ST. PAUL, Minn. — American Public Media will receive a $1.5 million grant from CPB to help stations with investigative reporting, CPB President Pat Harrison announced at the Public Radio Super-Regional meeting Tuesday.
APM will help stations increase their capacity for investigative journalism through training and other resources, Harrison said.
The project, titled the Public Media Accountability Initiative, will also involve WNYC and APM corporate sibling Southern California Public Radio. The two stations will partner with WABE in Atlanta and KCUR in Kansas City, Mo. Each station and APM Reports will hire an investigative journalist and designate a coordinating editor, with the aim of producing three investigative reports over the next two years.
“The goal is to produce investigations that have impact in each station’s region,” said Chris Worthington, managing director and editor-in-chief of the APM investigative unit APM Reports, who will be lead editor for the collaboration. “Each station will strive for collaborations within their regions, partnering at times with news organizations not included in the grant.”
In addition, APM Reports will hire a data journalist and another reporter to assist stations. APM Reports will also keep partner stations abreast of what it’s working on to enable them to cover the same topics regionally, Worthington said.