America’s MacArthur Foundation has become an early supporter of Press Forward, giving US$48 million (A$70.61 million) to fund infrastructure support and local newsrooms.

The foundation – launched by philanthropists John and Catherine MacArthur in 1970 – has announced the first grants to support pooled and aligned grantmaking. The national initiative aims to support local news and information with an infusion of more than US$500 million over the next five years.

Its funding priorities include strengthening local newsrooms, improving infrastructure for local news production, closing longstanding inequities in journalism coverage, and advancing policies that expand access to local news and information.

The largest of MacArthur’s initial grants, US$32.5 million, will go to a national pooled fund for local news, housed at the Miami Foundation, while MacArthur has also launched a new grantmaking strategy to support local news in alignment with Press Forward to provide direct grants to news organisations, each of which is also being supported by at least one other Press Forward funding partner.

The first of those grants will see NewsMatch – a programme of the Institute for Nonprofit News – and Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy each receive US$3.5 million, while US$1 million each will go to 100 Days in Appalachia, Catchlight, Free Press, and Outlier Media in Detroit.

US$500,000 goes to Documented (New York City), El Tímpano (San Francisco Bay), National Trust for Local News, Rebuild Local News, and URL Media.

Lawyers for Reporters will receive US$450,000 to provide essential legal services on a pro-bono basis to news outlets.

Buffalo’s Fire (through the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance), Charlottesville Tomorrow, Conecta Arizona, and Mississippi Free Press will each receive US$350,000.

MacArthur says the first set of grants includes funding for infrastructure support and shared services, along with direct support for eight local newsrooms that engage in sustained, deep listening to serve their communities with news and information.

Through its own grantmaking and grantmaking with Press Forward partners in the pooled fund, MacArthur is building the case for, and highlighting the possibility of, a local news renaissance around the country.

“Journalism, particularly local journalism, is the fabric of our democracy, the medium through which we strengthen communities, tell stories that build shared understanding, and hold power to account,” MacArthur president John Palfrey said. “Twenty per cent of Americans live in ‘news deserts,’ areas without reliable coverage of local issues. Press Forward aims to reverse that trend and confront this lack of credible information that contributes to a growing divide in America, declining civic engagement, and distrust in its institutions.”