Editorial of October 24, 2024

Iron String Press: Pressing Forward

Two hundred and five small local news outlets—including one in every U.S. state—will receive a share of $20 million to close persistent coverage gaps in their communities, thanks to funding from Press Forward, the nationwide movement to strengthen communities by reinvigorating local news.

Grant awardees were announced on Wednesday, October 16. Otsego County’s own Iron String Press—publishers of “The Freeman’s Journal” and “Hometown Oneonta” weekly newspapers and of the AllOtsego.com website—is one of them.

According to a media release issued by Press Forward:

The steady and significant decline in the availability of reliable, fact-based local news across the country is connected to growing threats to democracy, increasing polarization, and the spread of disinformation. At the same time, over a decade of investment in journalism experimentation and transformation have produced new models and solutions that are ready to scale, and a new generation of leaders prepared to reinvent and revitalize the field.

Motivated by the extraordinary quality and number of proposals, Press Forward is funding twice as many news organizations as it anticipated initially through its first open call. According to a press release, the recipients, the majority receiving $100,000 in general operating support, were selected from a total of 931 proposals from newsrooms with annual budgets of less than $1 million.

Press Forward describes the grant recipients as a “bright mosaic of independent, non-partisan sources reimagining what local news looks like across America.”

“These newsrooms are proof that we are seeing a moment of transformation, where new and longstanding newsrooms are stepping up to create a new story for local news,” said Dale R. Anglin, director, Press Forward. “Each newsroom plays a vital public service role in its community—providing trustworthy local news and information in places where no other sources may exist. Independent newsrooms need community support to survive. We hope that more people will subscribe and donate to them.”

The current grant recipients include newer nonprofits—some launched as information needs became evident during the pandemic—and enduring for-profit outlets continuing to innovate after a century in business. Some newsrooms are reporting on the vast American countryside, where they are the only news source for hundreds of miles, while others cover people of color and linguistically diverse communities that traditional news sources have overlooked.

Collectively, they are reporting and producing the original, locally-based stories people need to be involved in, in order to make decisions about their daily lives—from how their tax money is being spent, to crime and climate trends in their communities and ways to get help paying utility bills.

Forty percent of grantees are headed by Black, Indigenous and other leaders of color, 25 percent of recipients are serving rural communities, and eight are college newsrooms.

Press Forward is a growing coalition of donors committed to reimagining local news. The funding for this open call comes from donors who contributed to Press Forward’s Pooled Fund, housed at The Miami Foundation. In addition to raising money and awareness for local news, Press Forward has launched 31 local chapters around the country over the past year, where local leaders are raising funds and gathering support to strengthen their community through local news.

Press Forward’s coalition members are committed to the initiative’s four funding priorities: strengthening local newsrooms, advancing public policy that expands access to local news, scaling the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive, and the subject of this open call, closing local coverage gaps, so that all communities are part of the conversations about the issues that most affect their lives.

Press Forward engaged 113 advisors from a range of backgrounds in the application reviewer process. Each application was scored and evaluated using a rubric that favored newsrooms filling news gaps with strong, community-based leadership, a plan for sustainability and a track record of community listening and collaboration. The Press Forward staff, including veterans in philanthropy and journalism, narrowed the list further and, with input from the Management Committee, made the final decisions to ensure a balanced list for maximum impact across the country.

Iron String Press publications are honored to serve rural Otsego County. Our award-winning newspapers are locally owned and disseminate information in a thoughtful, impartial, and unbiased fashion, covering topics that impact county residents directly on a local, statewide, regional, national, and/or international level.

Many, many thanks to all of the community leaders, municipal officials and readers who wrote letters to further reinforce our grant application. The long history of “The Freeman’s Journal” in particular—as a leader in and voice of the community for 216 years and counting—and the tremendous outpouring of support in general, must certainly have tipped the scales in our favor.

We thank those who currently read or subscribe to our publications, and ask those who don’t to consider supporting independent, local news with a subscription to AllOtsego.com or to “The Freeman’s Journal” or “Hometown Oneonta,” which includes unlimited access to the website. You can subscribe today via https://www.allotsego.com/subscribe/ or by calling (607) 547-6103.

And finally, many, many heartfelt thanks to Press Forward for believing in the importance of—and working to save—small, locally-owned newsrooms like ours, and for recognizing the accomplishments of our past, our efforts in the present, and our promise for the future.

As we approach the new year, Iron String Press will seek to hire additional editorial staff, in order to cover more of the county’s news in both the weekly hard-copy papers and online. We will work to create new partnerships and to strengthen those that already exist. We will continue to live up to our own motto, “putting the community back into the newspaper.”

And we will, most importantly, press forward.