Serendipity led me to the GlobalPost this afternoon as I tried to clear out the tons of unread items in my Google Reader (after two hours, I still have 1000+ unread items). First I read an article linked from McClatchy’s Inside South America blog about Brazilians’ perception of Americans as ignorant. A few minutes later, I saw that MinnPost has partnered with GlobalPost. I’m glad to see there are people out there trying different approaches to funding good news coverage. I missed last month’s article in the New York Times about GlobalPost.

That ad-supported reporting is only one part of the GlobalPost business plan. If it is to succeed, it will depend in part on how many people sign up for a separate paid section of the site, which was to have been available in test mode beginning last week but is now expected to go online in the coming days.