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Frontline, the award-winning PBS investigative documentary series produced at GBH in Boston, has received a new grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation aimed at continuing the series’ efforts to fortify local journalism in communities across America.
The $1.5 million grant will support Frontline’s Local Journalism Initiative (LJI), a project that has supported more than a dozen local newsrooms around the country since 2019. Reporters affiliated with local media organizations can submit proposals to join the next LJI cohort by Monday, June 2. The 2025-26 partners will be announced by July 1.
The initiative aims to “promote sustainable, public interest journalism in communities where local news organizations have been hit hard by financial pressures, or in news deserts. It also provides editorial and financial support for newsrooms, which can include paying journalists’ salaries and sharing Frontline’s expertise on investigative techniques, video storytelling and connecting journalism with wider audiences.”
Through LJI, Frontline has partnered with newsrooms to produce in-depth investigative projects in various formats, from digital and print, to video and audio. The initiative has helped produce major investigations, including a series of stories about a polluting lead smelter in The Tampa Bay Times that won a George Polk Award and Pulitzer Prize, as well as a multiplatform investigation with Maine Public Radio and the Portland Press Herald into the deadly 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that was nominated for a 2025 George Foster Peabody Award.
The initiative will support four projects annually over the next three years. Applications and more information are available here.
“Frontline’s partnerships with local newsrooms are a win-win,” said Marisa Kwiatkowski,