The Reporting Project is now providing election stories and related news from The Associated Press, a nonpartisan nonprofit news cooperative operating since the mid-1800s.
“This comes as the election campaigns are heating up, and at a time when fact-based news coverage is more important than ever,” said Julia Lerner, managing editor of The Reporting Project. “It also comes in the wake of two large newspaper chain owners’ decision to stop publishing Associated Press stories.”
The AP reported in March that the Gannett and McClatchy news chains, publishers of more than 230 newspapers – including USA Today, The Columbus Dispatch and The Advocate in Newark – said they would stop using journalism from The Associated Press amid continued financial pressures for the news industry.
“By providing Associated Press stories free to Reporting Project readers along with local election news and many other stories about interesting people and important topics, The Reporting Project is able to provide valuable context and perspective to news about issues and candidates,” Lerner said. “It’s news that isn’t available from other local media sources.”
cooperative whose members are U.S. newspapers
and broadcasters. Credit: The Associated Press
The Associated Press was founded in 1846 and has journalists around the world contributing to its trusted and robust reporting, Lerner said.
For 178 years, the AP has been “breaking news and covering the world’s biggest stories, always committed to the highest standards of accurate, unbiased journalism,” according to its website.
“We were founded as an independent news cooperative, whose members are U.S. newspapers and broadcasters, steadfast in our mission to inform the world,” the AP says. “To this day, AP remains independent, beholden only to the facts.”
The Associated Press and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced in July that they would work together to provide AP’s election content and services to local newsrooms in battleground states ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
“Select nonprofit and local newsrooms in key states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada that are members of the Institute for Nonprofit News and Local Independent Online News Publishers qualify,” the organizations said in a news release.
As a member of LION, The Reporting Project applied for the service and was accepted into the program, which provides AP content free to The Reporting Project and its readers.
“For over 175 years, AP’s vote count, race calls and coverage have allowed newsrooms across the U.S. to tell the full story of the run-up to Election Day and inform their communities about the results,” AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace said in the news release. “With funding from the Knight Foundation, we are thrilled to expand access to this crucial information to local outlets, equipping these newsrooms with the tools they need to inform citizens with election facts.”
And Knight Foundation President and CEO Maribel Pérez Wadsworth said in the release that “our hope is that this support not only will provide voters with the information they need to make informed decisions in November, but that it also provides news organizations with the boost they need to sustain their capacity to engage communities well into the future.”
Chris Krewson, executive director of LION Publishers, said in the release that its local, independent online news organizations “are already doing the hard work of covering elections at the national, state and especially the community level, and gaining access to the breadth of resources produced by The Associated Press will be a shot in the arm during this crucial election season.”
Krewson said that LION “members are deeply connected to the communities they are covering, and it’s crucial to support their efforts to provide high-quality news and information so communities can make informed decisions at the polls.”
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.