That's real money for organizations like Black Iowa News, founded during COVID to deliver news about the pandemic; the Nome Nugget, a newspaper that covers a wide swath of western Alaska; and Radio Indigena, which tries to connect California's migrant communities with newscasts delivered in Indigenous languages.
The group doubled its original funding plans because “we felt that the need was now,” said Dale Anglin, president of Press Forward, which raises money and awareness of struggling local news outlets. Outlets with annual budgets of less than $1 million were eligible.
“I think the public only sees the big journalism leaders like The New York Times and Associated Press,” said Anglin. “We forget that small is important, small still exists, even if some of them are hanging on by a thread.”
Thousands of local news outlets across the country have either closed or stripped down staffing due to economic problems over the past two decades, and philanthropies are trying to lend a hand.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.