Focus Areas
Media Training
Archives
Youth
Representation in Media
Community-Centered Journalism
Media Policy

Broadcast, digital, and print journalism that accurately reflects the lived experience of communities of color can lead to increased civic engagement (e.g. voter turnout, everyday people running for office), minimize divisive narratives that foster polarization, and provide live-saving resources that build up our communities. Major news organizations’ newsrooms, in Philadelphia and beyond, are primarily led by and staffed with white journalists, with a disproportionate number of them from elite universities. 

These media organizations, because of their lack of diversity, select and report stories that do not reflect or dignify the lived experiences of communities of color. This creates a series of problems for the newsrooms and their communities such as perpetuating harmful stereotypes, loss of trust, an unwillingness to pay for the news which weakens the news business, and communities disengaging from civic life. 

IPMF imagines nuanced and solutions-oriented journalistic coverage that leads to improved policy making, reduced harm to communities of color, and fosters meaningful civic dialogue. The Journalism program aims to build resilient systems for communicating and sharing information by supporting the training of diverse newsroom leadership, community-connected news and information, and journalism that addresses systemic inequities and systems that need to change.

What We Support

    Projects

    $50,000 - Awarded August 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    To establish a better direct connection with students in Philadelphia through journalism, Chalkbeat will collaborate with the district-wide online student newspaper, the Bullhorn, and jumpstart a reporting series on how gun violence is impacting the city's youth.

    $75,000 - Awarded August 2021

    Focus areas
    Media Training
    Description

    To address inequities in coverage of the Black community in South Jersey by supporting more Black media makers in the creation of news and information. Recipient of the 2021 Community Voices grant.

    $80,000 - Awarded August 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    To strengthen the news ecosystem in Delaware and increase voices and coverage of underrepresented communities, particularly BIPOC and low-income communities, by creating a pipeline of BIPOC journalists, identifying geographic and demographic news deserts, and building infrastructure to address news and information needs.

    $50,000 - Awarded August 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    To support and uplift residents of Philadelphia's Hunting Park community, a predominantly Latinx and African American neighborhood with one of the city's highest poverty rates, by engaging additional community members as contributors and editors for Impacto's Spanish-language publication.

    $40,000 - Awarded August 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    For the “Outing” project which will search for Native children through investigative and solutions-based journalism, bolstering demand for a national accounting of Indigenous youths who went missing while under official supervision at dozens of government- and church-run boarding schools, with a special emphasis on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

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