Sacramento Bee receives grant to hire new reporter covering the region’s Latino communities
For the second consecutive year, The Sacramento Bee has been awarded a grant from Report for America, which will help fund a full-time reporter in the newsroom to cover Latino communities in the region.
The new reporting position comes as the Latino population in the Sacramento region continues to grow: More than 1 in 5 residents in the Sacramento area identify as Hispanic, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates, and nearly one in three in the city of Sacramento are Hispanic.
The grant announced Monday comes from Report for America, a collaborative partnership between nonprofit media outlet the GroundTruth Project, Google News Lab and other foundations. The initiative helps place reporters at newsrooms across the country, funding up to $20,000 of their annual salaries. The rest is paid for by the hosting news outlet and local donors.
The Bee secured a similar grant earlier this year through Report for America to partially fund a reporter covering Asian American and Pacific Islander issues across California.
That position, which began this summer with the hiring of Theodora Yu, will now be extended through at least the end of 2020, as announced Monday by Report for America.
“As we work to build a sustainable path forward for local news, we must elevate voices that have been marginalized,” said Sacramento Bee and West Region Editor Lauren Gustus in a statement.
“The Report For America program has been a great partner to many newsrooms – including ours – in this respect.”
Applications for the new Latino communities reporter at The Bee are now open on the Report for America website. Candidates will be interviewed by The Bee early next year.
New reporters at The Modesto Bee, The Fresno Bee
The Modesto Bee and The Fresno Bee have also secured new grants from Report for America for the second year in a row.
The Modesto Bee will hire a new reporter to cover economic development in Stanislaus County and the northern San Joaquin Valley, according to Modesto Bee Editor Brian Clark. ChrisAnna Mink, who covers children’s health in the Central Valley for the paper through Report for America, will also be re-upped for another year.
At The Fresno Bee, a new Report for America reporter will cover Latino issues in the central San Joaquin Valley, according to Fresno Bee Editor Joe Kieta. In addition, the paper’s current Report for America reporter, Manuela Tobias, who covers regional poverty issues, will continue to report for the paper through next year.
New funding sources for local journalism
The Report for America initiative is relatively new. The first group of reporters sponsored by Report for America entered their respective news outlets in 2018. For the 2019 cohort, Report for America placed 60 reporters in newsrooms across 28 states and Puerto Rico.
In a blog post published last year, Report for America co-founder and president Steven Waldman said the initiative is “focused on plugging the gaps in ‘news deserts.’ ”
“We don’t want reporters to come in for a year or two, leave and have the news ecosystem to revert back to what it was before,” Waldman wrote. “If we expand the number of local residents who view journalism as an essential civic good, we will permanently improve local journalism.”
As local newsrooms across the country shrink or shutter all together, some outlets including The Bee have been diversifying its funding and revenue sources to sustain its coverage.
In November, The Bee announced its Tipping Point Lab – a team of reporters focused on the region’s success and challenges, funded by local foundations and community philanthropy.
The Miami Herald has launched a similar initiative to fund its investigative reporting, and The Fresno Bee announced last month three of the four hires for its Education Lab, which will expand its local education reporting.