Community News Production Institute

The Community News Production Institute is the nation's only radio news bureau of grassroots community organizers! We produce news that matters to working people, bringing voices of those who are so rarely heard in the media to local and national audiences

CNPI trains grassroots community organizers and workers in radio production and media advocacy. CNPI trainees learn production, writing, editing and research skills, and use them to support local organizing campaigns. Through technical assistance from CNPI, immigrant workers learn radio journalism skills to document issues affecting their own communities, as well as the broader society in New York. CNPI aims to not just have historically excluded communities tell their own stories and represent themselves, but to also join the city’s reporter pool and change mainstream coverage of their issues, using both the independent and mainstream media to win their organizing goals.

CNPI also incorporates media policy education into our journalism trainings. With our new media policy program, CNPI is developing trainings and materials on issues from net neutrality to municipal wireless to media consolidation. CNPI staff and trainers will conduct community education sessions on these issues, engaging the low income communities, communities of color, and immigrant communities often excluded from these critical discussions.

Reporters trained by CNPI have had their work aired on the national news program Free Speech Radio News, which is heard on over 100 stations nationwide, and locally on WBAI's flagship morning program Wakeup Call which reaches hundreds of thousands on a daily basis.