The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium has announced $990,000 in grants to innovative local news and information programs around the state as part of the organization’s second round of funding.
The recipients include 13 first-time grantees and nine renewals to grantees funded during the Consortium’s initial round last year. The grants include projects to create a statewide investigative reporting center, a statewide news site to cover the state’s disabled community, and an online Creole language radio program for the Haitian community. Other projects include expanding coverage of neighborhoods across Jersey City and communities of color in South Jersey, and funding a dedicated statewide reporter to cover mental health, particularly in rural communities.
This round includes the Consortium’s first grants in Hudson, Monmouth and Union Counties, to organizations in Jersey City and New Brunswick, a public high school, and an existing public media organization.
The grant renewals include an innovative news collaborative in Newark; a Cumberland County program to teach journalism skills to foster children and children of the incarcerated; dedicated hyperlocal sites in Atlantic City, Blairstown, Bloomfield and Trenton; and an online Spanish language radio program focusing on seasonal agricultural workers in South Jersey.
“In this new round of grants, the Consortium board worked hard to continue finding ways to fund and grow innovative programs across the state,” Consortium Board Chair Christopher J. Daggett said. “The applications we received are testament to the innovative spirit of the New Jersey media community. Budget constraints were the only barriers we had to funding more projects.”
In addition to $1 million given to the Consortium last year during the annual state budget process, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) awarded the Consortium a grant of $150,000 to fund four health-related projects of $35,000 each, which are included in the grants announced today. The remaining $10,000 of the RWJF funds will be used to support training programs offered to grantees by the Consortium.
“I am particularly excited about the many projects that grow the state’s journalism pipeline in this round of grants,” Consortium Board Vice Chair Therise Edwards said. “By bringing more people into journalism, particularly students, we can diversify the voices of those telling the stories of New Jersey and work to grow the industry for the future.”
The Consortium is a first-in-the-nation project created in 2018 by the state to focus on growing access to local news and information across New Jersey. The Consortium consists of six Public Research University members – Rutgers, New Jersey Institute of Technology, The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, Kean University and Rowan University.
