by Neighborhood Media Foundation
Late on Thursday, May 7, Facebook announced the Erie Chinese Journal was awarded a COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant from the Facebook Journalism Project (FJP) Community Network Grant Program.
The Chinese newspaper, which has its headquarters in Cleveland, is one of only 144 media outlets to be awarded a grant across the US from FJP, of which only four were located in Ohio.
The newspaper received a grant in the sum of $64,998 from FJP, which partnered with a group of media support organizations for the grant selection process, led by Local Media Association and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, and including input from the Institute for Nonprofit News, Local Independent Online News Publishers, the Local Media Consortium, and the National Association of Broadcasters.
The grant will add direct-mail home delivery of the Erie Chinese Journal print edition, 1:many and 1:1 text communication, and email newsletters to better reach the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hongkongese communities of Greater Cleveland.
Anne Ying Pu, Publisher of Erie Chinese Journal, said, “This is the first time the Erie Chinese Journal has received a grant, and we are grateful to Neighborhood Media Foundation for connecting us to this Facebook opportunity. I feel like this is just the beginning of a beautiful partnership that will help Greater Cleveland’s Chinese communities receive vital COVID-19 containment information.”
The FJP grant will allow the Erie Chinese Journal to begin direct-mail delivery of their print newspaper, three separate weekly email newsletters for our Chinese communities, and 1:many / 1:1 text communication to deliver vital COVID-19 containment information to and from our area’s Chinese residents.
The Erie Chinese Journal was submitted for the FJP grant by Neighborhood Media Foundation, a Cleveland-based 501c3 nonprofit supporting Cleveland’s local media ecosystem.
Neighborhood Media Foundation Executive Director Rich Weiss said, “We are very proud of Ying Pu and the value Facebook places on her labor–since 2002–developing her grassroots Chinese-language newspaper.” He added, “Neighborhood Media Foundation submitted grant proposals for all 13 grassroots outlets of NCMA-CLE (Neighborhood & Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland, an association of Cleveland-area small media producers), and Erie Chinese Journal was one of only 144 media outlets to be awarded a grant across the US.”
Weiss submitted Cleveland’s 13 small media outlets for grants from FJP but is also waiting to hear from duplicate submissions to Google News Initiative, The Poynter Institute, and The Cleveland Foundation. He said, “We hope this award from Facebook will encourage support for our duplicate programs to keep 12 other neighborhood and overlapping ethnic community media outlets of Cleveland in contact with their loyal readerships, even in a crisis.”
The other Ohio outlets to receive grants from the Facebook program were the Richland Source (Richland, OH, $100,000), The Devil Strip (Akron, OH, $40,000), and The E. W. Scripps Company (Cincinnati, OH, $100,000). These Ohio outlets were among a group of just over 200 news organizations selected from over 2,000 applications, worldwide.
“After receiving more than 2,000 applications for the COVID-19 Local News Relief Grant Program from newsrooms across every state in the U.S., all U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., we are providing grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 to help publishers continue serving communities during the coronavirus outbreak,” writes Facebook.
According to Facebook, the group of selected grant recipients includes those who “are published by or for communities of color (50 percent),” and “nearly four in five are family or independently owned,” their site states.
Ying said that in addition to Cleveland, the Erie Chinese Journal reaches as far as Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, and other Asian communities throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as those in New York, Kentucky, and Washington.