Connecticut Public Named as One of the Grant Recipients from the American Press Institute for its Election Coverage and Community Listening Fund
Thirty-one news organizations will receive support through the American Press Institute’s Election Coverage & Community Listening Fund, an initiative aimed at empowering newsrooms to implement community listening in their elections coverage.
The projects funded will start immediately and run through this election year, but they will also yield important lessons for 2023 and 2024 that can be shared through journalism networks and conversations facilitated by API.
The funding made possible through this initiative is designed to help these news organizations try new approaches to election coverage or expand on existing projects that show promise.
“At a time when democracy faces challenges at multiple levels, these projects will help news organizations nurture deeper relationships with their communities. All of the participants will share news and information that helps people more fully participate in our society,” said Michael Bolden, CEO and executive director of API. “It’s also essential that the participants will learn from one another and share those lessons to benefit news organizations across the country that are trying to engage people whose information needs have long been overlooked.”
In selecting the participants, the American Press Institute prioritized projects that seek to shore up trust and engagement between news outlets and communities of color. Many of the newsrooms are looking to expand their reach into communities that have been underserved or undercovered, leading to distrust and a disconnection from many media organizations.
The recipients will have opportunities to share with peers what they are working on and learning through informal virtual events over the course of the project. Those insights and associated written materials will be made public so that other newsrooms can learn from the experiences.
API will facilitate peer-learning sessions during the grant period and after the November 2022 elections.
As part of the Election Coverage and Community Listening Fund, several of the news organizations will receive a free one-year license for Source Matters, the American Press Institute tool that tracks sources in news stories and enables news organizations to improve the diversity of who is quoted. The recipients of the free licenses will be announced later this fall.