National prizes honor Maine journalists

Congratulations to two Maine journalists for recently winning two significant national honors:

Richard Anderson, publisher of Village Soup, has been awarded a Knight Foundation grant for $885,000 to take the platform and technology behind the VillageSoup websites and make them open-source.

Alicia Anstead, a Bangor Daily News columnist, has been awarded a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University. Anstead “represents exactly the kind of journalist we were hoping to attract: someone with a deep commitment to the local community,” according to an AP article on the announcement.