Facebook grant expands coronavirus news coverage in El Paso. We also need to hear from you

El Paso Matters is among the first 50 news organizations in the U.S. and Canada to receive an emergency grant to help with local reporting on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The $5,000 grant is from the Facebook Journalism Project, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association.

We are using the money to hire experienced freelance journalists to focus on the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, particularly on the most vulnerable El Pasoans. 

We also need your help.

Use the short survey form below to tell us what sort of coronavirus/COVID-19 reporting is most needed in El Paso. Your responses will help shape our coverage of the issues you’re dealing with now and in the months to come.

El Paso Matters also needs donations now to quickly ramp up our reporting capabilities to meet the challenge of covering the coronavirus crisis and other important issues. The emergency grant is a good start, but more is needed to sustain our efforts. Here’s what we’re prioritizing as El Paso’s key information needs in coming months:

• Clear, thorough and understandable information on how to best protect the health of our families.
• Solutions-focused information about the unprecedented economic disruption faced by our workers and businesses.
• Ensuring that the needs of our most vulnerable populations are being met.
• Accountability reporting to make sure governments and other key institutions are properly spending huge amounts of relief money pouring into our community.
• Thorough coverage of 2020 elections, including the November mayor and City Council races.

Your support of El Paso Matters provides our community with important, understandable and actionable information. Stories and data analysis published by El Paso Matters are freely available to local and national media for republication to get vital news out to a wider audience. Stories like these:

• Using data collected from the Harvard Global Health Institute, El Paso Matters showed a clear timeline of how our hospitals could become quickly overwhelmed if El Paso didn’t “flatten the curve” of the COVID-19 spread.
• As it became clear that tens of thousands of El Pasoans would lose their jobs because businesses were being forced to close, El Paso Matters provided information on how to access unemployment benefits or find alternate work. 
• We told the story of how El Paso’s critical nonprofit agencies are being stressed as never before. 
• And we looked at how social distancing directives were challenging in border communities long accustomed to hugs and movement across boundaries.

Please click here to support El Paso Matters, either with a one-time gift or through membership with recurring monthly contributions.

El Paso has proven itself to be strong and  resilient in the face of adversity. Working together we can get through this latest challenge, too.