MIF is excited to announce a partnership with the Glen Nelson Center at American Public Media Group. As part of Media Impact Forum programming, MIF and the Glen Nelson Center are co-hosting the 2025 Next Challenge for Media & Journalism National Awards Celebration.
The Next Challenge is a national competition promoting groundbreaking ideas and trailblazing startups that will reinvent the media industry over the coming decade. This year’s competition will award $200,000 in grants to both nonprofit and for-profit startups transforming local news, building technology to power newsrooms, and analyzing publicly-available data to power essential local journalism. Media Impact Forum attendees will find inspiration in these early-stage startups tackling the very questions the Media Impact Forum is exploring about the future of media and journalism.
This year’s competition is aligned with Press Forward, a national coalition of funders investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and to scale the infrastructure the sector needs to survive.
The reception and awards celebration recognizing the Next Challenge finalists and winners will take place immediately after the Media Impact Forum on June 10.