Corporation for Public Broadcasting Announces a $1.5 Million Grant to NPR

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced its intention to award a $1.5 million grant to National Public Radio to launch a major on-air and digital journalism initiative to increase the number of journalists from a diverse pool of candidates and help expand public media’s service to increasingly diverse communities.

CPB announced the grant at the UNITY 2012 Convention, a gathering of media professionals from across the country. The two-year grant from CPB will help NPR create a diverse team of journalists that will build a digital service for stories that connect to Americans today – whatever their age, race, economic background or geographic location. The initiative will be guided by a senior online journalist who will oversee the creation and curation of original content each day. The reporting team will provide deep coverage of local communities around the country, the issues that affect them and the people of many backgrounds and opinions who make these communities unique. The new grant builds on the success of the CPB/Knight Foundation-funded Project Argo that helped NPR serve new broadcast and online audiences by focusing on a defined content subject.

The original content created by this new initiative will be optimized for all platforms. It will reach an audience that is younger and more racially and ethnically diverse than traditional radio listeners, through websites, on tablets, and through an array of mobile devices. In addition, the team will work closely with NPR editors to incorporate the stories into NPR’s national news programs, infusing new perspectives and sources throughout the network’s daily coverage.