Q&A with American Journalism Project co-founder Elizabeth Green
As market forces fail local news, our media ecosystem are failing the communities that they have been entrusted to serve. Philanthropy, for its part, has come to the table, providing critical support for nonprofit news in innovative and unprecedented ways. Today, a new initiative announces it plan to reinvigorate local news on a large scale.
Here’s how to use our updated impact assessment tools
As you may have noticed, a few weeks ago we completely overhauled our website in an effort to better serve the rapidly changing fields of media and philanthropy. (Here’s an overview of what you can now find.) And with our shiny new website comes shiny new impact assessment resources, which we’re eager to showcase.
NewsMatch raises $7.6 million for nonprofit news organizations in 2018
Washington, D.C. (Feb. 12, 2019): NewsMatch raised $7.6 million from individual donors and a coalition of major funders for nonprofit news organizations in two months at the end of 2018. During the largest-ever grassroots fundraising campaign to support local news, over 240,000 people gave to 154 newsrooms between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. More than […]
Heising-Simons Foundation announces 2019 winners of $100,000 journalism prize
One year ago, we announced the creation of the American Mosaic Journalism Prize. This unrestricted cash prize of $100,000 per recipient is awarded to freelance journalists for excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the American landscape. We created the prize as part of our work that supports journalism […]
Welcome to our new website—we’re excited to show you around
Today we unveil our newly redesigned website to greatly improve the online experience of our users. In recent years, we have grown in our role as a knowledge network to meet the changing needs of members and the larger funding and media communities. In response to a rapidly changing media funding field and to better […]
Sundance report: New funder-filmmaker collaborations & a mission to find climate solutions
The Media Impact Funders team has just returned from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where we convened a highly engaged group of media funders to discuss innovative new collaborations among funders and filmmakers, and social impact campaigns designed to move the needle at the community level.
Funders, there’s still plenty of time to join NewsMatch
Early reports suggest that NewsMatch, a funder collaboration to promote individual giving to journalism and capacity-building at nonprofit news organizations, is on track to break last year’s record of nearly $5 million raised. As of this Tuesday, organizers say the number of individual small-dollar donations on NewsMatch.org has tripled compared to last year’s campaign. Through […]
MIF announces 3 new members to its board of directors
Media Impact Funders is pleased to announce the addition of three new members to our board of directors: Kaitlin Yarnall, senior vice president of Media Innovation at the National Geographic Society; and Tim Isgitt, managing director of Humanity United; and Carmen Lee, communications officer with The Heinz Endowments. Yarnall and Isgitt, whose appointments begin in […]
Press Forward is ready to address the issue everyone’s been talking about but no one has fixed: Newsroom harassment
Job scarcity, unpredictable hours, power imbalances on staff, deadline pressures. For decades now, the fast-paced, high-stress culture in newsrooms has created conditions in which abuse of power and sexual harassment may occur. But it’s only recently that the bad behavior is getting the attention it deserves. Thanks to a landmark 2014 study by the International Women’s […]
Media Impact Funders to strengthen support of local media with support from Knight Foundation
Philadelphia, PA—The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded Media Impact Funders (MIF)—a member-supported network of funders who support media in the public interest—a $200,000 grant to identify and expand the number of community foundations, place-based foundations and other funders interested in supporting local news and information. With the spread of misinformation, deep […]
Chasing Coral and Newtown among Peabody Award winners
This week, the Peabody Awards announced nine winners in the Documentary category, including Chasing Coral—the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning film that uses beautiful time-lapse imagery to document the world’s dying coral reefs—and Newtown—the gripping story of a community struggling to recover from the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. (You can view the […]