22 projects share $22.7 million to meet the urgent challenges facing local newsrooms

These projects represent a range of solutions that are needed to meet urgent challenges. We hope these awards can provide local newsrooms, organizations and journalists with shared resources that strengthen their efficiency and capacity. We also want funders and donors to understand that reimagining and strengthening the field requires a wide range of solutions.”

Dale Anglin, Press Forward’s director

Press Forward today announced $22.7 million in funding in its Open Call on Infrastructure to 22 projects that address the urgent challenges local newsrooms face today.

Several recipients are working to protect a free and independent press, ensuring newsrooms have safety protocols in place when covering protests like the recent events in Los Angeles, the mental health services to help reporters heal from trauma and burnout and legal resources to face challenges to their reporting. Another ensures that newsrooms are prepared to cover crises and natural disasters like the recent Texas floods, using lessons from North Carolina to build a newsroom playbook.

Others are strengthening newsrooms’ sustainability — tackling revenue and operations challenges so the field can thrive long-term. One project, for example, borrows lessons from other sectors, like hardware stores and breweries, to strengthen worked-owned media outlets. Meanwhile, immigrant-serving outlets are coming together to test and spread revenue models. And another effort will help local news outlets preserve their stories, so that communities have access to them even if the publication ceases to exist.

The full list of recipients is online at pressforward.news/infrastructure25.

With more than 550 submissions, this Open Call revealed the pressure points in the field, where rapid change has impacted most facets of the industry, said Dale Anglin, Press Forward’s director.

“Today’s local newsrooms are much smaller than 25 years ago yet must do more with less — particularly due to rapid changes in technology and demands of a 24-hour news cycle,” Anglin said. “These projects represent a range of solutions that are needed to meet urgent challenges. We hope these awards can provide local newsrooms, organizations and journalists with shared resources that strengthen their efficiency and capacity. We also want funders and donors to understand that reimagining and strengthening the field requires a wide range of solutions.”

Launched in the fall of 2023, Press Forward is working to reimagine local news nationwide. Together, more than 90 funders — from local community foundations to national foundations to individual donors — have invested more than $200 million in the sector, including in news outlets in every state.

Support for the Open Call on Infrastructure comes from Press Forward’s Pooled Fund, whose first grant opportunity last fall invested $20 million in the country’s smallest newsrooms — one in every state — to help them close coverage gaps in rural and urban communities.

After that, Press Forward turned to look more broadly at the local news ecosystem. Much of the infrastructure in local news — whether it helps earn revenue, grow audience or care for people — was built for a different era. Rapid changes have impacted every facet of the news industry. The Open Call sought to fund solutions that will launch and sustain the newsrooms of today.

For more information, visit pressforward.news/infrastructure25.

About Press Forward:

Press Forward is a nationwide movement to strengthen our democracy by revitalizing local news and information. Press Forward’s growing coalition of funders has committed to invest more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news and scale infrastructure the sector needs to thrive. Named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Non-Profits of the Year, Press Forward is housed at The Miami Foundation. For more, visit pressforward.news.