The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit group that supports young journalists around the world, plans to address the lack of daily news coverage in communities in California through its initiative Report for America.
According to the Report for America press release, this lack of reporting, also known as news deserts, has left millions of Californians without basic information and accurate reporting. The organization has a goal of placing 10 reporters into newsrooms across California in 2019 and 20 reporters in 2020.
"There are so many news deserts in California," said Charles Sennott, CEO of The GroundTruth Project and co-founder of Report for America. "These extraordinary young journalists are going to really help fill these gaps, and strengthen democracy in the process."
Report for America will collaborate with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to provide reporter training and support for corps members, according to the press release. The corps members will be a mix of young journalists from California and around the country.
Steven Waldman, president of Report for America, hopes to utilize Annenberg's resources to help continue to teach journalists how to avoid lack of news reporting.
"We're grateful to the Annenberg Foundation and USC Annenberg for supporting this time-sensitive effort to plug some serious gaps in coverage in California," said Waldman.
Kevin D. Grant, co-founder and executive editor of The GroundTruth Project, received his Master's degree from USC Annenberg in 2011.
"In the past year and a half, [since the] 2016 election, we realized there was a crisis in local journalism that we can address specifically by building out this program," said Grant. "[It is] not just about doing journalism, but [it is also about] being in local communities and working closely on stories that are not being covered as much as they should be."
Along with getting training from the Annenberg School, reporters chosen to be a part of this project will be paid.
"The program pays for half of the reporter's salary while 25% is provided by the local newsroom," explained Grant. "The remaining 25% is raised by the newsroom either through individual donors, fundraising, or crowdfunding."
The application to become a member of the corps is due on Feb. 1, 2019 and can be found here. Journalism training at Annenberg will begin next June.
Additional reporting by Olivia de Witt and SeoungJoon Lee.