FRONTLINE Wins Major Funding to Expand Investigative Reporting

FRONTLINE today announced two new major grants to expand investigative reporting across platforms.

Longtime WGBH supporters Jon and Jo Ann Hagler have made the single largest gift by an individual to FRONTLINE in its 30-year history: $5 million, with the majority going towards a new endowment for continuing journalism.

In addition, the Ford Foundation is making a two-year, $800,000 grant towards a new cross-platform Enterprise Journalism Group within FRONTLINE that will deepen the series’ in-house investigative bench.

“These two gifts are a vote of confidence in FRONTLINE’s ambitions for the future,” says Executive Producer David Fanning. ‘’We know that to keep doing significant investigative reporting we have to undertake a major effort to raise additional funds for the time-intensive and costly work of enterprise journalism. The generosity of the Haglers and new support from the Ford Foundation is an expression of optimism about the future of the series and the kind of journalism we practice, and need to keep expanding.”

FRONTLINE, which receives its majority funding from PBS as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has been the recipient of major foundation support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for many years, with an initial series grant of $5 million and an early grant of $1 million to pursue digital opportunities across WGBH.

The Park Foundation is also a longstanding series funder, and FRONTLINE recently received funding from the Wyncote Foundation to support journalistic collaborations. Additionally, the series receives support from the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, which helps fuel in-depth journalistic investigations through donor contributions.

“FRONTLINE has been able to build its journalistic capacity because of the support of the MacArthur, Park, and Wyncote Foundations,” says FRONTLINE Deputy Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath. “Now the Haglers and the Ford Foundation are giving us a remarkable chance to not just expand our original investigative journalism, but to innovate it, to report and tell stories that matter in new, creative ways, and to reach a digitally native audience.”

Read the full announcement here.