Mississippi Today
Deep South Today Receives $2 Million Grant from American Journalism Project
Deep South Today will receive a $2 million grant as part of a round of funding announced today by the American Journalism Project (AJP).
“We are immensely grateful to the American Journalism Project for this strategic support, which will further increase our capacity to provide the highest quality news and information for the communities we serve,” said Warwick Sabin, President and CEO of Deep South Today. “We are committed to meeting the need for local journalism that exists across our region, and we appreciate the trust and confidence that AJP is bestowing upon us to carry our critical mission forward.”
Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today and Verite News. Founded in 2016, Mississippi Today is now one of the largest newsrooms in the state, and in 2023 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Verite News launched in 2022 in New Orleans, where it covers inequities facing communities of color. With its regional scale and scope, Deep South Today is rebuilding and re-energizing local journalism in communities where it had previously eroded, and ensuring its long-term growth and sustainability.
“This support from the American Journalism Project reaffirms that Mississippi Today is moving the needle,” said Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today CEO. “Thanks to supporters like AJP, we will continue to grow our newsroom and expand our coverage to meet the information needs of the communities we call home.”
The grant from AJP will be directed toward building business infrastructure that will support the growth of local newsrooms across the Deep South, bringing high-quality public service journalism to communities that are underserved. In 2019, AJP made a three-year, $1 million investment in Mississippi Today. In that time, the organization nearly doubled its annual revenue, built the largest newsroom in the state and produced noteworthy journalism, including its 2023 Pulitzer-prize winning Backchannel series.
“We are in the midst of a rebirth in local news across this country, driven by a new generation of local news innovators changing the way we sustain community journalism in this country,” said Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project. “Each of these organizations have compelling visions for journalism that strengthens their communities. We're thrilled to partner with them to help them build enduring organizations.”
Since its founding in 2019, AJP has committed $55.3 million to a portfolio of 44 grantee partners, including 40 established news organizations and four concepts under incubation. With these new grantees, AJP's portfolio representsnearly 20 percent of the Institute for Nonprofit News members focused on local or statewide news.
In addition to funding, AJP will provide Deep South Today with strategic assistance to grow its revenue, strengthen its organizations, and expand the local reporting capacity of its newsrooms. This includes venture support, coaching, peer learning and capacity building. Over the three-year grant period, Deep South Today will be able to reinvest its increased revenue back into its newsrooms to expand their ability to do more original reporting. AJP's first cohort of grantees grew their combined revenue by $15 million over three years, resulting in a 4.9x return on AJP's annual investment, and grew their news budgets by 66 percent.
Since 2019, the American Journalism Project has raised $168 million for local news, including nearly $60 million from local philanthropies to support local news initiatives in their markets. In 2023, AJP received several commitments of note, most recently $5 million from the Abrams Foundation, which represents a significant increase in their commitment. It also received $500,000 from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, which joined OpenAI's $5 million commitment to enable the launch of AJP's new Product & AI Studio.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=359978
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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