Voices of NY

Absorbing Voices is part of City Limits’ move to expand its existing portfolio of deep coverage of housing, transit, climate change, and elections.

NEW YORK, July 15 – Voices of New York, a unique news site dedicated to curating and promoting the best of ethnic and community journalism in the New York region, will become part of the award-winning news operation at City Limits.

Originally launched as Voices That Must Be Heard after the September 11 attacks left the Muslim community feeling invisible, a decade later the news site became Voices of New York and was published by the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. It became a key element of the school’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media that provides training and other support to community and ethnic news outlets.

Due to changing strategic priorities, the school ceased publishing Voices this spring. But City Limits, a non profit news agency, is picking up where the school left off. By this fall, new coverage as well as Voices archived stories will be available at citylimits.org/voices.

For more than 40 years City Limits has done deep coverage of issues facing New York, especially its most vulnerable communities. Its stories have been recognized with awards from the Deadline Club, New York Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists, and Education Writers Association.

City Limits’ publisher Fran Reilly said she is excited that Voices will be further broadening the news agency’s reach. “Voices celebrates New York’s incredible diversity while also bringing together communities separated by language and geography,” Reilly added. “We look forward to making the best of ethnic and community reporting accessible to a larger audience.”

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Sarah Bartlett, dean of the Newmark J-School, said, “We are thrilled that City Limits has stepped up to help preserve Voices. It has been our privilege to sustain it for the last eight years, and housing it in a news organization with such a deep commitment to covering all of this city’s communities is the best possible outcome.”

In addition to absorbing Voices, City Limits is growing its portfolio with deep coverage of housing, transit, aging, climate change, and elections. It also has a new Spanish-language initiative, operates a paid internship program for young local journalists, and co-hosts a public-affairs radio show.  And, City Limits recently launched a housing-policy newsletter and helped lead a collaborative effort to improve freedom of information practices in New York City.

“You know you’re in New York when the newspaper rack at the deli has headlines in three or four languages you don’t speak, and a community paper that covers a neighborhood you barely know,” said Jarrett Murphy, the editor of City Limits. “This is a single city of many worlds, and City Limits is honored to help draw attention to the excellent reporters active in all of them.”

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