News & Events

Renaissance Journalism is excited to announce the publication of “The LaunchPad Report,” our recent research inquiry into the myriad professional, personal and systemic challenges facing many young, entry-level journalists as they seek to find meaningful employment, pursue their reporting interests, and establish themselves within the news industry.

“Perhaps now more than ever, the news industry is at risk of losing one of its greatest assets: the next generation of journalists who are passionate about social justice and equity journalism,” said Jon Funabiki, executive director of Renaissance Journalism.

The twin crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings have laid bare deeply rooted systemic inequities and racial inequalities that have long plagued our nation. In light of this unprecedented inflection point, Renaissance Journalism is launching the Equity and Health Reporting Initiative. The project’s goal is to stimulate news media coverage, storytelling projects and/or community engagement activities in the San Francisco Bay Area that explore and investigate the impact of systemic inequities—exposed by the twin crises of 2020—on the health and well-being of our region’s most vulnerable communities. We are currently soliciting proposals from Bay Area journalists and news organizations for ambitious, in-depth and community-centric health reporting projects.

Renaissance Journalism announced in May 2020 that it has created the Covid-19 Relief Grants for Local News Organizations and will award $185,000 to 20 nonprofit community, ethnic and university news organizations that are covering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The goal of the project is to provide emergency funding relief to a select group of nonprofit news organizations that, at great risk to their own journalists, are struggling to cover the pandemic and its impact on our area’s diverse and most vulnerable communities. At the same time many of these local news outlets face financial difficulties as the accompanying downturn in the economy has led to lost advertising, donations and other revenues.