Mike Rispoli
Mike focuses on winning public policies to transform local news and create equitable access to information that promotes civic participation and thriving communities. He joined Free Press in 2015 to help launch the News Voices program and oversee the Civic Info Bill campaign, which led to the creation of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a first-of-its-kind nonprofit that invests public funding to strengthen local-news coverage. Mike now sits on the consortium’s board. He also sits on the advisory board of the publicly funded California Local News Fellowship at UC Berkeley. Mike co-authored The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information and serves as an adviser to several journalism organizations and foundations throughout the country. He has taught news reporting at Rutgers University, worked for international human-rights organizations focused on press freedom and surveillance, and was a journalist for the Newark Star-Ledger and Gannett New Jersey Newspapers.
