A letter from our Director

October 18, 2024

Dear Reader,

This week we took a giant step forward.

In recognition of our groundbreaking public service reporting, a national panel of philanthropy and journalism leaders awarded us a major grant.

We are deeply honored to receive this two-year, $100,000 award from Press Forward, the nationwide movement strengthening communities through local news. It was highly competitive.

Marc Perrusquia

Receiving applications from 931 newsrooms across the U.S., Press Forward awarded grants to 205 of them, or 22 percent. Collectively, these news organizations are sharing $20 million to report on communities and regions that traditionally have gone uncovered or underserved.



This is our third national grant this year. Overall, these grants will generate $500,000 over the next four years. They include:

·       A $100,000 grant from the Public Welfare Foundation to launch a data reporting initiative.

·       A $300,000 grant from the Scripps Howard Fund to develop an open-source investigations graduate program and journalist training boot camp. We will launch the program next fall in partnership with the University of Memphis’ Department of Journalism and Strategic Media.

These financial awards give us tremendous momentum as we head into our annual NewsMatch fund drive starting Nov. 1. We have plans to sustain and grow our “small but mighty” nonprofit news organization, and much is riding on our year-end fund drive. You’ll be hearing more about this in the weeks ahead.

But for now, let’s reflect a moment on this significant milestone. We’ve come a long way since we opened in 2018. At first it was just me. I worked in an empty, draft-filled room on the third floor of the Meeman Journalism Building here on the University of Memphis campus. Now we have a full, lively newsroom: five staff journalists working alongside two paid student interns.

We do some of the most impactful investigative and enterprise reporting in Memphis, digging deep into controversial issues few others have the time or resources to address, covering matters like child poverty, gun violence, police accountability, government abuse, inequity in education, public utility policy and racial injustice. In addition, we help mentor journalism students from middle school to graduate school through our Otis L. Sanford Journalist Incubator.

That work impressed the Press Forward award committee. Their grant allows us to continue and expand that work.

We are grateful for that and for you, our readers and supporters, who make all this possible.

Marc Perrusquia

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The Institute is led by director Marc Perrusquia, who worked nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He’s the author of the 2018 book “A Spy In Canaan,’’ which exposed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as an FBI informant and inspired the 10-part podcast “Ernie’s Secret” and the documentary film “The Picture Taker,’’ to be released on PBS in January.

The Institute’s associate director, David Waters, worked more than 30 years at The Commercial Appeal and another four at The Washington Post. He is revered as Memphis’s best news writer and is beloved for his work exploring faith, child poverty and education

Laura Kebede-Twumasi is a Report for America corps member. She recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special “History, Justice and the Journalists” on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area. She previously covered education inequities for Chalkbeat Tennessee and local government and religion for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.