The Lipman Center’s Initiative in Reporting on Race and Criminal Justice seeks to illuminate the inequalities and what has gone wrong in the American criminal justice system. The project provides local newsrooms and reporters the financial assistance and professional collaboration they might need to pursue major reporting projects in their communities on law enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial and incarceration racial and human rights abuses.
The criminal justice initiative amplifies the Lipman Center's mission of reporting in the public interest on civil and human rights and comes at a crucial juncture in the history of race and rights in the United States.
The toll of inequality within our criminal justice system has seldom been more apparent. This program is meant to heighten our awareness of the specific problems and implications of particular practices and policies in criminal justice in hopes of spurring productive institutional change.
Under the auspices of the Lipman Center, the Initiative in Reporting on Race and Criminal Justice will annually award up to five grants ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 each to individual newsrooms and independent journalists to pursue a yearlong project in criminal justice abuse. The funds may be used for data acquisition, analysis and visualization, additional staff, FOIA requests, or travel, public health conditions permitting.
The program is made by possible by Arnold Ventures.
2022 Grant Recipients
In 2022, the Lipman Center awarded seven grants totaling $208,000 to journalists and newsrooms for reporting on inequalities and misconduct in the American criminal justice system. The 2022 grant recipients are: The Current of coastal Georgia; The Riverfront Times in St. Louis, Missouri; The Associated Press; Amsterdam News of New York City; the Insider; Vice; and independent journalist Lauren Gill of Brooklyn, New York.
Grant Application Guidelines
Applications for 2023 have closed; deadline for 2024 TBA.
- A 1,000 to 1,500-word description of your project, to be submitted by the editor or lead reporter
- A breakdown of budget
- A list of staff involved
- Proposed publication or broadcast date
- Applications are open to all local newsrooms; grant must be completed within a year
You may email your application and proposal in Word or PDF to [email protected].
You may also mail your application to the following address:
Lipman Center Criminal Justice Initiative
Columbia University School of Journalism
Pulitzer Hall
2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Work by Criminal Justice Initiative Grant Recipients
Click here for an archive of work produced by grant recipients.