Local Media Association is pleased to announce 46 newsrooms selected to participate in three state cohorts of the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding in 2025. These newsrooms in California, Illinois and New Mexico will engage in a six-month cohort learning program to develop fundraising strategies to help sustain their essential local journalism.
Since its launch in September 2020, the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding has trained 148 newsrooms in five national and two state cohorts on fundraising best practices. Collectively, those newsrooms have raised more than $28 million to support their journalism. Training for newsrooms in the lab is made possible through sustained support from Google News Initiative.
This expansion will bring the lab’s proven training and fundraising to 19 news outlets in California, 13 news outlets in Illinois and 14 news outlets in New Mexico, enabling them to support their civic journalism in part through philanthropy.
Meet the newsrooms:
“We are excited to expand the proven practices of the Lab for Journalism Funding to these three new states,” said Frank Mungeam, who leads the lab as LMA chief innovation officer. “These newsrooms have a deep commitment to community service journalism, and we look forward to helping them grow local support for their essential reporting.”
“The Google News Initiative has been a long-standing partner of the Lab for Journalism Funding,” said Lauren Ashcraft, news partner manager at Google. “It was exciting to see the success of the new state cohorts of the lab from last year and we’re thrilled to support an expansion of the program in these important states. We look forward to our continued partnership with LMA and its members.”
The state cohorts will be led by Mungeam and Liz White Notarangelo, LMA’s co-CEO, along with a team of best-in-class coaches including Joaquin Alvarado, who has been instrumental in the development of philanthropic funding at The Seattle Times and other local newsrooms; Jennifer Preston, formerly vice president of journalism at Knight Foundation; executive coach Joanne Heyman; and Judi Terzotis who as CEO has helped dramatically grow philanthropic support for journalism at Georges Media Group.
Each publisher in the state cohorts will set a fundraising goal, receive one-on-one customized coaching, and create and pitch a journalism project to be funded through philanthropy. Newsrooms will also gather for an in-person training and convening and have the chance to compete for stipends to kick-start their projects.
In 2025, in addition to these three new state cohorts, LMA will once again offer a national cohort of the Lab for Journalism Funding with new support from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. LMA has also published two industry reports, Pathways to Philanthropy and Sustaining Philanthropy for Journalism, available as free downloads to help all local newsrooms learn and apply fundraising best practices.