BND’s campaign for community support of expanded news coverage gets a boost
The BND’s campaign for community financial support to expand coverage of East St. Louis, nearby towns and education in southwestern Illinois has received a big boost.
Ameren Illinois has contributed $15,000 to the nonprofit Report for America program, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, to help fund two new reporter positions at the BND. The grant was made available through the Ameren Cares program.
Richard Mark, chairman and president of Ameren Illinois, explained why the company decided to award its grant.
“Local media plays a key role in our lives, from keeping us informed on daily occurrences to holding local institutions accountable,” Mark said in a statement for this column. “Strengthening the local media with these two additional reporters benefits everyone that lives in our communities, as we rely on these outlets to provide us with essential and accurate information about our area that pertains to our daily lives.”
Mark has strong ties to the East St. Louis community, beyond his work as the leader of Ameren Illinois and other civic involvement. Before joining Ameren in 2002, Mark was president and CEO of the former St. Mary’s Hospital in East St. Louis for six years and served five years as its chief operating officer. For 10 years, Mark was chairman of the East St. Louis School District 189 Financial Oversight Panel.
Report for America is a national service program that partners with news organizations to place emerging journalists in local newsrooms to fill coverage gaps. The program pays half the salary of each reporter, while the community helps fund the positions with direct, tax-deductible contributions to RFA through The GroundTruth Project.
The Ameren Cares contribution is the first major community grant received during our RFA fundraising campaign, which will continue throughout the year. We are grateful for Ameren’s support of these reporter positions and the expanded coverage they will bring to our region.
Ameren’s contribution is a statement about the importance of local journalism to communities in southwestern Illinois. We hope that it inspires other institutions and individual readers to invest in these two positions as well.
The BND’s two new reporters, DeAsia Paige and Megan Valley, joined our newsroom this summer. Paige is the community reporter for East St. Louis, Cahokia, Centreville and nearby areas. Valley covers education across southwestern Illinois.
They are already getting to know people on their beats and producing articles for the BND. For example, Valley has written multiple articles on COVID-19 and its impact on schools and explored education issues such as proposed school consolidation in O’Fallon and Shiloh. Paige has reported on the importance of Black-owned businesses, efforts by a little girl and her family to make a difference in East St. Louis and the pandemic’s impact on Black people in the metro-east.
And that’s just a sampling of their work so far since June 1, when they joined our staff.
Contributions from civic-minded organizations like Ameren and from individuals in the community couldn’t come at a better time as the BND and local news organizations across the nation continue to face tremendous financial challenges.
We are all working hard to find our way to a sustainable future so that communities everywhere are served by trustworthy local newsrooms that keep them informed and hold public institutions and officials accountable.
Community contributions and foundation grants will be increasingly important parts of our funding to pay for this work, in addition to subscriptions and advertising.
We hope those of you who can afford it will consider contributing to the RFA program to support the BND positions.
And we thank Ameren and individual readers who have already contributed. Your investment is making a difference.
If you are interested in finding out more information about how you can support the campaign, please contact me at jcouch@bnd.com or call 618-239-2551. I would be glad to talk with you in detail about our new positions, our coverage goals and Report For America.
Or you can make tax-deductible contributions to support these positions here: https://bit.ly/BNDRFA It will explain how you can contribute.
Thank you for considering a contribution to Report for America to support local journalism. And as always, we thank you for reading the Belleville News-Democrat.
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
