301-985-4021 J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism is a spin-off of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and will serve as a venture fund for interactive news and information. J-Lab will support newsroom experiments that advance civic participation in the digital arena and spotlight and reward best practices. J-Lab's goal is to empower people to be global and civic players by pioneering interactive ways to participate in news and information. J-Lab will solicit interactive news ideas and then team computer scientists with newsrooms to build the software that creates easy entry points for people to interact with public issues.