More Iowa newsrooms earn Facebook journalism grants
Facebook has announced more than 200 news organizations will receive nearly $16 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news.
Three Iowa newspapers in Carroll, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines in total received over $200,000 in grants. Cedar Rapids Gazette and Iowa Starting Line were announced as recipients during the latest round of grants. They join newspapers in Iowa City, Denison and Spencer, who received funding in earlier rounds of the project.
The grants stem from $25 million in local news relief funding announced in March as part of Facebook’s $100 million global investment in news. It includes:
$10.3 million being awarded to 144 US local newsrooms as part of the COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program. The fund is supporting many publishers who are hardest hit by this crisis: nearly 80 percent of recipients are family- or independently owned and more than half are published by or for communities of color.
$5.4 million being awarded to 59 North American newsrooms that participated in Facebook Local News Accelerator programs focused on subscriptions and memberships.
Remaining funds will be used throughout 2020 to support projects focused on longer-term sustainability in local journalism. This includes $2.5 million for Report for America, helping the group place 225 journalists in 160 local news organizations for their 2020 reporting corps.