Following the outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic globally, some organisations have been offering financial support for journalists and media organisations interested in covering the situation in various communities worldwide.
The fund is particularly helpful for freelance journalists, community-based media and start-ups in need of funds to provide wider coverage beyond what the traditional media are offering.
We took time to look through some of the grants and hereby highlight what interested journalists and organisations in Nigeria and Africa need to know to qualify for the support.
Below are some requirements:
The National Geographic is offering $1000 -8000 USD for writers, photographers, videographers, audio journalists, cartographers, filmmakers, and data visualization experts.
Reporting within local media ecosystems may cover any aspect of the virus and its fallout, including but not limited to:
Social consequences of COVID-19 and measures to contain it, particularly related to equity—such as its impact on immigrant communities, domestic violence, and early childhood education.
Stories of resilience and solutions that could be applied on a regional or global scale.
Novel forms of data visualization or science communication to help communities better understand how to protect themselves.
Lessons learned from local response(s) to COVID-19 that could be applied to other large-scale challenges, such as climate change or the refugee crisis.
Best practices of how educators, students, and schools are reacting to this crisis, particularly as they illuminate under-resourced schools.
Priority communities include Those at high risk or hit especially hard by the virus, indigenous communities, immigrant or refugee communities, underserved, urban, rural, elderly populations, and children.
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-profit organization that supports independent global journalism, is seeking proposals that develop innovative approaches to reporting on the novel coronavirus crisis using collaboration among journalists and newsrooms across state lines or national borders. This opportunity is open to all newsrooms and independent journalists in the United States and abroad.
The centre is seeking strong proposals that involve a strategic and concerted effort by multiple journalists and/or newsrooms to pursue a reporting project together, leveraging resources, expertise, and publication platforms.
In addition to a strong collaboration component for reporting and publication, it encourages proposals that:
+Focus on systemic, under-reported issues underlying the coronavirus crisis
+Use data-driven and/or interdisciplinary approaches to reporting on coronavirus
+Hold the powerful accountable
Global non-profit Internews has launched a rapid response fund to help small, community and local news organisations worldwide survive in the face of COVID-19. The fund will launch with $100,000 to be made available immediately and is targeting $1 million in donations to provide immediate support for journalists globally.
Though the facebook journalism $ 100m grant under the COVID-19 Community Network grant program, is mainly for newsrooms in the United States and Canada, journalists and media organisations in Africa may learn from specific things the supported media are doing that can be replicated locally.
