Black communities

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom based in Memphis and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Launched in April 2017 during the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, we frame the news from the perspective of the people King would have been aligned with had he not been assassinated. Through our three-year partnership with ProPublica, MLK50’s RFA fellows will have access to ProPublica training and may have the opportunity to collaborate on stories co-published with the national investigative reporting outlet.  

Long Beach Post

Long Beach Post is a daily, digital publication covering news, life, business, placemaking, food, sports, LGBT issues and more in the city of Long Beach, California. We became the largest newsroom in the city last summer when a handful of journalists from the city's legacy newspaper resigned amid an onslaught of layoffs and cutbacks at their publication and joined the Post.

The Island Packet

In 1970, real estate developer Tom Wamsley and former newspaperman Ralph Hilton enlisted help and money from a third Hilton Head Island resident to start a newspaper to cover happenings on Hilton Head, a small island off the S.C. coast. The first edition — a 20-page tabloid — rolled off the press July 9, 1970. The paper came out on Thursday afternoons to an island with only 3,000 residents. As the island grew into a renowned resort, the Packet grew with it — from a weekly tabloid into a daily broadsheet newspaper. McClatchy Newspapers purchased the Packet in 1990, and by 1995 it had become a seven-day-a-week newspaper.  

The Haitian Times

The Haitian Times was founded in 1999 as a weekly English-language newspaper based in Brooklyn, NY. Since 2012, it has morphed into an online-only publication broadening its audience to include Haitians from all over the world. Our readers are thought leaders and decision makers in their families and communities. The news outlet is widely regarded as the most authoritative voice for Haitian Diaspora.  

The Community Voice

The Community Voice is a bi-weekly, state-wide publication that targets Kansas' African-American community. The publication was founded in 1993, and purchased by the Gooch family in 1996. The publication was originally a monthly, and has been bi-weekly for almost two decades. Until 2015, our coverage area was predominately the Wichita community, but we've expanded into the Kansas City market, focusing heavily on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area. Again, in response to a request to expand, we formally expanded our coverage in 2018 to include the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Akron Beacon Journal

The Akron Beacon Journal provides comprehensive news coverage primarily for Summit and Stark counties in post-industrial Northeast Ohio. We frequently publish deep-dive enterprise reports on a wide variety of topics. These newsroom also leads the joint news efforts of GateHouse Media in Northeast Ohio, which includes numerous other daily media sites and weekly publications. Overall, GateHouse serves 10 counties in Northeast Ohio and a population of 1.2 million residents. We also work closely with GateHouse’s Columbus Dispatch for Statehouse and regional news coverage.

The City

The City is a nonprofit New York digital news outlet dedicated to accountability reporting that serves a wide cross-section of New Yorkers. The push for the site, set to debut in early 2019, came in response to the stark reduction in strong local news sources. The effort, funded so far by major foundations and civic-minded individuals, is led by Editor in Chief Jere Hester, a former NY Daily News city editor, and Executive Director Kai Falkenberg, former First Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and a past Forbes newsroom lawyer. The site will be featured on New York magazine’s homepage, and the outlet’s audience-building efforts range from social media outreach to neighborhood-based town hall-style events. Our goal is to break news — and get action — through beat and investigative reporting focused on Albany, City Hall and the city’s five boroughs.