One week after the American Journalism Project and a coalition of local funders announced the forthcoming launch of a major nonprofit newsroom in Cleveland, the Marshall Project, a national nonprofit newsroom devoted to criminal justice reporting, has announced that it will launch a Cleveland newsroom as well.
That newsroom, the very first “bureau” of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Marshall Project, will launch in 2022 and is currently seeking an editor-in-chief.
The Marshall Project Cleveland newsroom will work in collaboration with existing newsrooms and intends to co-publish its flagship investigative and data reporting with other local outlets, as it has on a national stage since 2014. The editor-in-chief job posting says that the newsroom will be staffed with local reporters, and that the national newsroom will provide editorial and operational support as needed.
A press release stresses that the newsroom will work to produce reporting for those “directly affected by the criminal justice system, who are often neglected or mischaracterized in media coverage.” Incarcerated people and their families will be invited to help identify important narratives to be told and injustices to be exposed.
The Gund Foundation has provided a $750,000 grant to support staffing and editorial resources at the newsroom for three years, with matching grants from national funders. Fred Cummings, one of the Marshall Project’s founding board members and president of Elizabeth Park Capital Management in Cleveland, is also providing financial support.
The total local staff size is for now estimated to be six, with an editor in chief, three reporters, an outreach manager and a part-time fundraiser.
“There is a profound need, locally, to deepen the public’s understanding of the criminal justice system and to hold power to account,” said the Gund Foundation’s Marcia Egbert, in a statement. “The Marshall Project has a strong track record of doing just that.”
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This article appears in Nov 17-30, 2021.
