The MacArthur Foundation is leading a group of donors that have pledged $500 million to help the struggling local news industry, hoping to seed outlets that can make up for those that have closed or been hollowed out over the past two decades.
While led by a $150 million donation by the journalism-focused Knight Foundation, the Press Forward initiative is focusing on the importance of news in communities and is bringing in funders whose primary mission hasn’t necessarily been journalism.
The Carnegie Corp., the Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and MacArthur are among a group of 20 initial funders. (The Associated Press receives grant funding from several sources for some journalism coverage, as well.)
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