Fifteen Nigerian publications, mainly online newspapers are among beneficiaries of the $5,000 grant and other amount from the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund offered by Google to support news organisations in developing countries to increase their capacity to cover the COVID-19 pandemic.
Available confirmation indicate that beneficiaries of the Fund in Nigeria are Aledeh.com, City Mirror News, Daily Nigerian, News Wire NGR, Lagos Post Media, Newsfeed Nigeria, Premium Times and Sundiata Post.
Others are Sunrise Newspaper, Tell Magazine, The Daily Times, The Daily Report, The Eagle Online, The Median, TNG and The Punch (including Saturday Punch, Sunday Punch and Punch Online).
Chief Executive Officer of the Sundiata, Max Amuchie and Managing Editor of Sunrise, Micheal Olatunji confirmed the grant to their organisations in publications on their website on Friday.
The Daily Report also published a report on the award on Monday, July 21.
According to Amuchie, the Google News Initiative Team said in an email to him that it “received over 12,000 applications from more than 100 eligible countries and we are happy to confirm that your application has been approved to receive USD $5,000 from the JERF, in this wave of announcements.”
Amuchie, former Managing Editor of Leadership and Features Editor of THISDAY, in his reply, thanked the Google News Initiative Team for the grant and promised that it would be used judiciously.
“I lack words to express the depth of my gratitude to God for His immense blessing. This is coming less than a week after we unveiled Dealboku, our e-commerce subsidiary,” Amuchie stated in a Facebook post with the link of the grant award.
In his response, Olatunji said: “We at Sunrise News are extremely delighted that an institution as strong and reliable as Google, found us worthy to partner with, especially at this time when economies all over the world are going through very hard times and operations of a website have become more challenging and demanding. We assure the JERF that the fund would be judiciously used.”
Executive Producer of The Daily Report, Charles Kalu said in his reaction to the news.“This award by Google comes to me and my colleagues as a surprise and it’s indeed gratifying and heartwarming because it shows that the little effort being made by The Daily Report to highlight the problems and challenges faced by our communities and neighbourhoods, especially with the advent of Covid19 has received worldwide recognition,”
“We shall not rest on our oars to ensure that we do more investigations as well as report on issues directly affecting the ‘common man’ and how to help improve his standard of living. The Daily Report team will always be at the forefront of reporting stories that affect the lives, health and well being of our communities.”
“With the Google JERF, The Daily Report will be able to extend its digital reach and imprint even further, producing more online and video-based content, and creating a series of podcasts as we continue to report news about everyday people,” Online Editor, Pelu Awofeso said. “This support couldn’t have come at a better time, and we look forward to making the most of it.”
Sundiata, The Daily Report and Sunrise got the grant after responding to call for applications for the Google News Initiative’s Journalism Emergency Relief Fund (JERF) in April https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/journalism-emergency-relief-fund
The Fund’s aim is to support the production of original journalism for local communities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Application Eligibility Requirements included the following:
Small and medium-sized news organizations producing original news for local communities during this time of crisis.
Eligible applicants must have a digital presence and have been in operation for at least 12 months.
The Fund is targeted at newsrooms employing between 2 – 100 full-time employees (FTE) journalists.
Local publishers employing more than 100 FTE journalists can still apply and will be considered subject to Google’s discretion, based mainly on differing needs in different countries/regions.
Organizations must be incorporated or registered in one of the eligible geographies. Unincorporated organizations must be based in one of the eligible geographies.
Eligible applicants need to have a focus on core news provision, i.e. not a lifestyle, sports, business-to-business.
Eligible applicants can include for-profit or non-profit traditional news organizations, digital natives, radio and/or TV broadcasters.
Government-owned entities and individuals are not eligible to apply.
Sundiata Post was launched in Abuja on 7 July 2015, while SUNRISE News commenced publishing in November 2015.
On April 1, our website, www.mediacareerng.org published an article on how journalists and media organisations can get COVID-19 support fund.
