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The Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) has received a $1 million grant from the American Journalism Project to support Spotlight Delaware, a first-of-its-kind collaborative, community-powered nonprofit newsroom for the state.
Spotlight Delaware — launching next month under the leadership of editor in chief Jacob Owens and LJI Founder and CEO Allison Taylor Levine — will focus on how public policy affects the daily lives of Delawareans, particularly in underserved communities. Through this new partnership with AJP, Spotlight Delaware will build its founding business team, including its development, membership, and operations roles.
The American Journalism Project announced the Delaware grant today as part of a package of $5.4 million in new support for four nonprofit news organizations: Deep South Today, Grist, New York Focus and Spotlight Delaware. In addition to funding, the venture philanthropy will give the nonprofit news organizations strategic support to grow their revenue, strengthen their organizations, and expand their local reporting capacity.
Spotlight Delaware is a nonprofit, community-powered, collaborative newsroom to cover the impact of public policy on Delawareans, increase access to information and civic engagement in historically underserved communities, and strengthen existing newsrooms throughout the state.
Driven by in-depth community listening, the Spotlight Delaware team is committed to providing communities statewide with information about what’s happening in state and local government, and what it means for them, their families and their communities. The newsroom will share information before government decisions are final, and will tell the community who the decision-makers are and how to contact them, so Delawareans can raise their voices and influence decisions.
The goal of Spotlight Delaware is to produce great journalism and get it to as many audiences as possible via as many platforms as possible. All of the reporting the Spotlight team generates will be shared for free with Delaware’s existing newsrooms. It will also be shared via nontraditional news sources.
Spotlight Delaware will proactively collaborate with existing newsrooms to reduce duplication and facilitate sharing of resources
To serve more communities, stories will be prepared for print, online, broadcast and social media, making it easy for partners to share on any platform. In time, the newsroom also aims to produce content in Spanish.
‘‘Delawareans told us they want and need more local news that inspires and empowers them to participate in our democracy, builds stronger connections among neighbors and holds those in power to account,” Levine said. “They also asked us to help newsrooms work together to share the ideas and stories of different people. So we’re building Spotlight Delaware with our communities and, with the help of the American Journalism Project, we’re building it to last.”
Learn more about LJI and Spotlight Delaware, sign up for the mailing list and donate at spotlightdelaware.org.
ABOUT THE LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE (LJI)
LJI, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, is working to strengthen local journalism as a vehicle for a stronger democracy and thriving communities throughout the First State. Learn more about LJI at ljidelaware.org.
ABOUT THE AMERICAN JOURNALISM PROJECT (AJP)
The American Journalism Project is a venture philanthropy dedicated to local news. We believe in civic journalism as a public good and are reimagining its future by building a model to finance and sustain the local news our democracy requires. We make grants to local nonprofit news organizations to build their revenue and business operations, partner with communities to launch new organizations, and mentor leaders as they grow and sustain their newsrooms. To learn more about the American Journalism Project, visit our website. To learn more about our grantees, visit our portfolio page.
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