FRONTLINE Announces 2024 Local Journalism Initiative Partners

BOSTON – March 5, 2024 — FRONTLINE, PBS’s flagship investigative documentary series, announced today the selection of the newest class of partners for its Local Journalism Initiative.

Our new partners during this year will include the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which will explore healthcare disparities in Tennessee; the Portland Press Herald, which will undertake an accountability investigation into Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, and will work in partnership with Maine Public (PBS); and The Texas Tribune, which will analyze immigration and politics along the U.S.-Mexico border. We will also continue our partnership with The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, which will turn their lens on rural voters in the state.

FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative provides editorial and financial support for newsrooms, which includes paying journalists’ salaries and sharing FRONTLINE’s expertise on investigative techniques, video storytelling and connecting journalism with diverse audiences.

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The initiative aims to promote sustainable, public interest journalism in communities where local news organizations have been hit hard by financial pressures. It launched in 2019 with support from Knight and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Local Journalism Initiative is based in FRONTLINE’s newsroom at GBH in Boston. Knight’s funding is part of a $300 million commitment, announced in 2019, to build the future of local news and information.

“We’re so pleased to welcome our fourth cohort of local journalism partners to FRONTLINE. Since this initiative began, it’s been an honor to support and amplify our partners’ enterprise reporting, and to shine a light on the immense value of local journalism,” said Raney Aronson-Rath, executive producer and editor-in-chief of FRONTLINE. “We are grateful to Knight Foundation for their steadfast support of our Local Journalism Initiative, and we look forward to bolstering the powerful storytelling emerging from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Portland Press Herald, The Post and Courier, and The Texas Tribune.”

Erin Texeira, senior editor and director of FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, said, “It was inspiring to receive such a robust pool of applications from journalists and newsrooms across the country. In this election year, investigative journalism illuminating pressing local issues has never been more vital.”

FRONTLINE also helps local newsrooms extend their reach through regional cooperation and by building their audiences. The initiative also aims to increase diversity representation in newsrooms in underserved communities by working with editorial leadership to think intentionally about their hiring practices, the stories they tell, and how they choose to tell them. Since 2019, FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative partners have included WFAE Charlotte NPR, Rhode Island’s The Public’s Radio, The Texas Newsroom, The Tampa Bay Times, Oklahoma Watch, Rocky Mountain PBS, New Mexico PBS (KNME-TV), Milwaukee PBS, The Salt Lake Tribune, and Star Tribune in Minnesota.

The initiative has helped produce major investigations, including Fractured, an 11-part WFAE radio series and forthcoming FRONTLINE documentary on North Carolina inmates living with mental illness; Underage and Unprotected, a series on migrant teens working risky jobs in Massachusetts fish processing plants; and stories about a polluting lead smelter in The Tampa Bay Times that won a George Polk Award and Pulitzer Prize.

“We’re excited by the newsrooms chosen by FRONTLINE for this year’s cohort and can’t wait to see the work that comes from these partnerships,” said Jim Brady, Knight Foundation’s vice president of journalism. “The Local Journalism Initiative has been a winning effort from the start, as local newsrooms have gotten the benefit of FRONTLINE’s legendary expertise and local communities have benefitted from the outstanding stories published by these partnerships.”

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About FRONTLINE FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including more than 106 Emmy Awards and 31 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation We are social investors who support democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.

FRONTLINE Press Contact: anne_husted@wgbh.org | 617.300.5312 Knight Foundation: Paul Blake, blake@kf.org