CPB Pumps $2.25 Mil Into State Gov. Coverage
• The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is investing $2.25 million to increase and strengthen state government coverage provided by public media station newsrooms, which have seen a drop in the number of full-time statehouse reporters. The following seven state grants, selected from 20 proposals submitted from public media organizations in 19 states were announced Wednesday at the Public Media Content Conference in Philadelphia:
Alaska: $196,588 to Alaska Public Media, to provide a year-round full-time journalist reporting on the state legislature and state government; Connecticut: $217,775 to Connecticut Public, to support a year-round, full-time reporter covering state government at Connecticut’s only statewide, community-supported public media service; Delaware: $300,000 to Philadelphia-based WHYY, with a signal that reaches all of Delaware, to provide multimedia, enterprise, and investigative journalism about state government to audiences throughout Delaware; Kentucky: $294,727 to Louisville Public Media to expand the station’s state government news team to four journalists; Oklahoma: $250,000 to KOSU/Stillwater, to add a full-time journalist dedicated to providing data-driven investigative and enterprise reporting and digital content on the state legislature, government representatives, and public policy issues; Wyoming: $360,999 to Wyoming Public Media to partner with Jackson Hole Community Radio to add a multi-platform journalist covering state government and a full-time digital content coordinator, to ensure the coverage reaches the broadest audience possible; Texas: $250,000 to KERA/Dallas to support the Texas Newsroom with the addition of one editor and one reporter to deepen state government coverage with investigative reporting.
In addition to these two-year grants to stations, CPB is providing $380,577 to NPR, which will enable the organization to hire a second state government editor to work with station reporters to identify trends across states, as well as provide training for state government reporters.
“The American people look to public media to provide high quality journalism in the form of factual, trusted news and information,” said Patricia Harrison, CPB President & CEO. “A strong civil society and democracy requires its citizens be informed with the facts. This is especially important when it comes to state government reporting. Unfortunately, today there are far fewer full-time journalists covering our nation’s statehouses than just a decade ago. These CPB grants will address an urgent need as we increase the number of journalists at public media stations reporting statehouse news and policy decisions. Their coverage will be made available to all citizens in those seven states.” Complete details about these generous grants are available here.
