In the six years since photojournalist Chris Hondros was killed while on assignment in Misrata, Libya, the fund established in his honor Fund has given more than $100,000 to support the work of photojournalists. Now, the organization is introducing a Domestic Reporting Grant.
The new grant, worth $10,000, is dedicated to the defense of press freedom in the U.S. and will fund two to three stories produced by the non-profit news organization ProPublica.
“For the past two years, we have been wanting to come up with an idea to focus more domestically,” says Christina Piaia, president of the Chris Hondros Fund’s board. “I think a lot of people consider the fund to be strictly a conflict-work-based organization, but the majority of Chris’ work was actually done domestically.”
The launch of this new grant comes following a contentious American presidential election that saw the press becoming the target of partisan attacks. As a result, the $10,000 will specifically be used to produce work that relates to the aftermath of that election, though Piaia tells TIME that the connection could be interpreted broadly to include coverage of issues relating to everything from the environment to healthcare.
David Sleight, ProPublica’s design director, tells TIME that the organization — which doesn’t have a full-fledged photography department — usually picks its photojournalistic collaborators on a “case-by-case basis” depending on what the story requires. “We’re going to look to use [the grant] where it can augment existing storytelling,” he says, “or give us a way to look at something from a different angle or opportunity we might not have had before.”
Both organizations expect the first story to benefit from this grant to be published after the summer.
A Visual Record of Venezuela’s Collapse
Raul Martinez, who has little medication for his schizophrenia, takes a nap under his bed at the state-run Pampero Psychiatric Hospital in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, on July 28, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxMargarita Silva, a paranoid schizophrenic, yells at nurses from her solitary confinement cell, where she was being held after biting off another patient's nose and eating it, at the state-run Pampero Psychiatric Hospital in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, on Aug. 24, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxPatients in the patio of the women's ward of the state-run Pampero Psychiatric Hospital in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, on July 29, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxMinerba Pinera with her granddaughter Karla in La Vela, Venezuela, on Sept. 11, 2016. The country's economic crisis left the family struggling to find the medicine Pinera's mother needed to treat her diabetes.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxLeidy Cordova, 37, with four of her five children at their home in Cumana, Venezuela, on June 16, 2016. Their broken refrigerator held the only food in the house: a bag of corn flour and a bottle of vinegar.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxJose Villarroel waits for hours in an emergency operating room at Luis Razetti Hospital in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela, on April 15, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxPeople mourn during a group funeral procession and memorial for four men, who were tortured and killed by the Venezuelan army, in the town of Capaya on Nov. 29, 2016. Throughout the country, armed military forces have become Venezuela's lawkeepers, engaging in commando-style raids that sometimes take on the profile of urban warfare.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxKevin Lara Lugo's school uniform on his bed in Maturin, Venezuela, on Sept. 5, 2016. After not having eaten in three days, the 16-year-old died after he was poisoned by foraged yucca and taken to a hospital that had no supplies.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxCarlos Freydel mines for gold at the illegal "Cuatro Muertos" mine outside Las Claritas, Venezuela, on July 20, 2016. The cratered economy has sent many Venezuelans to work in the country's illegal gold mines scattered across the jungle, where the primitive conditions have seen malaria return with a vengeance.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxA girl walks through destroyed homes in Rendel, a village in Haiti devastated by Hurricane Matthew, on Oct. 12, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxMen make a dugout canoe from a tree felled by Hurricane Matthew in Pestel, Haiti, on Oct. 16, 2016. Like much of the country's southern peninsula, Pestel is writhing beneath the weight of disaster.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxMigrants board a smuggler's boat that will take them to the Caribbean island of Curacao on Sept. 26, 2016. More than 150,000 people have fled the economic collapse in Venezuela in the last year alone, the most in more than a decade, scholars say, with the sea route posing special dangers.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxMigrants board a smuggler's boat that will take them to the Caribbean island of Curacao on Sept. 26, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxPatients with symptoms of cholera with their families, who risk getting sick caring for their loved ones, at a small clinic in Rendel, Haiti, on Oct. 12, 2016. The town of Rendel and its surroundings, which once sheltered 25,000 people, are the epicenter of a potential Cholera disaster in Haiti made worse by the recent destruction caused by the storm.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxA clinic overflowing with cholera patients in Rendel, Haiti, on Oct. 12, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/ReduxA boy carries river water to what remains of his family's home, destroyed by Hurricane Matthew, in Rendel, Haiti, on Oct. 12, 2016.Meridith Kohut—The New York Times/Redux
The news comes as Meridith Kohut, a frequent contributor to the New York Times, received the sixth annual Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award for her work in Venezuela.
