An initiative that provides short-term urgent editing help to public radio and TV newsrooms is getting a financial boost from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Public Media Journalists Association’s Editor Corps “will resume service as it implements a sustainability plan under a two-year, $100,000 grant,” CPB stated.
It was announced at a PMJA conference in San Antonio, Texas. (PMJA formerly was called the Public Radio News Directors Association.)
CPB Vice President, Journalism Joy Lin was quoted describing the Editor Corps initiative as “a vital resource to public media newsrooms, especially at small and rural stations that provide trusted local news.”
PMJA launched Editor Corps in 2020 after the pandemic broke; editors are assigned daily to stations that ask for help, originally at no cost.
The early funding was provided by NPR, PRX, CPB and the Knight Foundation after PMJA canceled its conference in 2020. CPB says that in three years, stations have received about 3,300 hours of editing help at particularly critical times.
Now, under a sustainability plan, stations will pay a portion of the cost of the editorial assistance on a sliding scale, from $25 to $65 per hour. Editors are paid $85 per hour. Funding from CPB and others will cover the difference.
Christine Paige Diers is PMJA’s executive director. “With this new funding, the PMJA Editor Corps will move toward becoming a sustainable service for public media,” she said in the statement.
