North Carolina weekly uses Facebook grant to bring in Latinx readers, offering valuable lessons for other papers

"Over the last nine months, the Chatham News + Record has leveraged a $30,300 Facebook grant to receive an $8,000 commitment from a local hospital by giving voice to a voiceless Latinx community on a health issue, namely the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic," University of Kentucky associate journalism professor Buck Ryan reports.

"As weekly community newspapers, suffering financially from the pandemic’s jolt to advertising revenues, struggle to stay afloat, the News + Record (3,800 paid circulation, about half from street sales) provides some valuable lessons on how to improve quality news coverage that gets recognized with financial support from a community institution," Ryan writes.