Hey there,

How are you doing? 

These are unprecedented, challenging times for us all, but especially for local journalists, who are working hard to keep their communities informed while staying safe and confronting serious economic headwinds. 

At The Lenfest Institute we’re doing our best to help journalists and news organizations at the center of the crisis. We’ve created lists of funding opportunities, reporting resources, and tips for self-care. You can find all of the tips and toolkits we’ve curated at lenfestinstitute.org/coronavirus. We are regularly updating these posts, so please email me at [email protected] if there’s anything you’d like us to add. 

I’ll be back in the coming weeks with more typical Solution Set reports on how local newsrooms are addressing the coronavirus pandemic in their communities. (If you missed it, last week I wrote about how The Philadelphia Inquirer re-oriented its newsroom to cover the crisis.) Please reach out if there are any examples from your newsroom or others that you’d like to share. 

Here are some key resources: 

Funding Opportunities:

The National Geographic Society is awarding grants on a rolling basis of up to $8,000 to journalists around the world covering coronavirus in their own communities. 

The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting launched a grant program to support collaborative reporting on the pandemic. The program is open to newsrooms and journalists from around the world, and it’s accepting applications for awards of up to $10,000 on a rolling basis. 

 The Fund for Investigative Journalism is supporting freelance reporters pursuing U.S.-based investigative projects. Applications for grants of up to $10,000 are being accepted on a rolling basis.

• A group of funders in Chicago is collaborating to launch the Chicago COVID-19 Journalism Support Fund for small-to-medium-sized newsrooms in the Windy City. Grants of up to $10,000 are available, and the deadline to apply is April 15. 

Our full list is available here, and it also includes call outs from Substack, the International Women’s Media Foundation, AIR, and more. It also includes lists of free or discounted tools or services that you can use to boost your journalism. Please check back often, or follow us on Twitter, as we’ll be updating it as more opportunities emerge.

Reporting Resources: 

• Open News has created a peer-review system to help journalists make sure their reporting and data analysis is accurate. Fill out this Google form to team up with other journalists to break down data and analyze numbers

• The Newsroom Guide to COVID-19 was created by an all-star team to “to help newsroom managers provide clear, useful guidance to their reporters and editors during a period in which we lack official institutional direction on how best to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic.” 

• Resolve Philadelphia’s Reframe project has produced a thorough guide to help newsrooms present their coverage responsibly and effectively in a manner that helps provide valuable information to their communities.

• The Conversation publishes explainers and analysis from academics that are written for a broad audience. Everything it publishes is made available to other organizations for free to republish. You can find all of its Covid-19 coverage here

• The Solutions Journalism Network has held a number of webinars and compiled resource guides to help newsrooms practice solutions reporting during this moment of crisis. Learn more about that here

We’ve curated dozens of additional resources, which you can find here

Tips for Self-Care

From the Columbia Journalism School, The Dart Center has created self-care guides and support practices for editors and reporters during times of disaster

• University of Virginia clinical psychologist Claudia Allen assembled nine tips to protect your mental health during quarantine. 

• Poynter’s Al and Syndey Tompkins released nine stress-relieving strategies for journalists working this non-stop story.

Our full list of resources of self-care tips is available here


All of The Lenfest Institute’s coronavirus coverage is available at lenfestinstitute.org/coronavirus. We’ll continue to update these as long as the crisis persists. 

I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. Everyone at The Lenfest Institute is grateful to all the journalists providing us necessary news and information. 

Thanks, and see you next week. 

Photo by Tim Goedhart.

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