The PRT is excited to announce that we have received a $20,000 ‘Sustainable Publishing Solutions’ grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This grant program is designed to help newsrooms develop and upgrade their digital platforms. In addition to the funding, the PRT will be able to participate in training sessions for utilizing business and audience development tools.
We were one of only 25 newsrooms from across the country to receive this grant. The applications were judged by a panel of industry experts who selected the winners based on “application strength, grant utilization and industry impact.” The grantees include both nonprofit and for-profit news organizations. 88% of the grantees are nonprofits (or have fiscal sponsors), 36% serve communities of color and 56% focus on local journalism.
The grant is being used to fund our new website. If you haven’t visited it yet, please do at patagoniaregionaltimes.org
We have launched our new interactive calendar on the website, as well. Everyone is encouraged to post your events on the calendar. You can also upload flyers and photos there, and links to your websites. We hope the calendar becomes a valuable community asset.
We have revamped our popular weekly newsletter. We can now boast about having 2,000 subscribers to the newsletter, a remarkable number in a rural area.
One new feature we are exploring is the opportunity to share articles from other news organizations here, in addition to our own articles and news bulletins.
We are so grateful to Arizona Luminaria, a nonprofit paper in Tucson, who reached out to us recently with an offer to allow us to republish their excellent article, written by Johanna Willett, about Aishah Lurry and her Patagonia Flower Farm. Look for this article on our website.
And, of course, none of this would be possible without you, our readers, who support us, not only financially, but with your story ideas, kind words and suggestions for ways we can improve. As the PRT float rolled along in the 4th of July parade, voices all along the parade route yelled out “We love the PRT!” It just doesn’t get much better than that.