog Institute to analyze government data and make it available for searches by the public on the Internet.

$80,000 to the MinnPost for a program at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism to produce investigative reporting projects that will run on MinnPost.com.

$75,000 to Boston University for The Public Eye, a pilot project providing a monthly data-driven investigative story to small/medium size newsrooms for a sliding scale fee.

$255,000 to the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Television Journalism for seminars and webinars on ethical decision-making, newsroom systems and coaching, action planning, managing alternative news sources, local news expansion and content options.