Funding for "Frontline"

Good news for fans of long-form journalism. PBS' "Frontline" has bagged a $5 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. "Frontline" exec producer David Fanning says the dough will help the program expand its online presence and distribution of content on the Web. "Frontline" already has a heck of a lot of material available for free viewing on its site via PBS.org, so it should be interesting to see what more they do with their material. I'm surely not the first to say this but it is true that "Frontline" is the only mainstream news program out there doing in-depth reporting on the most troubling issues of our times. Most recently the program impressed with a chilling seg, "Endgame" (pictured at left), on our seemingly intractable military quagmire in Iraq. Fanning sez the new money will "allow us to take the next big steps to integrate our documentary production online (and) enrich the user experience with new original content."