Following a rigorous national competitive process, Report for America selected JPR as one of 70 newsrooms to receive two years of funding to support up to half a local journalist’s salary, as well as provide training and mentorship opportunities. This year’s program brings the total number of journalists placed by Report for America to 758 nationwide since it was founded in 2017.
Report for America funding was awarded to JPR to hire a reporter based in Coos or Curry County to focus on local government and community issues along the Southern Oregon coast.
We’re thrilled to be able to expand our newsroom with this dedicated funding. It will increase our capacity to provide in-depth, accountability-driven reporting to a geographic area that has experienced a steep decline in local journalists and has been an important part of JPR’s service region for over four decades. It will also enable us to tell rich stories from coastal communities that will benefit all our listeners.
In addition to providing funding, Report for America recruits and vets a pool of mostly early-career reporters who are interested in working in underserved communities across the country to pursue public service journalism. JPR will select a journalist from this year’s class of Report for America corps members who have expressed interest in living and reporting on the Southern Oregon coast. This unique element of the program pairs skilled journalists motivated to work in under-covered communities with high-performing local news organizations.
Report for America is one of several innovative programs that has emerged in response to the local journalism crisis that has plagued the country since the disruption of the newspaper business began in the 1990s and has continued to accelerate as advertisers and readers have shifted to digital platforms.
Here at JPR, we’re actively working to respond to this shift, as we also work to develop a new sustainable business model without federal funding and expand our local journalism capacity. Securing support from Report for America is a significant step toward advancing both of these goals.
We also recognize that we would not be able to do this work without your support. We’ve made tremendous strides since we lost federal funding last year, thanks to the generosity of so many JPR listeners. Yet we still have work to do. During a time when fact-based, local news is at such a premium, we’ll need to act both urgently and with a long-term view to rebuild a local journalism ecosystem that serves as a pillar of our culture and democratic society.