Press Forward announces first round of funding for local news

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Press Forward, a coalition of nonprofits that fund journalism projects, announced Wednesday that it will award $20 million to 205 local news outlets as part of its first round of grant disbursement. Each media outlet will receive around US$100,000.

The initiative, which is funded by more than two dozen philanthropic organizations including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, initially made waves last year when it announced that its partners would commit more than $500 million to local news. Of this total, four hundred million are disbursed by participating foundations; the remaining $100 million (called the “pooled fund”) will go to Press Forward’s grants and overhead program.

“We’re really excited because this shows that it’s not all doom and gloom in journalism and that local news is transforming,” said Dale Anglin, director of Press Forward. “A lot of this also has to do with educating foundations and donors about the range of media available that you can invest in,” she said. “It’s just not what you thought twenty years ago.”

One way out, the Ouray County Plaindealer in Colorado, it is run by a husband and wife team covering a population of five thousand people. Their recent coverage of the local sheriff’s office caused 93 percent of voters to remove him from office.

Eight of the recipients were student works, a number that Press Forward expects to grow. Foundations working under the initiative have identified more than a thousand counties in the U.S. without healthy media outlets but that have nearby colleges and universities that can help disseminate information.

“It’s a win-win situation because for young people, it’s a huge development to report on their community and not just their college, and for the community, they get journalism because it can be difficult to start new media outlets.” , Anglin said.

Of the 205 grantees, Press Forward says 40% are led by Black, Indigenous and other leaders of color. One of these essays is Hello Carolinawhich provides news and information to Spanish speakers in western North Carolina.

Twenty-five percent cover rural communities. Press Forward paid more than a hundred consultants, including journalists and media experts, to help evaluate the 931 candidates, double the number initially expected. They used a rubric that scored proposals based on categories such as “address gaps in coverage,” “sustainability,” and “community-centered,” among others. The collective plans to open another call for candidates later this year and intends to carry out one to two rounds of financing per year.

Feven Merid is a staff writer at CJR and a senior fellow at Delacorte.