Giving Compass' Take:

· Kathy K. Im talks about the MacArthur Foundation's national Journalism and Media program, its goal to focus on supporting media and journalism that is “just and inclusive”, and the drive to produce diverse leaders in Chicago’s media and journalism institutions.

· How does media and journalism influence public perception of events and ideas? What can be done to encourage the media to produce correct, verifiable work? 

· Here's how social media has increased distrust in the news and journalism. 

In 2015, MacArthur refreshed and relaunched its national Journalism and Media program, a signature area of work for the Foundation since its earliest days. A key component of the relaunch was an explicit focus on supporting and amplifying “just and inclusive” news and narratives. With “just and inclusive” as our grounding value set, we began to change the composition of grantees in the national program and awarded a significant number of new grants in 2017 and 2018 to organizations led, staffed by, and serving diverse, non-white communities, such as Colorlines, Radio Ambulante, IllumiNative, 18 Million & Rising, Pillars Fund, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

In June 2018, we brought the national program to ground in Chicago with a local initiative to support and strengthen the journalism and media ecosystem in MacArthur’s hometown. The local program is animated by the “just and inclusive” focus and has three concrete objectives: connect the act of journalism and media making to civic engagement and empowerment; address systemic and social inequities in what is reported, who does the reporting, and how the reporting happens; and nurture a new generation of diverse leaders in Chicago’s journalism and media institutions.

Read the full article about media and journalism by Kathy K. Im at MacArthur Foundation.