N&O award from Report for America will help launch NC population growth team
The News & Observer has received an award from Report for America to support two journalists who will help launch a new initiative to study and report on North Carolina’s unprecedented population growth.
The two reporters from the nonprofit Report for America organization will be part of the N&O’s Growth & Housing Lab, set to launch in early 2020. The lab will include several journalists assigned to report on population growth trends for both the N&O and The Herald-Sun — focusing on Triangle growth and its impact on housing, transportation, the economy and quality of life.
Report for America is a journalism and community service organization that helps newsrooms cover topics significant to their regions. It’s an initiative of the GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit news organization that supports talented young journalists worldwide.
RFA partly funds the reporting positions, and newsrooms are responsible for identifying additional community funding to support the remainder of the cost. Report for America, along with the North Carolina News Lab Fund, currently supports a journalist who is reporting on hurricane recovery efforts around North Carolina for The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun. The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund is a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation.
The program receives funding from many individual donors and organizations including The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Annenberg Foundation, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and The Joyce Foundation.
In Monday’s announcement of this year’s reporting corps placements, Charles Sennott, CEO and editor-in-chief of GroundTruth, noted that Report for America will place 250 journalists in 46 newsrooms across the country in 2020.
“RFA is about serving these communities and helping to restore the pipeline for a new generation of journalists,” Sennott said. Journalists may apply for the 2020 positions at reportforamerica.org.
The two N&O reporters will start their work in late spring with the Growth & Housing Lab, modeled after highly successful news labs at media organizations around the country — and the first of its kind in North Carolina. The lab will be supported by philanthropic funding, grants and donations.
To find out more about the Growth and Housing Lab and how you can be involved, please contact Managing Editor Jane Elizabeth, jelizabeth@newsobserver.com.; or simply complete this form. Here’s how to make a donation directly to our Report for America project.
This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 12:01 AM with the headline "N&O award from Report for America will help launch NC population growth team."