Press Forward Chicago, a funder collaborative housed at The Chicago Community Trust, helps to right-size independent, community news outlets and set them up for long-term sustainability. This initiative infuses the Chicago journalism ecosystem with renewed financial vitality, fortifying the multitude of independent outlets serving the diverse local communities.
Program Area: Public Square
Local Independent Online News Publishers Inc.
LION Publishers strengthens the local news industry by helping independent news publishers build more sustainable businesses. They provide teaching, resources, and community to independent news entrepreneurs.
Open News
OpenNews, a fiscally sponsored project of Community Partners, helps journalists create authentic, trusting relationships and to build a community of support. This grant supports their ongoing efforts to increase peer support and peer learning among the journalists they serve.
Kairos Fellowship Inc.
Kairos works toward an inclusive, multi-racial democracy by changing how pro-justice organizations see, use, and imagine the future of the internet. Kairos recognizes that understanding the internet as a place, and reshaping governance of the internet as a public square, are essential to strengthening democracy and building a healthier digital media ecosystem.
Mississippi Center for Justice
By engaging elected officials, faith-based leaders, media, community activists, educators, childcare providers, healthcare professionals and other advocacy partners, the Mississippi Center for Justice dismantles the policies that keep Mississippi at the bottom of nearly every indicator of human well-being and deny African-American and lower-income Mississippians opportunities.
National Black Tech Ecosystem Association
The National Black Tech Ecosystem Association (dba Black Tech Futures Research Institute builds a national network of city-based researchers and practitioners conducting research on sustainable local black tech ecosystems. The outcomes of this work are actionable policy recommendations and a national public data archive.
Institute for Local Self Reliance Inc
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is a national research and advocacy organization that partners with allies across the country to build an American economy driven by local priorities, accountable to people and the planet.
Montclair State University Foundation, Inc.
The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, provides critical infrastructure to the local news and information ecosystem across New Jersey. Their signature program, NJ News Commons, along with their other efforts, works to create a more collaborative local news ecosystem in New Jersey and beyond.
Center for Media Justice
MediaJustice (formerly Center for Media Justice) is building a powerful grassroots movement for a more just and participatory media — fighting for racial, economic, and gender justice in a digital age.
Public Narrative
Public Narrative works to strengthen community-driven journalism in Chicago. In 2024 Public Narrative assumed stewardship of the Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA). Their work to integrate CIMA into Public Narrative closes the feedback loop among stakeholders and collaborators like CIMA administrators, members, audiences and supporters/philanthropy.