San Diego County is set to benefit significantly from a recent $2 million investment aimed at enhancing local journalism. This funding will support four local nonprofit news outlets and one California-wide outlet, enabling them to provide important investigative reporting on various local issues, including soccer, sewage, and city hall affairs.
The nonprofit newsrooms receiving funds—inewsource, KPBS, NEWSWELL/Times of San Diego, and Voice of San Diego—will each receive $300,000. CalMatters, a California-based outlet focused on state-wide coverage, is allocated $800,000 to share data and resources with regional media partners. The grants are distributed over a two-year period.
This funding initiative comes from the Prebys Foundation, the largest independent private foundation in San Diego County, which has also made recent investments in downtown real estate and arts education. The foundation is known for its commitment to various societal areas, including medical research, leadership development, and mental and physical health care access.
Why focus on journalism? According to Grant Oliphant, CEO of the foundation, journalism is critical for the functioning of society, especially in understanding current events in America. “You can’t really understand what’s happening in America today if you’re not getting this information,” Oliphant stated, pointing out the significance of reliable news in grasping issues like cuts in local medical research.
The foundation identified nonprofit newsrooms as a viable investment target, especially given the decline and consolidation of traditional news outlets. Oliphant emphasized that the current climate underscores the need for such funding, particularly as attacks on journalists and independent news organizations have increased.
“If we don’t have good, independent news organizations, then there really is no one holding the government or the powerful to account, or playing the role of translating very complicated, difficult information for the rest of us to learn about and understand,” Oliphant added.
The foundation opted to distribute the funding across four local outlets instead of concentrating it on a single organization. Scott Lewis, the CEO and editor of Voice of San Diego, acknowledged that the funds will allow his organization to expand its investigative reporting—including hiring an investigative reporter focused on city hall, additional journalists to cover arts and sports, and the development of podcasts.
Lewis expressed that this investment demonstrates the foundation’s recognition of the importance of local journalism. “This investment shows that the foundation realizes how important it is to make sure that journalists are able to continue to tell stories about everything that’s happening,” he noted, emphasizing that journalism plays a role in facilitating discussions about significant community challenges.
Chris Jennewein, the editor and founder of Times of San Diego, launched in 2014, shared that the funding will bolster newsroom operations and allow for coverage of pressing regional issues, including professional soccer. With the recent addition of two full-time editors, five freelancers, and four paid interns each semester, Jennewein said the investment allows them to double down on in-depth reporting covering accountability, including issues like homelessness, city governance, and the sewage crisis.
“This extra funding enables us to devote more coverage to all those things that are vitally important to our readers,” added Jennewein.
Lorie Hearn, editor and CEO of inewsource, founded in 2009, remarked on the grant’s impact in amplifying local news’s importance in an era of declining public trust in media. “Nonprofit news, like inewsource and our fellow grantees, provide a vital service to the public, especially in these times when many people can’t agree on a set of facts, let alone trust the media,” Hearn said.
Hearn stressed the necessity of relying on trustworthy news sources and highlighted the importance of compensating journalists for their efforts. “There are real journalists behind those posts that are working hard to gather and verify facts, and those journalists deserve to be paid for that work,” she stated.
The Prebys Foundation’s investment will also enhance inewsource’s Documenters program, which trains and pays everyday people to report on public meetings that lack media coverage due to resource constraints. In its first year, the program has successfully trained more than 300 participants.
Overall, this significant investment aims to empower local journalism in San Diego County and bolster the capabilities of nonprofit news organizations in navigating the challenges of today’s media landscape.
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