(Chicago, Ill.) November 12, 2022
The SNPA Foundation is pleased to announce a $25,000 gift to the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University to help fund The State of the Local News Project.
Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean, and Director of the Local News Initiative, said, “We are grateful for the support of the SNPA Foundation. While the Knight Foundation has pledged support for the bulk of the project, that commitment is contingent on the Medill School raising funds for a significant chunk of the work. We have also received support from the Microsoft Journalism Initiative and individual donors. The gift from the SNPA Foundation provides important industry validation of our program to key donors and helps us provide the funds to begin our important work.”
“We like the willingness of the project to tackle the complex issues of the newspaper industry by a deep data collection effort, analysis and visualization, and making the insights gained predictive and diagnostic,” said SNPA Foundation Chair PJ Browning. “This initiative already has extensive datasets in all 50 states on more than 12,000 local news organizations – newspapers, digital-only news sites, public broadcasting stations, and ethnic media outlets.”
The SNPA Foundation considers funding requests for programs and initiatives that support educational opportunities for the advancement of newspaper industry leaders, the creation of sustainable business models, and the technology that supports the advancement of the news eco-system.
The SNPA Foundation is especially interested in seeding projects that may start “locally,” but include the possibility of scaling to a national level; that have a broad impact on the public; or that enrich the racial diversity of professional ranks by drawing more talent into the newspaper industry.
For more information about the Medill School Local News Initiative, contact Tim Franklin, Timothy.Franklin@northwestern.edu. For more information about the SNPA Foundation, contact Edward VanHorn, edward@snpafoundation.org.
