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Press Forward, a coalition of nonprofits funding journalism projects, announced on Wednesday that it will be awarding $20 million to 205 local news outlets as part of its first round of grant disbursement. Each news outlet will receive around $100,000.
The initiative, which is funded by over twenty philanthropic organizations, including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, initially made waves last year when it announced its partners would commit more than $500 million to local news. Four hundred million of that is disbursed by the participating foundations; the remaining $100 million (called the âpooled fundâ) will go toward Press Forwardâs grant program and overhead costs.
âWeâre very excited because it shows itâs not all doom and gloom in journalism and that local news is transforming,â Dale Anglin, Press Forwardâs director, said. âA lot of this is also about educating foundations and donors about the range of outlets that are out there that you can invest in,â she said. âIt’s not just what you thought of from twenty years ago.â
One outlet, the Ouray County Plaindealer in Colorado, is run by a husband-and-wife team who cover a population of five thousand people. Their recent coverage of the local sheriffâs office led to 93 percent of voters recalling him from office.
Eight of the recipients were student papers, a number Press Forward hopes will grow. The foundations working within the initiative have identified over a thousand counties in the US without healthy news outlets, but which have nearby colleges and universities that can help with information dissemination.
âIt’s a win-win because for young people it’s great development reporting on your community and not just your college, and for the community, they get journalism, because it can be hard to start brand-new outlets,â Anglin said.
Of the 205 grantees, Press Forward says 40 percent are led by Black, Indigenous, and other leaders of color. One such newsroom is Hola Carolina, which provides news and information to Spanish speakers in Western North Carolina.
Twenty-five percent are covering rural communities. Press Forward paid over one hundred advisers, including journalists and media experts, to help assess the 931 applicants, twice the number it initially expected. They used a rubric that scored proposals based on categories like âaddressing gaps in coverage,â âsustainability,â and âcommunity-centered,â among others. The collective is planning to open up another call for applicants later this year, and aims to have one to two funding rounds a year.
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