The Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded IowaWatch’s Lauren Mills a $5,000 grant to support a journalism project in which she will examine Iowa’s water quality.
This marks the third time the organization has given an IowaWatch reporter a grant and the second time it has given one to Mills, who is IowaWatch’s assistant editor, data analyst and reporter. The funds will help pay travel and water testing expenses and support part of her salary while working on the story.
“The Fund for Investigative Journalism’s support is appreciated deeply,” said Lyle Muller, executive director-editor of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, which runs IowaWatch. “Our non-profit model requires us to find financial support for our reporting and the Fund for Investigative Journalism’s grant helps make that happen. We would not have been able to take on some of the expenses to do this project without the fund’s help.”
Mills joined IowaWatch in January 2013. She previously was a reporter at the Sioux City Journal.
The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that does in-depth investigative and public affairs journalism and shares that work free of charge to collaborating news organizations and, via its website IowaWatch.org, to the public. It also trains college students to do this kind of journalism at a high professional and ethical manner. It was founded in 2010.
The Fund for Investigative Journalism, founded in 1969, periodically awards support to investigative journalism that shows promise of having impact. In its first year, a $250 grant supported the start of reporter Seymour Hersh’s investigation into the My Lai massacre. A follow-up $2,000 grant from the fund allowed Hersh to finish that story.
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