The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education announced the inaugural cohort for the Fire Up Entrepreneurship Program.
The cohort consists of eight California-serving newsrooms. Each receives seven months of training in revenue, product, and community, plus mentorship on their proposed project and a $20,000 grant. Project ideas range from surfacing untold Black stories to ensuring free bilingual news in the Central Coast to mitigating AI threats to audience traffic.
Fire Up is part of the Propel Initiative to strengthen California’s multilingual media ecosystem, ensuring sustainability of public service journalism for underserved localities.
The eight news organizations are Bay City News Foundation, Daylight San Diego, India Currents, El Informador del Valle, El Latino Central Coast, MindSite News, Nowruz Media, and Observer Group Newspapers of Southern California.
Where are Fire Up newsrooms?
Fire Up is made possible by a budget allocation from the State of California and is part of the Propel Initiative to support local news, safeguard democracy and encourage civic engagement by giving all citizens access to quality journalism. The journalism organizations in this cohort serve audiences statewide, including 26 Assembly districts and 12 Senate districts.
