The Granite State News Collaborative has received a $15,000 grant from the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation to expand its arts and culture coverage of diverse communities in New Hampshire. The Eppes-Jefferson Foundation, Inc. was created in support of the arts, historical preservation and education.  

The Collaborative is a collective of more than 20 local media, education and community partners working together to produce and share news stories on issues impacting people in the Granite State. Since March of 2020, The Collaborative’s partners have published more than 4,000 shared news stories and Collaborative reporters have contributed nearly 600 in-depth and investigative pieces including single stories, series and projects.

Director of The Collaborative, Melanie Plenda, said the grant from the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation will be used for The Collaborative’s exploration of the arts, culture and history of the diverse communities in New Hampshire as part of its Race and Equity Initiative. 

“This will be a new focus area for the Collaborative and we believe arts, culture and history are important components that need to be added to this initiative.” said Plenda, who described the arts as a form of journalism.  “Like journalism, the arts can be used to educate, capture and explain moments in time and reveal common bonds in our human experience and foster understanding. What they also do is reach people in a way that traditional journalism may not. That’s why adding this component to our reporting is so crucial.”

The goal of this part of the  project is to foster understanding between communities and to educate New Hampshire about the diverse communities that exist in the state, Plenda said. 

Co-Executive Director of the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation, David Ward, said the Collaborative’s intention to expand its Race and Equity initiative to include arts, culture and history of diverse communities in New Hampshire, aligns with the Foundation’s mission. 

“Our hope is that [the Collaborative’s] innovative journalism will raise awareness, spark interest, and even lead to fresh opportunities for readers and listeners,” Ward said. 

Plenda said the Collaborative will use the funds received from the Eppes-Jefferson Foundation to pay for the reporting, editing and photography necessary to accomplish these objectives. 

“We want to do this in partnership with existing cultural and non-partisan community groups, writers, performers and artists,” she said, adding that the Collaborative will be assisting in the writing and editing process but that the work and editorial guidance will come from them. “We know they have the expertise and lived experience that will ensure that we in the media are presenting fair and accurate representations of their communities.”

Any new or commissioned work produced specifically for the project, community partners and/or freelancers will be compensated from this grant for that work.

Resulting pieces will be published on the Collaborative’s website and will be made

available for distribution and publication through The Collaborative’s statewide network of local media partners which have the potential of reaching more than 3.8 million people through print, online and broadcast in New Hampshire and parts of Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine. 

Additionally, The Collaborative co-produces a digital public affairs show with NH PBS where artists, performers and historians are able to further amplify their voices, Plenda said.

“We have been working for the past two years to build up trust between NH’s communities of

color and The Collaborative,” Plenda said. “As a result we have a good track record of being able to co-create projects with community members such as The Common Ground initiative; Our Story NH; and Flavors of our Neighbors.”

Anyone interested in contributing to this or any of GSNC’s other reporting efforts, click here for more information. Now through December 31, NewsMatch–a collaborative fundraising movement to support independent, public service journalism like GSNC– and a national foundation will match each match every donation up to $1,000 dollar for dollar. In other words, for every dollar donated, GSNC gets an additional two dollars in matching funds. 

For more information about GSNC contact Melanie Plenda at melanie.plenda@collaborativenh.org or visit collaborativenh.org