News & Events

Renaissance Journalism awards $185,000 to 20 Bay Area media nonprofits to cover Covid-19 crisis

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.

Introducing a journalist’s guide to covering the housing crisis

Renaissance Journalism is excited to introduce a new tool to help journalists cover the nation’s housing crisis. The guide, “Housing Reporting Rx: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Housing Crisis,” highlights our key findings and observations from a yearlong review of housing coverage. It also identifies major pitfalls to avoid and offers practical tips and real-life examples to journalists on how to improve and expand coverage of the housing crisis in all its complexity and nuance.

San Francisco Public Press to examine Census Bureau’s reliance on digital strategy

Renaissance Journalism has awarded a $10,000 reporting grant to San Francisco Public Press to investigate how the lingering digital divide might undermine Census 2020, the federal government’s massive effort to count every man, woman and child in the United States.

This year marks the first time that the U.S. Census Bureau will conduct the decennial count primarily online, creating a possible participation barrier for those without reliable access to the internet. Even in affluent and tech-savvy San Francisco, 10,000 people live in homes that lack internet access and 8,000 live on the streets or in temporary shelters.