Actually, the Poynter Institute is a legitimate non-profit school for journalists. I think they're aiming to provide training for small-time and amateur journalists—the kind of people who aren't going to attend full-time J-school at a university.

I've used some of Poynter's free online materials to learn how to report on police and crime stories, and my editor at Chi-Town Daily News has taken some of their courses on (I think) newsroom management and reporter development.

There's been a movement within the journalism community to try to find ways to integrate bloggers into larger news organizations. Some people running small newsrooms have visions of a shared electronic pool of tens of thousands of part-time reporters—already on the spot and familiar with the local situation—in every neighborhood of every city in the civilized world.

The main problem with that idea is the unknown skill and trustworthiness of all those people. One solution under consideration is requiring training and certification from an organization like Poynter.