Strengthening Local Journalism
The Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona, an initiative of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, raises public awareness about the impact of the loss of local news in our community and the local solutions and opportunities to address it. A group of civic leaders joined with the community foundation to launch the initiative in November 2023. The goal is to build philanthropic support to increase robust local news coverage about and for our community.
Our grant recipients are among the most community-centered and impactful news outlets serving Southern Arizona. Explore their work, stay informed about the issues that affect our communities and shape our future, and join us in strengthening trusted local journalism with a donation below.
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2025 Local News Grant Recipients
Arizona Luminaria produces community-centered, bilingual journalism that digs deeply into the issues Arizonans care about most, including government accountability, equity, and public resources. The newsroom prioritizes in-depth, easy-to-understand reporting that helps residents better navigate the systems shaping their lives.
Founded by veteran Arizona journalists Irene McKisson, Dianna Náñez, and Becky Pallack, Arizona Luminaria brings more than five decades of combined newsroom experience in reporting, editing, community engagement, and digital innovation. As a nonprofit newsroom built to address coverage gaps, it is rooted in Southern Arizona and guided by a commitment to accessible, accountable, and inclusive journalism.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Newsletters
Votebeat Arizona covers the mechanics of elections in every county across the state, with significant reporting in Southern Arizona, particularly for historically underserved populations who face unique barriers to voting, including policy changes, language access challenges, and resource limitations. Votebeat Arizona provides the state’s electorate with reliable, nonpartisan reporting on how local elections work, helping them make informed decisions and more fully participate in the civic process — especially those vulnerable to misinformation and partisanship.
Recognized by Time in 2024 as the only news outlet in America dedicated exclusively to local election coverage, Votebeat brings deep, state-based expertise to one of the most complex and consequential aspects of civic life. Its nonpartisan, accountability-driven reporting equips voters, election workers, policymakers, and community leaders with reliable information essential to a functioning democracy.
Civic News Company Website | Votebeat Arizona Website | Newsletters | Instagram | Facebook
KAWC serves Yuma and La Paz counties with public radio programming that educates, informs, and entertains. From local news and public affairs coverage to music and arts programming, the station provides 24/7 service tailored to the region’s diverse communities. Its Student Newsroom reports on issues important to young people, expanding perspectives often underrepresented in traditional media.
Based at Arizona Western College, KAWC operates from studios designed to support both professional broadcasting and hands-on student training. With support from public media partners and community philanthropy, the station strengthens regional journalism while mentoring the next generation of reporters in Southern Arizona.
For more than 16 years, the Patagonia Regional Times has provided news coverage to eastern Santa Cruz County. The publication reports on local government, school sports, the arts, community events, nonprofit work, and everyday stories that connect neighbors. Its monthly print edition is distributed throughout the region, ensuring readers across its rural communities have access.
Written and edited by local contributors, the Patagonia Regional Times is dedicated to being a reliable, inclusive platform for civic dialogue and community engagement. Funded by advertising, grants, and reader support, it remains a steady and trusted source of information in an area with limited media coverage.
Somos Tucson delivers trusted, accessible information in Spanish for Tucson’s Latino and migrant communities. The outlet shares practical guides, community resources, and coverage of housing, government spending, the environment, urban development, and elections — all designed to combat misinformation and strengthen participation. Through its articles, “Periodistas” video podcast, and active social media presence, it creates space for robust civic involvement and Spanish-language conversations about life in Tucson.
Founded by the former editor of La Estrella de Tucson, Liliana López Ruelas, Somos Tucson launched in 2025 with support from the University of Arizona’s Bilingual Journalism master’s program and the Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona, in collaboration with other local reporters. Rooted in a bicultural, binational perspective, the newsroom is committed to ensuring Spanish-speaking residents have clear, reliable information that supports daily life and strengthens belonging.
Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that centers its reporting on solutions-focused coverage of local government, education, sustainability, social services, and politics, often through the lens of the Hispanic community. It spotlights undercovered topics and communities while providing Southern Arizonans with tools to better understand and engage with local issues.
As a nonprofit newsroom, Tucson Spotlight prioritizes transparency, independence, and community impact. It offers paid opportunities, professional mentorship, and editorial oversight to journalism students and new graduates, helping them gain meaningful newsroom experience while producing impactful reporting. Co-founders Caitlin Schmidt and Susan Barnett are longtime Tucsonans. Caitlin previously spent a decade reporting for the Arizona Daily Star before co-founding the Tucson Agenda and later Tucson Spotlight. Susan is a graduate of the University of Arizona School of Journalism’s bilingual master’s program and previously worked for La Estrella de Tucson.
Tucson Spotlight has newsletters in both English and Spanish; learn more on their website.
The Impact of the Local News Crisis in the U.S.
Research shows that the loss of local news can negatively impact civic engagement and government accountability in a community. Studies find lower voter turnout, increases in government corruption, lower bond ratings without reporters scrutinizing local budgets, and increased political polarization.
The Opportunity
The Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona will invest in the future of local news and robust local reporting that serves all communities in the formats that best serve them.
The decline in local news has sparked a wave of innovation and opportunity across the country, including here in Southern Arizona. There has been a rise in journalists, entrepreneurs, public media newsrooms, and community leaders creating startup nonprofit newsrooms, local online news organizations, family-owned newspapers expanding their reach and investing in the future, mergers between local public media broadcast organizations and local newspapers, collaborative reporting projects and new for-profit models that serve communities with independent, nonpartisan journalism and provide essential news and information.
Rebuilding a future for local news offers an opportunity for the next generation of news organizations to do more community listening and provide more inclusive and equitable coverage for and with communities that have been historically marginalized, underrepresented, and, in some cases, misrepresented in the news.
Press Forward Southern Arizona was established in 2024 to provide ongoing community leadership and recurring philanthropic support to Southern Arizona news outlets. We strive to rebuild trusted local news and information in our community. Together, staff and the Advisory Board are building a long-term strategic plan to sustain this work, executing campaigns and events to increase community awareness, engage local donors, and seek national funding.
Press Forward Southern Arizona monitors progress and evaluates success by tracking dollars raised and measuring grantee impact in the field. Our work engages the diverse population of Southern Arizona, reaching its nearly two million residents. Among them, 42% belong to rural communities, while 38% identify as Hispanic. Our efforts extend across the seven service counties of Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yuma, and seven Native nations within Southern Arizona’s geography: Tohono O’odham, Pasqua Yaqui, Cocopah, Fort Yuma, Maricopa [Ak-Chin], Gila River, and San Carlos.
About Press Forward
Press Forward is a national movement to strengthen our democracy by revitalizing local news and information.
The steady and significant decline in the availability of reliable, fact-based local news across the country is connected to growing threats to democracy, increasing polarization, and the spread of disinformation. At the same time, over a decade of investment in journalism experimentation and transformation has produced new models and solutions ready to scale, along with a new generation of leaders prepared to reinvent and revitalize the field. Press Forward partners are moving from individual grantmaking strategies to a shared vision and coordinated action.
Press Forward is a national coalition investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and scale the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive. Join the movement at pressforward.news.
