Forty-four news organizations from 12 countries across Latin America have been selected to receive grants and expert mentorship as part of a new $2 million program from the Facebook Journalism Project and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) aimed at bolstering coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newsrooms will receive grants of $10,000 to $40,000 each, as well as coaching and training to help news organizations accelerate their digital transformations. In addition to strengthening coverage of the pandemic, the program is designed to help newsrooms combat misinformation, invest in technology and sustain journalists reporting the crisis. Newsrooms can use the funding to develop multimedia products, invest in new equipment and build reader-based revenue business models.

The recipients include national publishers, digital natives and also community outlets. 

Eighteen of the news organizations were also selected to participate in the Reader Revenue Accelerator, a program designed to foster innovation in the newsrooms. They will attend a 10-week mentoring program led by Tim Griggs, a former New York Times executive, which will include weekly training sessions to help participants transform their business based on a reader revenue model.

This is one of the opportunities that ICFJ is providing in partnership with the Facebook Journalism Project across four regions. These wide-ranging projects also target journalists and newsrooms in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

See the full list of selected newsrooms: https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/grants/latin-america-news-coronavirus-support-recipients-round-1