Pulitzer-congrats and Joy over Journalism with Moral Force

Congrats to Washington Post for winning four and New York Times for taking home three Pulitzer Prizes (the Oscar of journalism) for work in 2009. But an extra big congrats to online, nonprofit news organization ProPublica who won the prestigious award in print journalism.
Reading ProPublica - and reading about the publication - makes me happy. It presents itself as "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with moral force."
According to ProPublica investigative journalism is at risk and seen as a luxury in many newsrooms. But they state that it is fine to steal their stories, as long as you credit and link to ProPublica :)
The newsroom is led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. The managing editor is Stephen Engelberg, former investigative editor of The New York Times. You go!
The Pulitzer Prize is awarded from the Journalism school at my old and very beautiful university Columbia in New York.

Baby Grace

Every morning this little bottle makes me happy. It simply smells the best - purity, soap and water and happiness and clean sheets. And since I´m the proud mom of three beloved girls I must concede to the text on the back: if God has a face, surely it is that of a child. and if there is a place called heaven, it must smell like a baby. Thank you Philosophy.

Clean, sexy water...

...is the title of a New York Times op-ed by Nicholas D Kristof. It tells the fascinating story of former Manhattan night club promoter Scott Harrison who founded charity: water - an extremly successful aid group focusing on drilling wells and providing clean water to people in Asia and Africa. In three years the group is said to have raised 10 million dollars and provided water to nearly one million people.
Harrison has a natural gift for marketing and social media - part of the success story is the way the group uses the web. There are "twestivals" among followers on twitter, new donors can see how their money have been used since wells have gps-coordinates so they can be found on Google earth. And the videos produced really rock and go viral on the web.
Most important - Harrison seem to have found the joy in giving (the same that Bill Clinton describes in his book Giving). Another driving spirit in that context is my friend Amelie Silfverstolpe. She founded Volontärbyrån, an internet based service who matches volunteers with various groups and assignments - all because she believes in the great force of getting involved and helping others. You go!