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Charlottesville Inclusive Media nominated for ‘Collaboration of the Year’ award

A man in glasses with a microphone speaks while holding a sheet of paper.
Charlottesville Inclusive Media's innovative work has also been featured at national conferences, including the Institute for Nonprofit News' INN Days, American Press Institute conventions, and the Collaborative Journalism Summit, where Sarad Davenport took center stage with CIM partners in 2023. William Allen-DuPaw/Center for Cooperative Media

By Atlee Webber and Charlottesville Inclusive Media

Charlottesville Inclusive Media (CIM) is getting national attention for our collaborative journalism.

CIM partners Charlottesville Tomorrow, In My Humble Opinion Radio Show and Vinegar Hill Magazine have been nominated in the “Collaboration of the Year” category for the 2025 LION Sustainability Awards.

Four people in a glowing room stand together, with more people behind them. Left to right, a man in a gray suit jacket, a woman in a headband with a black and white patterned top, a woman in a floral pattern dress and a man in a black polo shirt.
(Left to right) Sarad Davenport of Vinegar Hill Magazine, Aliyah Cotton and Angilee Shah of Charlottesville Tomorrow and Charles Lewis of the In My Humble Opinion Radio Show, celebrated their work in Charlottesville Inclusive Media at their 2024 holiday party. The collaboration is built on a shared belief that news and information in central Virginia can serve everyone. Ézé Amos/Charlottesville Inclusive Media

The award recognizes Local Independent Online News members that are engaged in a collaboration that enhances “journalistic impact, financial health, and/or operational resilience,” according to the LION Publishers announcement.

Since its inception in 2018 and first public-facing projects in 2020, CIM was founded to bring greater representation to central Virginia media and build local media that serves everyone. Over the past two years, the partners introduced a slate of new community-oriented programs that earned the judges attention. 

  • We expanded our network to engage over 25 community leaders in the Informing Our Communities Roundtable, which collaborates to strengthen our local information ecosystem. The leaders reach diverse communities with essential information and are now collaborating to help grow a healthy news and information ecosystem in the region. 
  • This is the inaugural year of an internship program and fellowship program, which are helping give more people pathways into local news.
  • CIM publishes local contributors through the First Person Charlottesville series and hosts Can I Talk to You, C-Ville? public events. These events help bring more perspectives into local decision-making and connect communities across their differences.

Our innovative work has also been featured at national conferences, including the Institute for Nonprofit News’ INN Days, the Collaborative Journalism Summit and American Press Institute conventions.

CIM is among 51 finalists, chosen from a pool of 239 entries. Three organizations total were nominated in our size category. The other finalists are the Investigative Journalism Foundation in collaboration with CTV News and Spotlight PA in partnership with WESA (Pittsburgh’s NPR Station).

The Collaboration of the Year award winners will be announced during LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit on Sept. 3 in St. Louis, Missouri.