"Massive Philanthropic Funding Injected to Tackle Local News Crisis"

More than 20 nonprofit organizations, including the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, have pledged to invest a total of $500 million over the next five years in local media organizations through an initiative called Press Forward. The funds will be used to support existing local newsrooms, build shared tools, provide resources to underserved areas, and invest in nonpartisan public policy development. The goal is to address the crisis in local news and the rapid disappearance of local news outlets, which has left many communities without independent sources of information. The initiative aims to eventually raise and invest $1 billion to sustain news outlets that lack sufficient revenue.