New Media Ventures and Valiente Action Fund announced that they are providing 10 media orgs—including Deceleration—funding and training to help better serve Latine communities and fight disinformation online.
Deceleration Release
This week, New Media Ventures and the Valiente Action Fund formally announced their inaugural Latine Voices for Democracy Accelerator (LV4D) cohort. Deceleration is excited to share that we are among 10 media organizations selected to participate.
Inclusion provides Deceleration—a small nonprofit environmental justice media initiative based in San Antonio, Texas—with $50,000 in funding and seven months of tools and training to help expand audience reach in 2024 and 2025. LV4D is designed for media organizations specifically operating in the U.S. South and Southwest.
The effort is geared toward accelerating Latino/a media and narrative projects in key states that are considered critical to reaching growing Latino/a populations and fighting disinformation across Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida.
In an open letter to the investor community, NMV President Carlissia Graham wrote recently of ongoing media turbulence but also opportunities in what she described as “cultural media and niche properties,” as audiences continue to search out “real community.”
“It’s no secret that the progressive media infrastructure is underdeveloped. Collectively, the institutional left rents media instead of owning it,” Graham wrote. “The consequences of that choice includes robust overspending, loss of public trust, limited reach, and an inability to scale anti-disinformation tactics. Without proper media infrastructure, we’re working 2x and 3x harder to get our message out, but strategic investment can change that.”
In the case of Deceleration, an online environmental justice journal operated by award-winning journalists and experienced community organizers, the investment allows for some rapid and welcome changes.
“Inclusion in this effort allows us to focus on deepening and expanding our core operations while bringing Marisol Cortez back on board as a full-time partner and editor,” said Greg Harman, Deceleration’s founder. “Marisol has been critical in developing Deceleration’s vision and will now once again be able to put that vision in motion at a crucial time for our bioregion and our planet.”
Deceleration provides original investigative and explanatory reporting, data-informed visual journalism, and events geared toward interrupting the climate crisis and creating new and equitable pathways forward.
“Deceleration is dedicated to cultivating radical imagination that goes to the roots of climate disturbance in historical systems of oppression,” its mission statement reads, “while expanding and deepening the sorts of solutions we put into practice for protecting and creating the commons.”
Harman is an independent reporter and photographer and community organizer who has written about environmental health and justice issues since the late 1990s. He founded Deceleration after years as an editor, publisher, and reporter at various daily and weekly newspapers, including the Houston Press and San Antonio Current.
Cortez is a creative writer, scholar, and educator who has previously served as a Deceleration co-editor, most recently during Deceleration’s first year as a non-profit in 2021. She has since been working as a professor of English at UTSA teaching decolonial literature. Her first novel, Luz at Midnight, is about climate politics in San Antonio and won the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters’ Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction.
Other outlets included in the inaugural LV4D cohort are: Arizona Luminaria, Enlace Latino NC, Factchequeado, Hola Carolina, Manifest Communications, NotiVisión Georgia, Palabra, Texas Signal Media Foundation, and The Nevadan.
New Media Ventures and Valiant Action Fund describes the Latine Voices for Democracy effort this way:
Our democracy is under assault by a robust and organized network of media outlets and influencers who intentionally distort reality and misinform Americans. At a time when so many critical voices in the media space are being shuttered, publications like the Los Angeles Times have invested in Latino-centric verticals only to close them down unceremoniously later. This is unfortunate given that disinformation aimed at the Latino community is running rampant online. NMV’s LV4D accelerator directly counters that threat by building up transformative local media in states where democracy is most at-risk: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas. These 10 incredible outlets are trusted messengers meeting their communities where they are and with messages that deeply resonate with their followers. They are the new voices of democracy helping to usher in a new era of community-based media.
Deceleration has been operating since 2016 but has seen substantial growth in impact, readership, and community support since incorporating as a nonprofit in 2021. In addition to individual donations, Deceleration has received financial support in recent years from Texas Campaign for the Environment, Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation, Center for Mediation, Peace, and the Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC), and the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice.
About Deceleration
Deceleration is a nonprofit online journal rooted in San Antonio, Texas, producing original news and analysis responding to our shared ecological, political, and cultural crises. Deceleration writes at the intersection of environment and justice—journalistically, academically, and creatively—with emphasis on our home communities and bioregion (the watersheds of San Antonio, South Texas, and the Gulf South, broadly). Deceleration is dedicated to cultivating radical imagination that goes to the roots of climate disturbance in historical systems of oppression while expanding and deepening the sorts of solutions we put into practice for protecting and creating the commons.
-30-
Like What You’re Seeing? Become a patron for as little as $1 per month. Explore ways to support our mission. Sign up for our newsletter (for nothing!). Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes. Share this story with others.
