COVID-19

Examiner Media Wins 5K from Facebook

Examiner Media
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Examiner Media publisher and founder Adam Stone.

Examiner Media — publisher of community news in print and online across all of Westchester and Putnam counties — has been awarded $5,000 from the Facebook Journalism Project (FJP), the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association (LMA), with the first 50 recipients of the $1 million dollars in grants to support COVID-19 news reporting announced today. The funding is designed to help fill immediate gaps for resource-constrained newsrooms. 

In addition to Examiner Media, five other local newsrooms in New York were also selected to receive $30,000 in funding combined. The other five are CNY Latino, Niagara Frontier Publications, Spotlight Newspapers, Wallkill Valley Publications Inc, and Watertown Daily Times with each of the recipients getting $5,000 – and with more recipients to be announced in the coming weeks.

“Access to trustworthy, accurate, and local information is critical now more than ever in our state,” a press release stated. “These small investments can help fulfill immediate needs such as increasing frequency of publishing, tools to work remotely, combating misinformation and serving vulnerable and at-risk groups.”

Facebook Vice President, Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown noted how “Journalists in local communities are working around the clock to ensure people have timely information to keep them safe.”

“Lenfest and the Local Media Association will help us quickly provide support for this critical reporting,” she stated.

The initiative is a part of what Facebook describes as a broader effort to provide support around COVID-19, including a separate $1 million in grants to supporting fact-checkers.

“Local news enterprises have responded with superb, real-time, comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, but many newsrooms are resource-constrained just when our communities need us most,” said Jim Friedlich, CEO of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. “The grants announced today are designed to provide rapid-response assistance for the coverage of this fast-moving news story. Our focus is on need, speed and scope – helping as many news organizations as we can, as quickly as we can.”
Publisher Adam Stone said how appreciative he was not just for the funding to help his Examiner Media community newspapers and digital platforms, but also for the overall efforts by Facebook to galvanize support for and fund local journalism.
“This is a great example of how Facebook can work to support local journalism and communities across the country,” Stone said. “We are incredibly grateful for this funding and will make every penny count.”
Nancy Lane, CEO of Local Media Association, for her part, said “Covering coronavirus at the local level is a struggle for many small-to mid-size publishers who are already resource-challenged.”
“These grants will go a long way to help them provide vital information to their communities,” she said. “We are thrilled to be part of this program, and very grateful to the Facebook Journalism Project for funding this important work.”

Readers can stay up to date with all of Facebook’s COVID-19 news here.

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