About Renaissance Journalism

At Renaissance Journalism, we experiment with bold, new approaches to news and storytelling, reimagining the media as a vital source of education, engagement and empowerment for underserved communities. Today’s media revolution offers unparalleled opportunities for journalists and citizens alike to transform journalism into powerful tools that humanize and demystify polarizing issues; move people to action; and change the world in extraordinary ways.

Renaissance Journalism provides training, technical assistance, consultation and grants to journalists and organizations that share our passion for media innovations that strengthen communities. Key to our success is forging dynamic and entrepreneurial partnerships among mainstream news organizations, ethnic and community media, hyperlocal websites, foundations, academia and nonprofits.

Renaissance Journalism was created in 2009 as a program of San Francisco State University’s Department of Journalism. It operates in partnership with ZeroDivide, a funder, thought partner, and capacity-building organization working to transform underserved communities through the strategic use of technology.

Our projects, local and global in scope, include:

  • Vietnam Reporting Project, a journalism fellowship that produced powerful news stories exposing the lingering legacy of Agent Orange contamination on the lives of Vietnamese citizens, former U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese American communities.
  • New Media Lab & Incubator, a yearlong pilot project that provided grants and technical assistance to five nonprofit organizations, enabling them to test and experiment with innovative ways to utilize journalism, media and social media tools to engage audiences in civic dialogue.
  • Media Greenhouse provides support—grants, technical assistance, training— to ethnic media, community media and nonprofit groups in an effort to spark and test new models for gathering and distributing news.
  • LearningLab, our training component, is designed to help ethnic and community media journalists and nonprofit professionals learn new practices in storytelling, multimedia production social networking, community engagement and business operations.