Two outlets to provide new support for independent reporting in Mississippi
Two outlets to provide new support for independent reporting in Mississippi
The Associated Press news service and Grist, a nonprofit news organization, have separately announced new programs aimed at expanding local reporting.
The efforts are meant to promote objective, factual reporting at a time when the conventional print media is in decline and many readers rely upon social media and other web-based sources that may include misinformation or disinformation.
Though some parts of Mississippi are covered by local weeklies and, to a lesser extent, by larger outlets, many areas are essentially news flyover zones. The result is that many topics are thinly reported, if at all (which was the impetus for the creation of The Mississippi Independent). News stories posted on social media are meanwhile often subject to error, inaccuracy or bias. Larger nonprofits and news are attempting to fill some of the gaps.
The Associated Press announced on Aug. 21, 2024, that it will share content provided by three nonprofit newsrooms, including two that fall under the banner of Deep South Today, which covers Mississippi and Louisiana.
On Aug. 22, 2024, the news outlet Grist announced it will fund a fifth Deep South Today reporter in Louisiana and collaborate to create a new reporting position in Mississippi as part of its local reporting network. The new position will cover climate and the environment. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization focused on climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustice.
In announcing the new agreements, the AP’s U.S. News Director Josh Hoffner said, “By working with nonprofit news outlets in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi and Nevada we are able to reach local audiences and deliver the facts and information they need about issues that matter.”
Deep South Today’s president and CEO, Warwick Sabin, said the agreement with AP will “make the most of our collective strengths and assets to maximize our impact.”
Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today and Verite News. Mississippi Today has one of the largest newsrooms in the state and in 2023 won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. New Orleans-based Verite News covers inequities faced by communities of color.
The AP and Grist announcements follow a July 2024 announcement by the University of Southern Mississippi that it will roll out a community journalism project “to supply a major news desert with people-centric stories,” beginning this fall. Mississippi Today is likewise a partner in that program.
The program will “help people have the information and the resources they need to ask good questions of their local leaders, to get involved with community groups and to really stand up for themselves in their communities,” Mississippi Today CEO Mary Margaret White said at the time. The project, named the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center, will engage students at high schools, community colleges and the university to cover a 10-county region in southeast Mississippi that has limited local reporting, according to the university’s proposal, which led to a $3 million grant from the Scripps Howard Fund.
In July 2024, two newspapers that covered parts of southeast Mississippi, The Jasper County News and the Smith County Reformer, both owned by Buckley Newspapers Inc., closed for financial reasons.
Previously, the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica announced partnerships with three state newsrooms and affiliated journalists for its local reporting network: Nick Judin with the Mississippi Free Press; Isabelle Taft with Mississippi Today; and Caleb Bedillion with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
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