Banking on good ideas with $1.5 million


Noticed Eleanor Cippel, Knoxville-based director of innovation for E.W. Scripps, got some pub in an AP story today at the Newspaper Association of America’s trade show in Washington.

Eleanor Cippel, director of innovation for Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps, said her company started a $1.5 million “entrepreneurial fund,” similar to a venture capital fund, more than a year ago to bankroll business ideas mainly from their employees.

In that time, the company has reviewed about 175 ideas and funded about 15 mostly Web-related products, she said. Examples are RedBlueAmerica.com, which caters to readers who want to know about opinions from different sides of an issue, and RootClip, another Web site that invites users to submit short videos.

The idea, she said, is to grow loyalty within such audiences.

KnoxMoms is another creation of the fund. RootClip, have you seen that one.? Still figuring it out? I like to think of it as “Lost” on a park bench, but that’s just me.