Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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Newsjunkie.net is a resource guide for journalists. We show who's behind the news, and provide tools to help navigate the modern business of information.
Use of DataBoston, Massachusetts, USA · An initiative of Report Local (formerly The GroundTruth Project)
Report for America is a national journalism service program that addresses the collapse of local news in the United States by placing talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms that lack the resources to hire them independently. It is an initiative of Report Local — the organization formerly known as The GroundTruth Project — and was co-founded in 2017 by Charles Sennott and Steve Waldman, launching its first cohort of corps members in 2018. The program is explicitly modeled on Teach for America and AmeriCorps: a national service framework applied to the specific civic crisis of news deserts, where communities have lost the professional journalism that sustains democratic participation and institutional accountability. Since its first placements, Report for America has matched more than 750 journalists with local newspapers, public radio stations, digital newsrooms, and television outlets across the country, and has helped unlock nearly $60 million in local philanthropic funding for its partner newsrooms. In December 2024 it received a $20 million multi-year investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to expand its model — the largest single grant in its history.
The founding premise of Report for America rests on a well-documented structural collapse. In 1990, daily and weekly newspaper publishers in the United States employed approximately 455,000 people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By January 2016, that figure had fallen to 173,000. Since 2005, America has lost 37% of its newspapers and more than two-thirds of its newspaper journalists. The consequence — documented in academic studies — is not merely the absence of journalism but measurable civic damage: declines in voter participation, increases in political polarization, declines in municipal bond ratings (as less scrutiny means more surprise for investors), and increases in corruption. Communities without local reporters are communities where government runs with less accountability, schools receive less scrutiny, public health crises are caught later, and civic life frays. Report for America was built specifically to address the portion of that collapse attributable to the absence of journalism talent and funding in under-resourced local markets.
Report for America operates through a three-way matching structure. The programme pays up to half of each corps member's salary — up to $25,000 per year, with a cap of $30,000 for more experienced journalists — directly to the newsroom employing them. The host newsroom is required to contribute the second quarter of the salary cost, and Report for America's Local News Sustainability team coaches and supports the newsroom in raising the third quarter from local and regional philanthropic funders — community foundations, civic institutions, local businesses, and individual donors. This match requirement is deliberate: it forces each newsroom to invest in the journalism position itself, introduces local philanthropy as a revenue stream that most local news organisations had never previously developed, and creates a stake in the corps member's success among the community the newsroom serves.
Corps members are selected through a highly competitive national application process — the 2025 cycle received more than 1,300 applications for 107 positions. They become full-time employees of their host newsrooms, serving for one to three years on a specific beat proposed by the newsroom. Common beats include rural communities, local government, the environment, education, public health, housing, criminal justice, and communities of color. Corps members receive training, mentorship, a peer network, and ongoing professional development throughout their service. The retention rate is notable: 82% of Report for America alumni remain in journalism after completing the programme, in an industry that has historically lost early-career reporters rapidly to attrition.
The corps has been consistently more diverse than the American newsroom workforce broadly. Across active cohorts, approximately half of corps members are journalists of color and more than 60% are women — compared to an industry average where people of color make up approximately 16.5% of newsroom staff and women approximately 39%. Report for America has explicitly framed diversity of representation as a component of its effectiveness: newsrooms that better reflect their communities generate more trust and more relevant journalism. Nearly a third of all corps member positions focus on rural communities, and roughly a quarter specifically cover communities of colour.
Report for America has partnered with more than 450 newsrooms across all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Partner organizations range from large metro daily newspapers and Associated Press state bureaus to small digital-only newsrooms with nine or fewer editorial staff — the majority (59% of the 2025–26 cohort) fell in that smallest category. Partners include nonprofit and for-profit organizations, legacy print papers, public radio and television stations, and digital investigative outlets. A selection of notable specific placements illustrates the range: seven statehouse reporters at Associated Press bureaus for the 2024 election cycle; eleven corps members at the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk; a North Carolina collaborative placing reporters at The Assembly, IndyWeek, CityView Today, Blue Ridge Public Radio, and WHQR; and an ongoing partnership with visual storytelling organization CatchLight expanding photojournalism positions in underserved communities.
The journalism produced by Report for America corps members has generated documented civic consequences. A corps member at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism investigated a Tennessee juvenile detention centre holding children as young as 13 in solitary confinement for weeks or months at a time, in violation of a state law limiting isolation to two hours — an investigation that led directly to a county ordinance strictly limiting juvenile solitary confinement. This kind of specific, accountable local outcome is what Report for America's funders and partners point to as evidence that the model is working at a policy level, not merely at a journalism metrics level.
Since 2017, Report for America's newsroom partners have collectively raised $59.9 million from institutions, individuals, major donors, and corporations to cover their portion of corps members' salaries and benefits — funding that, in most cases, represented the beginning of a systematic local philanthropy capacity that those newsrooms had not previously had. In December 2024, Report for America added a pilot accelerator program for 35 newsrooms not yet ready to host a corps member, providing coaching, training, and fiscal sponsorship support to help them develop the revenue base that would make a full partnership viable.
Report for America is funded entirely by philanthropy. Its major supporters include the Knight Foundation (which provided a $20 million multi-year commitment in December 2024), Google News Initiative, Microsoft, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Joyce Foundation, the Tow Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Walton Family Foundation (in partnership with the Missouri School of Journalism), the Henry Luce Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Park Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Spring Point Partners, and numerous family foundations and individual donors. The program is an initiative of Report Local (The GroundTruth Project), the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that serves as its organisational home. Executive Director Kim Kleman — previously editor-in-chief of Consumer Reports — leads day-to-day operations.
Newsrooms seeking to host Report for America corps members can apply each autumn; the window typically opens 15 September and closes 20 October. Journalists seeking to become corps members can apply after newsroom partners are announced, typically in January, with a February deadline. Both application processes, along with full program details, beat listings, and information on the local news sustainability coaching work, are at reportforamerica.org. The program's annual impact data and newsroom partnership lists are publicly available on the site. Funders and philanthropists interested in supporting local newsrooms through the program's matching model can find information at reportforamerica.org/funders.
Report for America
An initiative of Report Local (The GroundTruth Project, Inc.)
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Executive Director: Kim Kleman
Co-Founders: Charles Sennott · Steve Waldman
Launched: 2017 (first cohort placed 2018) · Total journalists placed: 750+ (as of mid-2025) · Partner newsrooms: 450+
Website: reportforamerica.org | Apply (journalists): reportforamerica.org/apply
Apply (newsrooms): reportforamerica.org/news-rooms
