Four Online Community News Sites to Expand Coverage with Knight Grants

Four online community news sites will expand their local reporting staffs and bring their communities more content, with a combined $390,000 investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The grants aim to help the non-profit sites draw a larger audience by providing more local news, a key to their long-term viability. The sites will expand coverage in areas that have been hard hit by cuts at traditional media companies. The grant recipients are:

1) MinnPost, which provides news and analysis, including video and audio, from experienced journalists primarily in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

2) voiceofsandiego.org, the only professionally-staffed, nonprofit online news site in California.

3) Chi-town Daily News, which uses citizen journalists and staff reporters to cover Chicago's 75 neighborhoods.

4) St. Louis Beacon, which emphasizes local news on its site founded by veteran journalists, and partners with its local public TV station.