The Water Desk is excited to announce our first grants to support journalists and media outlets covering Western water issues and the Colorado River Basin.
Grantees will delve into a wide range of issues throughout the region, including biodiversity, pollution, groundwater, climate change, public lands, energy development and tribal water rights. The journalists and outlets will use a variety of media—newspapers, magazines, websites, television, radio—to explore critical challenges facing the West’s water.
The recipients of The Water Desk’s 2019 standard grants (in alphabetical order):
We’re at a critical moment for both water issues and the journalism industry, so we’re excited to be supporting these important projects. We were impressed by the quality of the applications, the diversity of topics proposed and the mix of approaches that the journalists will pursue.
The Water Desk’s standard grants award up to $10,000 to journalists and media outlets covering water issues involving the seven states of the Colorado River Basin—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—as well as the borderlands of Northwest Mexico.
For the 12 standard grants, The Water Desk has approved a total of $112,888 in funding for journalists. In addition to the standard grants, The Water Desk has also approved 10 micro-grants, up to $1,000 each, to support travel expenses, multimedia content and professional development for water journalists.
Applications for the standard grants were reviewed and approved by a selection committee consisting of: Mitch Tobin, Director of The Water Desk; Tom Yulsman, Director of the Center for Environmental Journalism; Hillary Rosner, Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Environmental Journalism; and Amanda Clark, a recent graduate of CU Boulder’s master’s program in journalism who worked for The Water Desk.
The Water Desk will be running a similar program for standard grants in 2020 and is still accepting applications for 2019 micro-grants until December 1. Details about the grantmaking program are on this page.
We’re looking forward to seeing what our grantees produce and wish them the best!
Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Tobin
Director, The Water Desk
Center for Environmental Journalism
University of Colorado Boulder
