The California Propel Local News Initiative
For the future of California Local News – The Maynard Institute’s Propel Initiative and the California Local News Fellowship
California’s local news industry is in crisis, with a quarter of the State’s news publications disappearing between 2004 and 2019. Many California counties now have a single local news source (or none at all), leaving communities vulnerable to disinformation.
To combat this, California has pioneered two initiatives, the California Local News Fellowship and the Callifornia Propel Local News Initiative, to strengthen local journalism by placing early-career reporters and editors in newsrooms for two year fellowships and training newsroom leaders to fortify a sustainable, diverse news ecosystem. Together, these programs will support 100 newsrooms annually.
Since launching in 2023, the California Local News Fellowship program has placed more than 75 journalists in full-time public service reporting roles in newsrooms throughout the State. The first group of fellows produced nearly 4,000 stories in their first year alone.
The California Propel Local News Initiative is an effort to strengthen California’s multi-lingual media ecosystem, ensuring long-term sustainability of local public service journalism for underserved localities.
The Propel Initiative will distribute grants, provide training and build infrastructure to help smaller outlets grow and better serve California’s diverse communities.
Led by the Maynard Institute in partnership with American Community Media, California Black Media and Latino Media Collaborative, Propel provides resources to augment business models, connect with audiences and build robust newsrooms that will ensure a healthy democracy for California.
The Propel Initiative Partners
The California Local News Editing Fellowship
Central to the story of the decline of local news is the dramatic reduction in the number of reporters working in communities across the country. There is an equally concerning, yet less visible, decline in the number of editors working in newsrooms. Editors are a vital and critical resource, as they set the editorial scope and direction of a newsroom, guide the work of reporters, provide training and mentoring and ensure accuracy and accountability.
Editors also play an essential role in shaping the next generation of journalists; early-career journalists benefit enormously from strong editors who provide on-the-job training, helping reporters to learn the ropes, get to know their beats, become more discerning about what makes a good or important story, and find their voice, among many other things.
Unfortunately, most newsrooms have had to cut their editing ranks just as severely as their reporting ranks, leaving newsrooms under-resourced to carry out their critical mission. To help address this gap, the California Local News Fellowship program is launching a pilot, one-year editing fellowship program in 2026.
In partnership with the California Local News Fellowship program, the Maynard Institute will support five reporters or producers to move into editing roles. We will provide intensive skill-building training and mentoring before and during their newsroom terms, in the craft of editing but also the art of managing people.
Historically, reporters have moved into editing roles with little to no training in either; we seek to provide a strong foundation for the fellows, setting them up to succeed as editors and managers and to dramatically increase the capacity of newsrooms to produce more reporting for their communities.
The Maynard Institute provides training and mentoring at the beginning and throughout the fellowship. Fellows will develop core editing skills, leadership, and equitable newsroom practices, with access to mentors and peer support.