Jersey Vindicator wins $100,000 national grant to support pilot County Chroniclers program

The Jersey Vindicator has been awarded $100,000 from the national movement Press Forward, which seeks to help close persistent coverage news gaps and reinvigorate local news.

More than 900 news organizations applied for the grant and 205 small, local news outlets across the country were selected for the inaugural, historic cohort.

The Jersey Vindicator was founded in August of 2023 as an investigative news nonprofit that seeks to strengthen democracy in the state through accountability reporting that engages and empowers residents.

A review panel of national foundation and journalism leaders read about how our reporting is making a difference, right here at home, and selected us as a grantee.

Since our launch, we have:

• Broken the key stories about attempts to gut the state’s Open Public Records Act and highlighted how the changes approved by the New Jersey Legislature would hurt journalists and residents
• Revealed how young people are being kept in solitary confinement in jails in New Jersey, contrary to state law.
• Shed light on how the Murphy Administration has broken its promises to tackle the problem of lead in public schools. Only $4 million of the $100 million allotted for lead remediation projects has been spent. Many schools aren’t following proper procedures for reporting lead issues.

The $100,000 we are receiving over two years in $50,000 installments from Press Forward is more than just a grant. It’s a symbolic gesture that national funders are investing in The Jersey Vindicator and ultimately, in New Jersey and its residents.

Press Forward funding will support our pilot County Chroniclers program. County Chroniclers is a new program we have been working on for several months behind the scenes. Residents will attend county commission meetings and report on key happenings. They will record the meetings, create minutes, and write reports that will be published on The Jersey Vindicator. website Independent media partners across the state will be able to republish these reports for their counties.

The Press Forward funding will enable us to hire two part-time County Chronicler coordinators and will also pay for training, technology, and other needs related to the program. We plan to launch our pilot program in three counties before the end of the year. The first county we will launch in is Mercer County, where we already have four residents who have stepped forward to become County Chroniclers.

Why are we creating this new program? In interviews with more than 100 residents of the Garden State over several months, a top theme is the lack of coverage of county government. Most news outlets no longer have the resources to cover county commissions or county colleges. Yet counties play a key role in local and state politics in New Jersey, and funding for counties is a large portion of residents’ tax bills. The majority of the tips we receive about failed policies, waste, or fraud in the state so far are tied to county-level organizations.

Several cities across the U.S. have a program called City Documenters. Residents attend government meetings in these cities and write up what happens. We thought the model could be applied across a state for county government coverage and are excited to see whether this experiment will be a success.

If you would like more information about the County Chronicler program or want to become a Chronicler, please reach out to us. We’d love to talk to you. We will roll out the program one county at a time. After Mercer County, we plan to launch a program in Essex and Salem counties, then Hudson County.