Reporting Brooklyn: Beyond the Style Section
http://www.cofinteract.org/rephilanthropy/?p=3187
If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a watch: NBC News anchor Brian Williams, as a guest on Morning Joe last December, goes on a hilarious rant aboutThe New York Times’ “discovery” of Brooklyn in 2010, calling it his “media story of the year” for its relentless, multi-angled coverage of the borough’s hipsters, foodies, and flea marketers.
The best jokes aren’t far from the truth, and certainly Brooklyn has earned its fair share of ink in that paper’s trends and travel sections over the past few years. But as Brian and we know, there’s a Brooklyn much larger than the one typically covered in those pages. As New York City’s most populous borough (2.5 million and counting), the local stories of many of our largest communities-such as Sunset Park and Cypress Hills-are left relatively untold by our city’s major news outlets.
That’s why we at the Brooklyn Community Foundation in partnership withCityLimits.org, a nonprofit issue-focused investigative journalism organization in New York City, applied to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for a grant to launch the Brooklyn-Bureau this fall. We wanted to create a one-stop site for in-depth Brooklyn news, to raise awareness for the complex issues that affect our 70 neighborhoods. We are thrilled that the Knight Foundation has agreed to provide matching funds over the next two years to help us launch this effort.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.