Newsday awarded $150,000 local journalism grant
Melville-based Newsday is among the news organizations nationwide and across North America that will share in $16 million in grants from Facebook as part of its Local Journalism Project. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Newsday has been selected to receive a $150,000 grant from the Facebook Local Journalism Project, which provides a financial boost to news organizations during the coronavirus pandemic.
Newsday was selected among 10 news organizations across New York State to receive more than $1 million in grants from Facebook’s relief fund, part of $16 million spread across North America to support 200 local newsrooms.
“Newsday is using the grant to create additional value for our subscribers, including the launch of a new subscriber deals and discounts program later this year,” Newsday Publisher Debby Krenek said.
Grants were also awarded in New York to the online startup The CITY, WNYC New York Public Radio and Gothamist.com, City Limits, El Diario, Greenpointers, the BK Reader, New York Amsterdam News, Impacto Latin News and The Syracuse Post-Standard.
“The pool of COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program recipients is notable in that nearly four in five are family or independently owned, half are published by or for communities of color, nearly 40 percent are digitally native publishers, and just over a third are non-profits,” the organization said in a news release.
Newsday, based in Melville, employs 670 workers and is owned by Pat Dolan, chief executive of Newsday Media Group. Newsday was selected through Facebook’s Local News Accelerator Program, focused on generating subscriptions and memberships.
“Reviewing hundreds of applications on a tight timeline both illustrated the depth of need, but also highlighted the innovation that these small, independent publishers can provide for their communities when given the resources,” said Jonathan Kealing, chief network officer of the California-based Institute for Nonprofit News.
A report by Facebook and Crowdtangle, a social media news metric program, studied 2,700 local news Facebook pages and found that during the last two weeks of March and April, reader growth doubled and shared articles increased by 40%.
Newsday also secured a $10 million Paycheck Protection Program loan last month to preserve jobs during the economic downturn that has hit the journalism industry hard due to declining advertising revenue. Newspaper publishers with 1,000 or fewer employees qualified for the loan.
The Florida-based Poynter Institute, which tracks newsroom layoffs, has tallied a total of more than 30,000 layoffs and furloughs across journalism since the nationwide shutdown in March from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Poynter Media business analyst Rick Edmonds said Facebook’s grants were “a start, but a modest one.”
“Given Facebook’s resources and the collateral damage of its ad success on local news business models, I hope it does lots more,” Edmonds said.
John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.
