Twenty newsrooms from across the country, with proposals that reflect a variety of issues at the center of democracy and civic participation, are the first grant recipients of the Solutions Journalism Network’s Renewing Democracy contest. The contest encourages reporting about how people and institutions are attempting to reinvigorate democracy in communities across the country.
The winning newsrooms, which have not partnered with Solutions Journalism Network before, will receive grants of $2,500 each. They range from small news outlets in underserved rural areas to hyperlocal news sites in big cities to large newsrooms across the country. They will write about issues like gentrification in historically Latino and Asian-American communities, community-led initiatives to create dialog across political and class divisions and efforts to increase civics knowledge among adults through a combination of reporting and mobile surveying technology.
The proposals were judged based on resonance with their communities, potential for impact and how well they place responses to problems at the center of reporting.
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Bay City News will explore how diverse groups in California’s Bay Area engage with constituencies to vote on Election Day, highlighting practices that successfully increase voter participation.
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Block Club Chicago will examine what Chicago can learn about equitable development from a transit-oriented development in a gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland where the longtime Latino population has not been displaced.
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Boise State Public Radio will trace how a citizen-driven campaign to expand Medicaid eligibility overcame Idaho’s restrictive ballot initiative law, which requires that signatures on petitions be equally spread among half of the state’s legislative districts.
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Colorlines will investigate interventions and initiatives across the country in response to a wave of fraudulent calls to police, such as the incident in a Philadelphia Starbucks, reporting people of color for being in public and private spaces.
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Daily Yonder will highlight the approaches of two rural communities in Washington and California, respectively, in response to the growing threat of wildfires.
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DaviesContent LLC will develop a series of podcasts that report on initiatives in Durham, Des Moines and Minneapolis to reach across racial, political and class divisions to strengthen local democracy.
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Flathead Beacon will explain why the number of missing indigenous women in Montana is not being reported or tracked by the state and federal governments and examine efforts to respond to the cases of the many missing and/or murdered women on the state’s seven tribal nations’ reservations.
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International Examiner will research efforts to preserve Chinatowns in Vancouver, BC, and other places to provide insights into how to maintain the historically immigrant, refugee and low-income residents of Seattle’s Chinatown International District as gentrification pressures increase.
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Issue Media Group will measure the civics knowledge of adults in Ohio over three years through a combination of stories, civics quizzes, social media and mobile surveys, and then determine best practices for increasing knowledge and participation in public affairs.
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KUT will investigate efforts in Portland, Denver and Seattle to help low-income residents benefit from rapid growth to inform how Austin, Texas, could prevent people from being pushed out of the city by rising housing prices.
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Law@theMargins will document in a series of multimedia stories how ethnic immigrant communities nationally are organizing and mobilizing to address immigration issues.
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Mendocino Voice will create an online interactive guide to the multiple government agencies in rural Northern California and write a series of stories about the agencies to help residents understand and engage with their government.
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Mission Local will investigate best practices for police de-escalation training and how it can be applied in San Francisco to reduce officer-involved shootings of civilians.
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Northern Kentucky Tribune will look at what Kenton County, ranked the worst in the state for income inequality, can learn from other Kentucky counties’ efforts to address inequality.
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The Spokesman-Review will combine an event for a new book about a prominent white supremacist who changed his beliefs by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Eli Saslow with reporting about local initiatives to overcome hate and intolerance.
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The Tyler Loop will report about how a network of mostly African-American women in East Texas is crowd funding basic needs for mothers in crisis in counties with some of the worst health outcomes for black women and their babies in the state.
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Wausau Pilot and Review will document a neighborhood campaign to clean up dioxin contamination and what can be learned to help other central Wisconsin communities saddled with potentially harmful brownfield sites.
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WBEZ will examine a City of San Francisco program that assesses how fees and fines impact low-income residents as some Chicagoans call for their city to take steps to help vulnerable communities reduce their debt from city fines.
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WDET will report on Detroit’s affordable housing problem as part of an ongoing exploration of housing inequality and engage residents and stakeholders in discussions about solutions while learning from other cities.
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Wyofile will investigate criminal justice reforms in other states, focusing on North and South Dakota, to inform solutions as Wyoming attempts to reform its criminal justice system.
The proposals were scored by veteran editors and solutions journalism practitioners Alison Gerber, editor and director of content, Chattanooga Times Free Press; Amy Maestas, editor, The Durango Herald; Jim Simon, managing editor, Honolulu Civic Beat; David Plazas, opinion and engagement director, The Tennessean; and Eugene Sonn, audio news director, WHYY. Some members of the Solutions Journalism Network’s newsroom practice change team helped select the finalists.
The stories must be published by Nov. 11, 2018.
Solutions Journalism Network will award 100 grants through 2020 to newsrooms to support stories, projects and collaborations that examine how people, communities and institutions are responding to problems at the center of democracy.
A new round of grant applications for the Renewing Democracy contest will be announced on Sept. 24 and will be open to all U.S. newsrooms.