• by Ray Schultz , Yesterday

A $3.6 million grant has been awarded to the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern by The Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

The three-year grant provides funding for creation of a shared services hub that will provide expert help and infrastructure support to news outlets in the Chicago area.

The hub is being set up by the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.

Expanding on the Medill Local News Accelerator, the hub will help local news media with consumer research, audience strategy, product development, revenue diversification and legal services.

“This new shared services hub will help us provide much-needed resources to Chicago area news outlets,” says Charles Whitaker, dean of Medill. “And it will allow them to spend more time focusing on what they do best — providing valuable journalism that helps residents be more informed about local matters that affect their daily lives.”  

In addition, the grant will support Medill’s continuing efforts to bolster state government coverage, solutions for journalism and high school media programs. 

It will also back the Medill Illinois News Bureau, which was launched last fall in partnership with the nonprofit Capitol News Illinois (CNI).

Medill students provide coverage of state government news from Springfield and Chicago in collaboration with CNI. Their stories are distributed to 700 news outlets in Illinois and surrounding states.