Editors note 9/14/23

By Fletcher Farrar

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Last week brought the welcome national news that 20 philanthropic groups, including major national foundations and the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln, are joining forces to invest a total of $500 million over the next five years in local news media organizations. The initiative, called Press Forward, is one of the biggest efforts yet to address the crisis in local news, caused partly by the shutdown of 2,500 newspapers over the past 20 years and staff cutbacks in many newsrooms that still exist. Details are yet to come, but if it looks like Illinois Times might qualify for a grant, we'll be likely to get in line. This little newspaper is proud of what we've accomplished scraping by all these years, but some targeted grant funding could eliminate our excuses and help us think bigger. –Fletcher Farrar, editor

About The Author

Fletcher Farrar

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Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .

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