It’s Spring already, and we’re overdue with this update on what we’ve been up to at Independence Public Media Foundation this year, and what we’re planning for the rest of the year: 2021 Grantmaking In 2021, we will conduct two rounds of invited proposals from our grantees to whom we gave two-year…

Although philanthropy is not known for transparency, it is one of our guiding principles at Independence Public Media Foundation. It is essential to building trust in the work we do, and to being held accountable. At the beginning of April, we published a statement about how we intended to respond…

The Independence Public Media Foundation announced its second round of grants today, totaling $4.3 million in support of its goal to establish the Philadelphia region as a “hotbed for creative media makers.” What does that mean? What might that look like? I will admit that when I joined the foundation…

How a public television station in Philadelphia seized an opportunity to transform itself and better serve its community —

by Evelyn Hsu and Martin G. Reynolds, co-executive directors, The Maynard Institute — As part of the News Integrity Initiative, we’re featuring a series of profiles of NII grantees in order to highlight their groundbreaking work. NII is centered around a vision for journalism that builds trust, empathy and solutions in our communities. In order to have enduring trust between newsrooms and the…

How you fund is as important as what you fund Jessica Clark, Dot Connector Studio Molly de Aguiar, News Integrity Initiative Next week, several hundred people from national, community, and place-based foundations, as well as newsrooms and other nonprofits, will come together at the Knight Media Forum in Miami. The conference focuses on philanthropy’s role in strengthening local news and…

Preventive journalism and distributed watchdogging, one text message at a time. — At the News Integrity Initiative, we’re launching a series of profiles of NII grantees in order to highlight their groundbreaking work. We can’t think of a better way to kick off this series than with Outlier Media in Detroit, founded by Sarah Alvarez. Outlier Media expands our imagination about what…

Notes from 15 Months of Leading the News Integrity Initiative — In one of the many notebooks I filled since joining the News Integrity Initiative, I’d jotted down a story about Anne, a journalist who received several letters from incarcerated men and women, thanking her for hosting a community meeting inside the prison to discuss issues of mass incarceration and re-entry…

Why the News Integrity Initiative is supporting MuckRock and DocumentCloud’s merger and expansion — Today the News Integrity Initiative is pleased to announce a $250,000 grant to MuckRock and DocumentCloud, two recently-merged organizations which believe, like NII does, that institutions should be open, transparent and accountable to the people they serve. MuckRock and DocumentCloud offer a suite of tools and services that help newsrooms…