Watershed Media Project is a new initiative to research and develop grassroots funding, production and promotional models for independent, public-interest journalism and media.

Watershed seeks to develop a series of small, simple, incremental goals over longer periods of time, by periodically publishing research, analysis and commentary using blogs and social media; and by providing a nonprofit laboratory for exploring grassroots fundraising and publishing models. This includes drydock and warehousing services for Newsfunders.net and Newsdesk.org as test platforms for its overarching hypothesis:  Grassroots funding and production models for journalism can more effectively serve key public-interest needs than institutional news media and monetized news products.