SAN ANTONIO — CPB announced Thursday that it will provide $100,000 to help public media newsrooms with short-term editing assistance.
The funding goes to the Public Media Journalists Association to resume its Editor Corps program.
PMJA will have about 20 freelance editors on call to help with short-term editing needs that might arise due to reasons such as natural disasters, breaking news coverage or staffers taking medical leave, PMJA Executive Director Christine Paige Diers said Thursday during the organization’s annual conference.
Starting Aug. 1, when the new iteration of the Editor Corps begins, PMJA member stations will be able to request editing help and get matched with an editor as soon as the next day, she said.
The Editor Corps “has funneled over 3,300 editing hours to over 50 different stations, many of which are in small markets or rural areas where such support is difficult to find,” Joy Lin, CPB’s VP of journalism, said during the conference. Lin said she would like to see even more stations utilize the program.
With the new grant, CPB will have provided $340,000 for the program.
Previously, the Editor Corps, which started in 2020, was free for stations. Moving forward, stations will pay on a sliding scale for the service. PMJA will pay editors an hourly rate of $85, but stations will pay $25, $40 or $65 per hour depending on their size.
PMJA will charge stations so they have “skin in the game” and will “use the editors when they ask for them,” Paige Diers said. The payments from stations will also help the program be sustainable.
PMJA is also looking for additional funding.
“We hope the Editor Corps will last a long, long time, because we think it’s a very important service to the system,” Paige Diers said.