Since its inception, the Knight Media Forum has focused on bringing together place-based foundations to strengthen local news around the country. And as the challenges for publishers have grown during the pandemic, support from local foundations, donors and even tech platforms has been a positive light during dark times.

This year’s forum, which took place online from March 2 to 4, shone a spotlight not only on the many challenges for local news, but on the growing solutions, case studies and trends that could open up a path forward. For example, the Seattle Times has created a series of philanthropy-supported labs that now fund 17 reporters in the newsroom. Microsoft has stepped up to provide funding and tech support for local news in five diverse communities. Report for America and the Local Media Association brought in a harvest of philanthropic dollars to for-profit newsrooms – including many in communities of color – for the first time. (You can read a detailed Report for America analysis on how it’s boosted local news outlets’ fundraising here.)

And maybe, just maybe, the U.S. Congress could put in place financial support or tax breaks benefitting local news outlets around the country, though the details are still a bit foggy. What kinds of publishers would get that money and which of the many bills in Congress under consideration might pass? That’s still TBD, but this year could be crucial in making progress.

And communities have a new resource from Impact Architects to help them gauge the health of their local news ecosystem. Understanding the current situation can help funders and other key stakeholders as they try to bring reliable, trusted information back to news deserts.

Philanthropic dollars flow to for-profit media

During the virtual sessions, many people in the audience asked whether funders would support for-profit news outlets as well as nonprofit. In the past, most foundations would only support nonprofits, so it’s a more recent phenomenon of commercial publications receiving philanthropic support. The answer was largely that funders aren’t as focused on the business model or IRS tax status of local publishers as long as they have a civic-minded mission.

In a breakout session titled “Case Studies: Community Foundations and Local Journalism,” Joaquin Alvarado and Michele Matassa Flores talked about their years-long effort to create labs at the Seattle Times that gave funders a way to support coverage of education, homelessness and more. In a year with so many stories to cover, the labs helped the Times keep up.

“The labs helped us cover more, dive deeper into more subjects, including the pandemic, racial reckoning, elections and even wildfires,” said Flores. “We did have to adapt from the typical lab MO. They are by design meant to experiment with engagement and solutions journalism… In 2020, to cope with the unprecedented pace of news, we had to break with the typical pace we had before. The big lesson is that it’s a constant endeavor to manage labs as well as a newsroom at the same time.”

Gaining inspiration from the Seattle Times, the Fresno Bee set up its own Education Lab and has raised more than $600,000 for it so far. One of its funders is the Central Valley Community Foundation and its president and CEO Ashley Swearengin (a former mayor of Fresno) spoke on the panel about the lab’s success during the pandemic.

“The Education Lab, which had been going for a couple years, had an extraordinary impact during COVID-19,” Swearengin said. “Thank God we had the infrastructure in place to cover kids learning remotely, going back to classes, and more. Overnight, that coverage reinforced trust for the newspaper.”

The foundation set up a special Impact Media and Measurement Fund that allows any donors or local foundations to collectively support local news in the Central Valley. That’s an important trend that is starting to happen in more places around the country – and should be considered by more community foundations who play such a central role in place-based giving.

Serving diverse communities

Community foundations played a key role in Microsoft’s recent forays into supporting local news in new ways. The tech company’s initiative funds outlets in five communities around the country, providing technology support as well. Mary Snapp, Microsoft’s vice president of strategic initiatives, talked about the importance of community foundations as a hub for fundraising for local news. She noted the importance of supporting collaborations in communities to help strengthen reporting on big topics.

“It’s important we have a common set of facts,” she said. “If we had that, we might not have had that violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s important for journalism to play a role in solving community problems. We want to build three different pillars: supporting the business model of local journalism; helping to ensure trust in local media; and on security, making sure journalists are safe. We wanted to partner on the ground with locations doing innovative things and willing to try collaborations between what had been competing stations and outlets. We wanted to give them skills for modern storytelling, and put money into community foundations and give them the role to raise more funds.”

Snapp pointed to the company’s efforts to support coverage of issues important to the Black community in Jackson, Miss., with a collaboration that includes Black media and  Jackson State University. They’ve also supported a collaborative in El Paso that includes the local paper and a Mexican daily, and helped the Yakima Herald-Republic in Washington state with data reporting on missing and murdered Indigenous women.

In Colorado, there have also been similar efforts to support underserved communities with its COLab,  with support from the Colorado Media Project. Based in Denver, this project was born after the struggles with massive editorial layoffs at the Denver Post, which was acquired by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. The collaboration was supposed to take place in person at a new facility at Rocky Mountain PBS, but when COVID-19 hit, they became largely virtual – and have been able to bring on a whopping 120 news outlets as part of the collaborative. 

Laura Frank of COLab and Tom Gougeon of Gates Family Foundation spoke about their efforts during the panel, “Stories from the Field: Funders and Local Journalism,” moderated by Knight Foundation’s Karen Rundlet.

“The pandemic pushed the accelerator on what we were trying to do,” Frank said. “We thought we would have half a dozen news organizations in our space, but when the pandemic hit in spring, we knew we had to do something. We brought together 22 news organizations, and took a non-siloed look at the impact of COVID-19 on all aspects of life in Colorado. Fast forward to the original launch date. We had 60 outlets in the fall, and now we’ve doubled that. It’s been quite an experience.”

Colorado Media Project helped shepherd an Informed Communities grant program with funding from local foundations and the Democracy Fund to make sure communities of color were getting vital information during the pandemic — while bringing in more publishers of color to the COLab. Gougeon noted that they have also made efforts to engage more diverse communities with the New Voices: Colorado project in partnership with Free Press. 

“We [have supported] a hip-hop and R&B radio station, helping them add more news and information,” he said. “We’re still working on the transition of local legacy papers that want to do the right thing, and are boosting engagement with communities with surveys and community listening. We’ve started programs called Real Talk, Black Voices and Latino Voices to create safe spaces to discuss racism in journalism. We’ve worked with trusted BIPOC sources of information which are not news organizations too. Our goal is to grow the coalition, grow the number of funders and policy makers and grow the tent.”

Field Foundation learned that communities of color in Chicago were getting much less grant funding than white, affluent areas

There’s been a lot of talk about news deserts, but the Field Foundation’s Angelique Power brought it home by explaining their work mapping “funding deserts,” in Chicago (see image above). These are communities that don’t have access to the same kind of funder and donor dollars as more affluent neighborhoods. Power talked about the Media and Storytelling Fund that Field set up to support journalists and media makers of color. And Power said the fund was actually designed by those journalists.

“There are so many foundations trying to figure out how to have a racial justice lens on philanthropy, but if you don’t focus on narrative storytelling you won’t achieve what you want in racial justice,” Power said. One of her grantees, Tiffany Walden, a co-founder of The Triibe, said that the Field Foundation’s grant for operational support made a huge difference for her startup covering the Black community in Chicago. (She was quickly echoed and +1’ed by many people in the chat during the panel for making that point.)

“We are thankful to the Field Foundation for giving us a start with operational funding,” Walden said. “Before, we were getting funding based on stories, but that doesn’t help us build a team. Project-based funds don’t help us like operational funding. We created a coronavirus website with daily news and covered press conferences from the governor and mayor.”

Later during the breakout session, “New Solutions to Rebuild Local Journalism,” we heard about a new coalition called URL Media, created to support publishers of color with distribution, marketing and advertising. URL Media co-founder S. Mitra Kalita talked about the power of communities of color as a commercial market and not just “a bunch of Black and Brown charitable entities.” The network started with eight initial publications, including Kalita’s Epicenter NYC, WURD and Scalawag, and is looking to grow.

“We want to be meaningful to our audiences, with the magic of local news, and we are members of our community,” Kalita said. “Fighting these behemoths on the internet, trying to figure out SEO changes – how as a niche brand do you succeed? We harness the power of working together, helping to navigate this. We soft-launched six weeks ago, and the reaction of advertisers and sponsors has been great – they want to reach these audiences and value our people as a market.”

Finding New Sources of Support

If the business model for commercial local news is broken, and most fixes don’t seem to be working, there’s a growing interest in deeper structural changes in the industry —including government intervention. 

Steve Waldman, president of Report for America, is shepherding a coalition of associations representing 3,000+ local news outlets called Rebuild Local News, which is advocating for the “re-planting” of local news in deserts and supporting more nonprofit news outlets. The coalition also supports the bipartisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act in Congress, which focuses on tax credits for subscribers, journalist pay and local advertisers.

“There are risks in having the government involved in supporting local news,” Waldman said. “But the need is so big that we can’t sit on the sidelines any longer and let other people make decisions about local news.”

What kind of structure would help with the re-planting idea? Elizabeth Hansen is leading the new National Trust for Local News, and spoke about the idea of creating a new framework for ownership of local media that leverages capital markets while making sure decision-making happens locally. The concept builds on previous successful efforts to find mission-aligned financing for noncommercial public radio stations with Public Media Co.

“We’re at an exciting moment for local news, with investments from Knight and others that have helped,” Hansen said. “But there’s a missing piece: News organizations large and small are missing mission-aligned capital, with community and diverse media struggling with financing and succession to a new generation of owners. Without mission-focused investors, Alden Capital and other hedge funds are stepping in and buying local papers. 

“Many communities would like to buy a local paper, so we want to build a national-focused organization that can help transform ownership and build sustainable news outlets.”  Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund.

From the smallest single-person newsroom to the largest media conglomerate, journalists are grappling with how to address prejudice inside the industry, and how to report responsibly about the deep rifts around race, gender, class and ability. Several sessions at the 2021 Knight Media Forum addressed these issues head-on, challenging both funders and news executives to interrogate their own biases and change the ways in which they allocate resources and address historical disparities.

The conference took place in the shadow of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which perpetrators carried Confederate flags and white supremicist symbols while violently seeking to halt the certification of the presidential election. Speaker Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” stressed the gravity of this transgression during an inspiring and eye-opening talk. However, she noted, it was not, as many have claimed, a betrayal of what America stands for, but rather “the consequences of unaddressed history.” 

It might have looked like a different country, a different century, she said, “but it is ours… This is the country’s karmic moment of truth.” Both journalism and philanthropy have a role in unraveling the narratives that uphold the American caste system, and unveiling the ways in which the ideologies of slavery still distort our assumptions about whose lives have value.

She described the striking image of masked Black janitors, cleaning up after the attack. While the rioters were ushered out with little violence, she observed, “if people looking like the janitors in that crew deigned to break into the U.S. Capitol — well, we know what would have come of that. It is inconceivable. They would not have lived to tell.” 

Calling journalism and philanthropy to account

A panel titled “Dismantling Systemic Racism: The Way Forward for Funders and Newsrooms,” tackled these issues directly, with a panel of women of color who have been advancing bold correctives in the midst of 2020’s “racial reckoning” in journalism. That, in turn, came on the heels of firings of many high-profile media personalities and executives as a result of the #MeToo movement.

Both journalism and philanthropy “demand a lot from others…but don’t necessarily do the work to look inward,” said moderator LaSharah Bunting of Knight Foundation, who wrote a  critique of failed newsroom diversity efforts in 2019. Bunting is one of 16 signers of an October open letter titled “Equity First: A Call to Action for Journalism and Journalism Funders.” Other program officers from foundations across the country signed the letter.

The letter was published on the Democracy Fund’s Engaged Journalism Lab, which has over the past year shifted its focus to showcasing the urgency of equity in journalism, and the creative ways in which the field is stepping up to the plate. Lea Trusty of Democracy Fund, who has helped to lead this effort, spoke about the frustrations of seeing diversity, equity and inclusion issues brought up again and again without meaningful resolution. It has been more than 50 years since the Kerner Commission called out the lack of inclusion in American’s newsrooms, she said, but communities of color are still being ignored and stereotyped, and many reporters still cling to the myth of objectivity, as if “whiteness is neutral.”

The Democracy Fund is not alone in re-examining its commitments. Michelle Morales of Woods Fund Chicago described the fund’s shift to only support grantees who have a leadership staff and board made up of 51% people of color or more. Too often, she said, grantees serve communities of color but don’t apply those same standards internally. The fund lays out its philosophy in its grantmaking guidelines, which also requires grantee organizations to have a person of color as their executive director or board chair in order to be considered for multi-year funding. 

Meanwhile the Media 2070 project, a project of Free Press, seeks to account for past inequities in journalism, and secure reparations for “weaponized narratives that promote Black inferiority and portray Black people as threats to society.” Alicia Bell, Media 2070’s director, spoke about the enthusiastic responses to the long-form essay that launched the project, and the collective visioning process it entails. 

Media 2070 calls for news organizations, and the philanthropic and government sectors, to acknowledge, reckon with, take accountability for and redress these harms. “We need a comprehensive plan for racial justice and equity,” she said, for “futures that are full and abundant with Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty.” 

While many she’s spoken to within news organizations are ready for change right now, building a coalition to collectively make reparations real and sustainable is a long-term project, Bell said. “The thing that has been the most difficult is that people have been saying ‘give us our marching orders,’  and we’ve been like: ‘Hang on, we need some more people,’ ” she said. Gaining wider support is crucial, says Bell, otherwise “there is no future of journalism, because we have termites in the wood.” 

For disabled reporters and communities, the challenge is even breaking through into the conversation to gain notice and coverage, said Cara Reedy of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. Disability crosses race, gender, and class. 

“Hopefully you’ll live long enough to be disabled,” she said. But “no one wants to talk about it,” even though social issues largely discussed in the context of race such as the school-to-prison pipeline might have significant factors related, for example, to ADHD or other learning disabilities. Because reporters are not on the beat, and statistics are not gathered systematically, it is difficult to spot patterns. 

“Our main goal right now is to get journalism to admit that disability is its own section that crosses all the others,” she said. 

Work to proactively address inequities has already begun at some large media organizations. In a keynote conversation Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen spoke with Cesar Conde, Chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, about their goal to achieve 50% in diversity of both staff and gender. 

“We want to be as diverse as the communities we serve,” he said. It’s not just “the right thing to do, but the right thing to do for business.” He noted that the U.S. reached a milestone in 2020: more than 50% of the under-18 population are people of color, and by 2030 this will be true for the entire nation. In order to help achieve their goal of keeping pace with the country’s demographics, they have launched NBC Academy, designed to provide scholarships and training to students from underrepresented backgrounds. Conde explained that the networks will also add diversity, equity and inclusion as a metric for accountability for their leadership teams.

Ethnic and community media: Myths, challenges and navigating partnerships

On the other end of the spectrum from this global news conglomerate, small ethnic media outlets largely staffed by people of color are working hard with limited resources to serve their audiences in the midst of both a pandemic and a tsunami of misinformation. In a breakout session titled “Community Media,” moderator Tracie Powell of Borealis Philanthropy spoke with Graciela Mochkofsky of CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism, Hilda Gurdian of Charlotte’s La Noticia and Sonny Messiah-Jiles of the Houston Defender Network.

Powell kicked off the session by dispelling some common myths. Community media and ethnnic media are not the same, she said, with the Black press often focusing on helping its readers navigate American culture, and ethnic media more focused on helping audience members to assimilate. Either way, such outlets are not just “advocacy.” She cited both MLK50 and the Sahan Journal for their hard-hitting reporting. 

Powell also dismissed the idea that mainstream media is a credible channel for reaching people of color, since such audiences have long since lost trust in these outlets. This means that what she terms “BIPOC media” (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) are actually the “mainstream media” for such groups, rather than an “alternative.” Finally, she dismissed the idea that BIPOC media is dying—outlets such as PushBlack reach millions of readers a year, and many others are experimenting vigorously with newer tech platforms such as WhatsApp, Clubhouse and Instagram.

Mochkofsy, who heads up CUNY’s Center for Community Media, underscored Powell’s point that such outlets are often central news sources for those who rely on them. She noted that so-called “mainstream” outlets also tend to serve only a small slice of a community’s population: the white and wealthy. She cited the Los Angeles Times’ recent apology for the newspaper’s failures on race, which acknowledges, “Newspapers are described as a first rough draft of history. But in truth, the first rough draft written by this newspaper — and those across the country — has been woefully incomplete.” Also incomplete, Mochkovsky said, are the many accounts of “news deserts” that leave community media out of the picture. 

While such outlets are very different—large and small, for-profit and nonprofit—what they often share is high levels of trust from the communities they serve. Gurdian and Messiah-Jiles spoke about what this entails in the cities they cover: Charlotte and Houston. 

La Noticia “breathes and speaks the language of the Latino community” in North Carolina, said Gurdian. While the print publication has been around for 23 years, it has only been online for the last year, and in  recent months, it has focused on addressing misinformation. “Meanwhile, people trust the Black press because “they have been there with the community, telling their stories,” said Messiah-Jiles. But often it’s difficult for funders without Black staff members to build relationships with these communities. “We’re doing more with less, but we can turn quicker,” she said “that’s where the opportunities for funding are.”

Supporting Outlets and Communities During the Pandemic

Partnerships were also a focus in a session called “COVID-19 Funds: Informing Underserved Communities,” moderated by Nate Wallace, who directs the Knight Foundation’s Community and National Initiatives Program in Detroit. Panelists included David Rousseau of the Kaiser Family Foundation, Roxann Stafford of the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, and Courtney Stewart of the Missouri Foundation for Health.

Rousseau said that the pandemic has been a catalyst for forming new types of partnerships, especially those focused on the “disproportionate impact that it has had on the health and wellbeing of communities of color,” and the lack of a “robust federal response.” Misinformation has also been a key concern, “replicating almost as fast as the virus itself.” Kaiser formed partnerships with health foundations in California, Colorado and Montana; joined forces with PolitiFact to publish health-related fact-checks on a co-branded site with support from the Google News Initiative; and worked with ESPN’s The Undefeated to survey Black Americans on their views on healthcare, racial discrimination and the coronavirus. Most recently, the family foundation launched The Conversation: Between Us, About Us, in partnership with the Black Coalition Against COVID, which features videos from Black scientists, doctors and nurses that offer vetted information about virus transmission, vaccine safety, side effects, costs and more.

Rousseau said he was “blown away in 2020” by the experimentation and rapid responses from philanthropic organizations, “which aren’t really known for innovation.” He is on the board of Media Impact Funders, a network of foundations that support public interest media, and urged attendees to tune into its 2021 Media Impact Forum, which will address issues related to vaccine hesitancy and evidence-based communications in a series of conversations between February and June.

Stewart spoke about how the Missouri Foundation for Health shifted its focus in response to the pandemic to “eliminating inequities within all aspects of health and addressing the social and economic factors that shape health outcomes.” This sharpening of intention has prompted the foundation to rethink the ways in which it uses strategic communications as a “change tool” and to launch two very different efforts: Prepare STL, a community-led online platform that serves the hardest-hit ZIP codes in St. Louis; and One for All Missouri, which addresses rural communities and is more of a “grass-tops” effort. 

Cultivating abundance, harnessing joy, prioritizing rest

Stafford spoke about an unusual strategy for making sure that community members are informed: “Mis- and disinformation can be inoculated by Black joy.” She described an initiative called AI for the People, supported through the Philadelphia COVID-19 Community Information Fund. This online campaign was designed to counter misinformation aimed at Black Philadelphians, which harnessed local influencers to talk about their own pandemic experiences. Rather than simply providing facts, Stafford suggested it’s important to tell stories that center the lived experiences of community members, allow people to speak with their own voices, and offer “hope and upliftment.”

She stressed the importance of prioritizing restoration and healing burnout, a concept that Stewart heartily seconded. Stafford said that she’d been influenced by the Nap Ministry, which creates site-specific installations to allow communities to “rest together.” 

“We as funders have to give space for people to rest and dream,” Stafford said. 

In the session on dismantling systemic racism, Bell also discussed many of the same themes: the importance of joy, the crucial role of rest, and the hope that imagining a better future offers not just to people of color, but to all Americans. 

“That’s why it’s necessary to center Black and Indigenous dreams,” Bell said,  “because there’s so much creativity and infrastructure missing because these dreams have been missing from the space. It serves all of us to give power to these visions.” Think from a position of abundance rather than scarcity, share power, and build new models together, Bell urged.
Jessica Clark is the founder and executive director of Philadelphia-based media strategy and forecasting firm Dot Connector Studio, and the co-author of Making a New Reality: A Toolkit for Inclusive Media Futures.

Access to accurate, fact-based news and information is critical for the well-being of individuals, communities and local government. As local news outlets face business challenges, philanthropy is helping fill gaps by supporting organizations who provide vital local information. 

While tactics for providing this support may vary, many local news funders struggle to assess whether that community’s information environment is actually becoming healthier.

In response, the Google News Initiative, Democracy Fund and Knight Foundation commissioned Impact Architects to develop a framework and playbook to help communities assess the health of their local news ecosystems. 

The new report “Healthy Local News & Information Ecosystems: A Diagnostic Framework,” presents an assessment approach tested and refined across nine U.S. communities of various sizes. Accompanying the report is a playbook and toolkit designed as a tool to help funders and other community organizations evaluate strengths and opportunities in their locale. 

While each local market presented unique conditions and challenges, this timely study found some common themes across communities: 

• Communities with greater racial and ethnic diversity tended to have lower trust in journalism, suggesting stronger relationships among legacy media and communities of color are of crucial importance.

• Increasing access to news through collaboration and strong ecosystem backbone institutions can lead to higher trust in journalism, which in turn can lead to more community support for local news organizations. 

• Greater news access can have a positive impact on voter turnout and resident satisfaction with their community. 

Building on extensive existing research and incorporating perspectives from industry stakeholders, this project moves beyond documenting the presence or absence of news organizations (i.e., “news deserts”) to include a more holistic look at dimensions such as business models and staff composition. It includes easy ways to use existing, publicly available data to measure community members’ relationships with journalists. Ultimately, the playbook is designed as a “plug and play” solution to evaluate 35 indicators across three interconnected categories: news and information providers, community information needs, and the relationship between newsrooms and the community. 

This new report includes case studies from the nine U.S. communities where Impact Architects applied the framework: Boulder County, Colo.; Charlotte, N. C.; Chicago; Detroit; Macon-Bibb County, Ga; New Mexico; Oakland, Calif.; Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio.

Insights from this effort reinforce the central role local news plays in the civic health of communities. They also show how local funders can use this framework to more effectively direct critical support for local news to areas of greatest potential impact. As new community initiatives are implemented, the framework can also be used over time to observe and assess progress toward healthier communities. 

We look forward to seeing how funders, newsrooms and others use this framework to better understand and track the state of the local news ecosystem in their own communities.

Photo (top) by Matt Donders on Unsplash

Knight Foundation’s new, $1.5 million investment in the Chicago-based outlet will help strengthen its role in public service journalism

With fewer professional journalists covering public meetings, residents and reporters don’t always have access to complete information on civic issues. City Bureau, a Chicago-based civic journalism lab, has pioneered a new approach: training residents to report on public meetings. In 2017, after two years of community-driven conversations to shed light on how journalism works, City Bureau used seed funding from Knight to inform the Documenters program, a focused effort to train and pay residents to take notes at municipal meetings.

From the moment we first heard about their work, we knew City Bureau was doing something special. Today, we’re announcing a new, $1.5 million investment to help evolve the Documenters program into a strong, local institution that can serve as a new model for public service journalism across the nation. 

The Documenters network has already taken root across the Midwest, expanding to include locally run programs in Cleveland and Detroit, with plans to continue its national growth over the next three years. As a network, the Documenters community supports its partner organizations to tailor programs to the specific needs of each city. Knight support will help City Bureau continue to establish itself as a strong local organization that increases the flow of accurate news, information and civic engagement. 

Since its inception, City Bureau has gone beyond informing the public — they’ve focused on equipping people to access and produce the information they need, inviting residents to join in the community conversation. After hearing their neighbors say one too many times that they didn’t see their issues being covered by traditional media, City Bureau set out to change the paradigm. They vowed that reporters and newsrooms would partner with residents on newsgathering.

City Bureau is an organization that has boldly reimagined journalism through its belief in equitable access to civic information. Its model focuses its reporting on communities of color and the organization is diverse from top to bottom. Their team has moved beyond the standard practice of collecting of data, fact checking, interviewing local officials and publishing stories — they’re listening to residents, engaging with neighbors and nurturing relationships — long after the story is published. But what makes them unique is their accountability journalism model: they’ve pioneered an approach to train and pay local residents to both report stories through their reporting fellowship as well document public meetings, which are then shared as an online resource for newsrooms and community organizations through their Documenters program.

Why is payment so important? Because when people’s contributions are valued, it creates opportunities for people to contribute who wouldn’t be able to afford to for free. Residents are engaged and equipped, as “Documenters,” using newfound skills and tools, learning ethics and legal review processes, so they can commit their own “acts of journalism.” Their notes can then be used by professional journalists to strengthen their reporting on local issues.

This particular investment has been a years-long journey. Knight Foundation first funded City Bureau in 2017 through a $50,000 Knight Prototype Fund grant, noting “Documenters” as a project that could potentially increase trust in journalism. As the City Bureau team shared their idea at various conferences, there were inquiries from journalism and philanthropy leaders in Detroit and Cleveland. “How might we bring this idea to our community?,” they asked. And so, the City Bureau team did.

It’s a good thing when a great idea spreads — and after listening to founders, Knight knew the most strategic way to support the Documenters program would be to provide direct investment in City Bureau’s team. This new funding supports the long-term sustainability of the Documenters program, funding key business and technology positions and executive education in strategy and business management for City Bureau’s leaders.

City Bureau’s Documenters team has now trained more than 1,000 people to cover more than 1,300 public meetings. During the pandemic, when in-person meetings were first paused, City Bureau built a database of 1,300 neighborhood, city and state resources to direct residents to food, money, legal help, available via text message and in 10 different languages.

Knight’s investment is intended to strengthen a local organization that has radically reimagined community journalism, so they can continue their best work at home before taking their model across the country. We’ve increasingly moved our focus on finding sustainable business models that allow news organizations to be independent. City Bureau has built a model that will help fill critical gaps in accountability journalism in a lasting, impactful way.

If you’re interested in starting a Documenters program in your city, let City Bureau know here.

Karen Rundlet is director for journalism at Knight Foundation.

Amid the pandemic, publishers have come up with new sources of revenue and tapped new support for diversity, equity and inclusion. Here are some solutions worth sharing. 

Whether it’s on TV or radio, in a newspaper or online, local news has had the struggle of its life. The loss of so many local businesses during the pandemic has led to shrinking advertising revenues, and the online ad market is dominated by Facebook and Google. Making a pitch for subscriptions or donations can also be difficult when people have less income.

There is no silver bullet for the business of local news, no knight in shining armor waiting in the wings. But this crisis has forced many publishers to engage with their communities in new ways, and test new models to become sustainable. At the same time, the racial reckoning in America has brought renewed attention, support and funding for publishers of color who reach underserved audiences.

Here are some resources to help publishers strengthen their news organizations through new business ideas, deeper commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and access to training and networks that can help sustain them for the long run. 

Business Ideas

Find a new line of revenue: Publishers might be interested in expanding into new areas, but are hesitant to give them a try. Check out some of these interesting business ideas, including Next City’s pay-what-you-wish webinars; the Chicago Reporter’s LATINEXT WhatsApp service for the Latinx community (with donations and targeted ads); and Racine County Eye’s Eye on Employment to cover worker shortages. Read more business ideas here.

Create or join a cooperative: Could the cooperative model that’s served grocery stories, credit unions and electricity providers work for local news? We’ve seen some publishers try different types of cooperatives, from Akron Devil Strip’s reader-owned cooperative to Mendocino Voice’s worker-owned cooperative to new collectives of publishers such as Brick House and Tiny News Collective. Read more about cooperatives here.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Collaborations focused on DEI: Many new collaborative journalism efforts are focused on publishers of color that are serving communities of color. These include Word in Black, a collaboration of 10 Black media outlets facilitated by the Local Media Association; the Tiny News Collective, run by News Catalyst and LION Publishers; and the News & Information Community Exchange (NICE) project supporting community media makers of color in the Philadelphia area. Read more about these collaborations here.

Training and cohorts: These have improved dramatically over the past few years, and standout programs include the Maynard Institute’s Maynard 200 fellowship program; the Facebook Sustainability Accelerator, which has supported 20 newsrooms led by people of color around the country; and Emma Bowen Foundation fellowships that place students of color into paid internships at newsrooms. Plus, the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy awarded $2.3 million to 16 news organizations led by and for communities of color last year. Read more about these programs here.

Support networks: Journalists of color have a variety of support networks that provide mentorship and training, including the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the NLGJA: Association of LGBTQ Journalists. A new organization to watch is URL Media, which serves “Black and Brown media organizations” by sharing content and distribution. Read more about these organizations here.

Grants & Donations

Fundraising support: INN offers nonprofit news organizations a number of resources for fundraising and getting grants, including the recently launched Network Philanthropy Center, with a News Giving Roadmap, consulting and trainings. And the Lenfest Institute announced another round of fundraising trainings with the RevLab at Texas Tribune, including an advanced membership class and two grant-writing courses.

Knight Foundation-funded initiatives: Knight has made a commitment to spend $300 million toward local news in five years, and publishers can see all of these programs here. They include Report for America, the Solutions Journalism Network and American Journalism Project, all of which provide grants and support for local news publishers. Read more about the programs here.

Local foundations step up: There are a number of established supporters of local news in their region such as the Robert R. McCormick Foundation (Chicago), the Lenfest Institute (Philadelphia) and Joyce Foundation (Great Lakes). Plus, newer entrants include the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation (western New York and southeastern Michigan) and the Wichita Community Foundation. Read more about the work of these local foundations here.

Support Services

Leverage useful technology: Publishers are faced with a mountain of potential technology solutions but which ones will really move the needle? For deep community engagement, check out Hearken’s tools and consulting services, while Cortico offers community listening for journalists with its “digital hearth.” And for a great tech stack focused on helping publishers, check out what WordPress’ Newspack offers. Read more about these services here.

Independent journalists making money: Smaller newsrooms or indie writers have a number of ways to bring in money online. For newsletters, Substack has an elegant, simple solution; for texting services, check out Subtext and its subscription model; and for your super-fans, set up a Patreon or PressPatron account. Read more about these opportunities here.

Find the right training and support networks: Local news publishers can boost productivity and knowledge with the right programs. Some of the best ones include the Women’s Leadership Accelerator run by the Online News Association; the Table Stakes program that helps legacy media leadership upgrade their skills; and the wonderful engagement community at Gather, run by the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon.
Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund.

Photo (top) by JJ Ying on Unsplash

During the biggest public health crisis in a century, local news reporters are on the front lines giving communities vital information – and funders have stepped up to help

In a time of crisis, people turn to local news outlets to understand what’s happening and how they can get help. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last spring, local news outlets stepped up by becoming front-line workers themselves. 

In the course of covering government, hospitals, local businesses and more, they had to do this work in public, interacting with people and putting themselves at risk of getting the virus. (At least 500 journalists and media workers have died from COVID-19, according to a running count at Poynter.)

In the face of severe business challenges during the pandemic, many outlets have shown incredible strength, creating online maps of testing sites and resources, and tracking the spread of COVID-19 cases in their communities. 

Even during difficult economic times, people have donated and subscribed to local outlets in an outpouring of support. They realize just how important local news has been during the pandemic, how vital it is to understand how the virus is spreading in communities and where to get support from food banks and other social safety net services.

Meanwhile, media foundations and supporters have stepped up with special funds to support local news publishers and laid-off journalists.

Sorting Out Vaccine Confusion

As life-saving vaccines have started to get distributed, states and cities were left to work out exactly who would get vaccinated first. Without a clear national plan, confusion has reigned, and many people sought help from local news reporters to help sort out when and how to get vaccines.

A reporter at the Tallahassee Democrat, CD Davidson-Hiers, has become a one-woman vaccine hotline in her community, receiving hundreds of calls and text messages over the past month from anxious seniors. She helps sort out fact from fiction and has even helped fill out online forms in a couple cases. Davidson-Hiers has been profiled in Poynter, in CNN and recently in the Washington Post, which noted that other reporters around the country have been fulfilling similar roles.

Rising nonprofit news site, The City, which covers New York City in depth, has added up-to-date vaccination data (see chart above) to its great COVID-19 Tracking Project, which also tallies cases, deaths and hospital capacity. Plus, The City has tirelessly covered local vaccination issues, including assembling data that showed more than 1 in 4 people vaccinated in NYC didn’t live in the five boroughs.

Local News Makes a Difference

The Batavian, in upstate New York, created a Coronavirus Community Support Map

Vaccines are just the latest concern in this ongoing health crisis. Over the past year, I’ve been incredibly inspired seeing how local news publishers have worked together to make a huge impact in their communities. Here are some of the stories I have written about how innovative initiatives helped reach people in “news deserts,” how publishers created maps and connections to help their audience, and how they were resilient during difficult business challenges.

3 Ways Local News Initiatives Are Serving Crucial COVID-19 Information to People in News Deserts

The situation for people in news deserts is dire, and even worse during a pandemic, when timely information is a matter of life and death. So what can be done to better reach people in news deserts and immigrant communities who lack access to news in their languages of origin. Ethnic media has been helping to fill the gaps, along with collaborations between community nonprofits and local news organizations. Texting services such as GroundSource, Outlier Media and Subtext have helped reach people on their phones, and community engagement projects and virtual town halls have helped give more people a voice.

6 Ways Local News Makes a Crucial Impact Covering COVID-19

Not only are local news outlets reporting on crucial timely issues, but they are going above and beyond by creating maps tracking the outbreak, leveraging technology, convening community forums online and helping to connect those who need help with volunteers. The work is truly inspiring and makes the best case possible for why you should support your local news outlet today.

How Local News Can Survive and Thrive During the Pandemic

Nimble public service journalism outlets are taking a multi-pronged approach to survive. They are making direct appeals to their audience, reminding them of the essential service they provide, while asking for donations or running crowdfunding campaigns. They are asking people in the community to step up and become members or buy subscriptions. They are asking advertisers to sponsor the removal of paywalls for COVID-19 coverage. And they are seeking out various national and local grant programs, as well as Small Business Association and other government loans.

‘Civic Bright Spots’ Show Where Local News is Making Progress

The updated interactive Civic Bright Spots Map shows just how many outlets in the highlighted communities have been touched by grants, memberships, collaboration and other Knight-funded initiatives to help support local news. While there are large numbers of local news organizations in the Northeast — and Philadelphia in particular — that have been part of these initiatives, the bright spots light up every state in the union, including Alaska and Hawaii. And while there have been closures of many print newspapers and alt-weeklies around the country, the media outlets on the map have largely remained resilient and in business.

How Funders Are Helping Stabilize Local News Publishers

As these local news outlets have been doing exemplary work, a growing array of foundations, philanthropists and donors have given money to help them recoup lost revenues during the pandemic. There have been special COVID-19 relief funds set up for publishers and journalists in Philadelphia, Chicago and New Mexico, while tech titans Facebook and Google provided grants to dozens of news outlets around the country. Plus, grassroots crowdfunding campaigns helped local journalists with stipends right after they were laid off or furloughed. This outpouring of support showed just how much these journalists mean to their communities. (You can read more about these efforts in this story from last year.)

So how can local foundations and philanthropists continue to sustain local news now that the pandemic is going into its second year? They can redouble their efforts in communities around the country, and attend the upcoming Knight Media Forum on March 2-4, 2021, which is online this year and open to any attendees. The Forum has been a vital place for funders to network and share tips on how to keep local news strong for the long haul.

Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund.

Photo (top) by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

It’s never been a more challenging time for local news – and a more impactful time for funders to make the leap to support them

During the pandemic, racial reckoning, and election last year, it became obvious just how important local news is to communities around the country. Despite their own financial troubles, local news outlets are providing vital, life-saving information, recently becoming a lifeline with vaccine distribution information. And they have proven to be trusted sources of info as social media platforms have been flooded with misinformation and false rumors.

So while it might be the worst of times for the business of local news, it’s also the best time for local foundations and high net-worth individuals to step up to support them. These publishers have shown their mettle and the time is right for funders to help make them sustainable and give them a boost during a time when these donations can make the greatest difference. Doing so will pay back dividends in the community by increasing political accountability, empowering voters with civic information and shedding light on issues funders care about.

Here are some stories to help funders get up to speed on supporting local news:

“Think and Look Outside the Box:” Local Foundations, Philanthropists Boost Giving to Nonprofit, For-Profit Newsrooms

It’s heartening to see the growth of support for local news — nonprofits and for profits — from foundations and donors around the country. Local foundations who had largely been on the sidelines have been instrumental in supporting new journalism collaborations in Wichita, New Hampshire, Northeast Ohio, Western New York and Southeastern Michigan. And high-net worth individuals have given generously to publishers who have fundraised for Report for America (RFA) corps members to cover their communities.

How NewsMatch Makes a Difference for Nonprofit Newsrooms Around the Country

More nonprofit news publishers are diversifying their revenues, and one of the driving forces for this change is NewsMatch, a matching program that helps nonprofit news outlets fundraise from their communities with matching grants from a number of national and local foundations. In 2019, NewsMatch turned an initial pool of $3.37 million in foundation funding into a $43.5 million payout for newsrooms. In 2020, the pool increased to more than $5 million, and there were 267 newsrooms participating – up 35% from the previous year.

Considering Supporting Local News as a Public Good? Here’s the Whole Story

Local news is poised to become a cause célèbre alongside all the other bumper sticker fodder of years past. As local newspapers struggle amid massive cuts, newer nonprofit and for-profit outlets are establishing themselves as the new watchdogs on the block. This is certainly a time for hope and renewal — but the newer players are going to need a big slice of philanthropy and investment to mature into community stalwarts.

How Local Foundations Can Support Local News

As the problem of deteriorating coverage from local news outlets hits community after community in America, more place-based foundations will have to step in to shepherd more support for a variety of public-interest media. The days of just cutting a check to a local public media station are long over. Much more needs to be done to make sure that public service reporting is alive and well in cities, suburbs and rural areas of the country. That means supporting newer nonprofit newsrooms, for-profit digital natives, support networks, education and more.

*****

Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund.

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Photo (top) by Kari Shea on Unsplash

For-profit publishers solicit more grants and donors, while nonprofits look for more earned revenues; DEI-led startups get funding and support

2020 was a very bad year for local businesses in America during the COVID-19 pandemic. By July, more than 420,000 small businesses across the country had closed permanently, according to Stephen Hamilton, an assistant professor of economics at George Washington University. Hamilton believes that 13% of U.S. restaurants permanently closed, leaving 1.4 million people unemployed.

Meanwhile, local publishers had more news than ever to cover, with a lot less local advertising support. How did they survive and thrive during such a challenging year? They made lemonade from pandemic lemons. 

Some publishers were able to successfully leverage their increased COVID-19 coverage – often freely available outside paywalls – to sell more subscriptions. For-profit publishers, with an assist from the Local Media Association and Report for America, were able to take donations from readers, while nonprofit publishers looked to increase earned revenues from sponsorships and online events. Diverse-led startups, often struggling to get support and funding, have led the charge as new members of Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers and the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN).

“Our members have been incredibly resilient this year,” said Chris Krewson, executive director of LION Publishers. “One small publisher had a couple rough months but this month his advertising sales went up. And another organization had its best December ever. I think that some federal pandemic support money for small businesses is trickling down to them.”

So what does that mean for 2021 and beyond? Will pandemic-induced shifts lead to long-term changes in the business models of local news? Most definitely, as the trends that were already happening (as I detailed in my earlier Knight story on business models) became more widespread this year. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle; a tactic that worked well in this worst of years is bound to yield even more returns in better years ahead.

Here are five profound business model shifts to watch in 2021 and beyond.

1. Publishers join collectives such as Brick House and Tiny News

In the recent past, local news publishers such as The Devil Strip in Akron, Ohio, and Berkeleyside in California have raised funds directly from their audience with a co-op model or direct public offering, respectively. And the Mendocino Voice became a worker-owned cooperative this year. Being a novice to the cooperative world, I even joined a funky smart News Co-Op Study Group, which has its own wiki, naturally.

But some publishers are taking the collective idea to another level, creating cooperatives that operate as  umbrella organizations providing some business and tech infrastructure, allowing the journalists to focus on reporting. It’s a model pioneered by projects such as CoastAlaska, launched in 1994 as a way for public media stations to fundraise together when government funds were cut. The stations own their buildings and transmitters, but CoastAlaska handles all the revenues.

Newer examples include the Brick House Cooperative, launched recently with nine participating publications born from the ashes of the failed Civil blockchain startup. While it’s a mix of local and topical publications, from Sludge to FAQ NYC, Brick House lets each member publication buy one share for $1, which can only be sold back to the cooperative. There are no ads and the business model relies on monthly or annual subscriptions, which run $7 per month or $75 per year for access to all publications.

The cooperative’s FAQ lays out its ethos clearly: “The Brick House is not beholden to Jurassic-era media barons, vulture capitalists, or fickle billionaire patrons.”

Another new entrant is the Tiny News Collective, just announced this week, which will be a nonprofit news incubator that will support one- or two-person newsrooms, often startups who have typically struggled in the past. The newsrooms will be LLCs based in Delaware, where the collective operates as a Model L 501(c)(3), treating them for tax and insurance purposes as subsidiaries – parts of the whole. Tiny News is a collaboration between LION Publishers, News Catalyst and Google News Initiative, with support from Alley Interactive, Newspack from WordPress and even legal assistance.

“Our goal is to have 10 publishers in Year 1, and then 100 in Year 2, and 500 by Year 3,” said LION’s Krewson. “They will be nonprofits to start, but they can choose to go for-profit. The goal is to have them become independent operations in a couple years. We are focusing on founders of color and those who serve news deserts.”

The hope is that by providing the web platform, newsletter platform, payroll, legal liability protection, training and much more, the small newsrooms can focus on serving communities with vital news and information.

2. Underserved communities and founders of color are seen and supported.

The Tiny News Collective is just one example of several efforts being made to give publishers and owners of color a chance to shine in the local news business. Often marginalized or put into the “ethnic media” niche, these publishers are now being included as full partners in local collaborative efforts around the country. For example, the Charlotte News Collaborative includes publications serving Latinx, Black and gay communities. 

The Tiny News Collective is being built to launch new outlets by founders of color – and help them succeed. The goal is to give them the all-in-one support they need to become sustainable businesses within 18 to 24 months.

“There’s a need now more than ever to help amplify the voices of underrepresented communities large and small,” said André Natta, principal of Urban Conversations and a board member of Tiny News Collective. “I’m excited to provide long-needed support for tiny news organizations, particularly those led by people of color, as they navigate the process of getting started and not throwing away their shot.”

Another project to watch is the News and Information Community Exchange (NICE) at public radio station WHYY in Philadelphia, funded by the Lenfest Institute’s COVID-19 Community Information Fund. 

NICE is led by Chris Norris, community contributors and engagement editor at WHYY, and WHYY’s first-ever community outreach organizer, Eric Marsh Sr. It uses the mutual aid model of support for a growing group of grassroots media creators, including community organizers and those who run hyper-local newsletters, podcasts, videos, internet radio programs and more. Most are serving communities of color. 

NICE members are able to network and share their insights and skills with each other, and work on their own goals, while also becoming sources for WHYY and helping the station build relationships and trust in their communities. WHYY is currently organizing a series of trainings, and some members, such as Revive Radio’s Tamara Russell, now have regular features on WHYY radio and online.

“So far the creators have gotten to know each other, and have organically wanted to work together,” Norris said. “There’s a real appetite for collaboration, because it’s very isolating doing grassroots media work.”

Clark said Norris, who used to cover issues of criminal justice as an independent journalist and joined WHYY a year ago, was an inspiration for the project. 

“Mainstream newsrooms often don’t give due to journalists and creators whom we consider too close to their communities,” said Sandra Clark, WHYY’s vice president for news and civic dialogue. “We dismiss them under words like ‘advocates’ or ‘organizers.’ Most of them, often through heart and soul, have always been there for their communities. When Chris told me he worked in the spirit of Ida B. Wells, I told him he was hired.”

3. For-profit news organizations raise more money from grants and donors.

There is an obvious connection between local news being a public good, and philanthropic support. As a civic good, journalism should be supported by foundations and donors just like the opera, symphony or other nonprofits. But there’s also a proud tradition of local TV, radio and newspapers being part of the local business community as commercial enterprises. With the collapse of the commercial models for news – especially during the pandemic – these local outlets finally overcame their hesitancy to reach out for help.

And there’s a very good chance that these new fundraising muscles will only grow in strength over the coming years. Two catalysts for this growth are Report for America (RFA), which requires local fundraising to support their corps member reporters, and the Local Media Association (LMA), which ran a successful COVID-19 Local News Fund this year, and created a new Fund for Local Journalism, which helped fund the Word in Black collaboration for top Black publishers. 

Each newsroom that gets a reporter from Report for America must fund one-quarter of their salary through local fundraising or crowdfunding. I previously wrote about how RFA has helped for-profit local newsrooms find large donors in their communities, including a $50,000 donation from a former newspaper employee to the Everett Herald in Washington and a $20,000 donation to the Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts from a local woman who works at a Fortune 500 company. 

Meanwhile, the LMA helped more than 200 for-profit local news publishers raise more than $1.8 million from the public through its COVID-19 Local News Fund. LMA CEO Nancy Lane points out that a small publication such as the Houston Defender was able to raise $110,000 during its campaign, which its publisher Sonny Messiah Jiles considered to be life-saving.

“Through our lab for journalism funding, we are seeing a lot of success with community foundations and philanthropists in local communities,” Lane said. “The Seattle Times has 18 reporters paid for through philanthropic funding. The Fresno Bee has 10 of 30 in their newsroom covered by philanthropy. Even the smallest members of our lab are setting goals of over $500,000/year to fund journalism projects and reporters. It is an exciting new development.”

Alec Saelens, revenue project manager at the Solutions Journalism Network, told me that the LMA fund helped break the ice, and that other for-profit publishers ran their own fundraising campaigns so they wouldn’t have to pay the LMA a cut of donations. Saelens believes there’s been an important change of mindset from news publishers who would have been wary about fundraising in the past.

“A lot of [for profit] publishers are vying for funding from philanthropic donors, trying to tap into the resources that are out there,” he said. “It breaks the mold that it’s just for nonprofits. That’s been a big shift in thinking and mindset. The pandemic hit so hard that publishers aren’t just thinking about subscriptions but also running donation campaigns.”

4. Nonprofits focusing more on sponsorships and events.

While for-profit newsrooms are taking a page out of nonprofit newsrooms’ and public media’s playbook, the same is happening in reverse as nonprofit newsrooms consider more “earned revenues” such as sponsored content and events to branch out from philanthropic giving. In a time of need, publishers are basically reaching outside of their comfort zones to diversify revenues.

INN found that earned revenue made up only 11% of its members’ income in its recent INN Index for 2020, while a standout local publisher such as the Texas Tribune made a third of its income from earned revenues. How could it help bridge that gap? INN worked with Google News Initiative on an Ignite Sponsorship program for eight newsrooms around the country, with a goal of increasing earned revenues by 30% in June 2022.

The program also produced some case studies of nonprofit newsrooms who have succeeded with earned revenues, including one on Madison365, which serves communities of color in Madison, Wis. The publisher has made more than half its revenues from a “business membership” program that includes advertising and consulting – with a big chunk from event sponsorship. This chart outlines how that works:

“Madison365 has a business membership offering, which is a little different than sponsorships,” said Courtney Hurtt, program manager for NewsMatch at INN. “Clients do advertising on their podcasts, newsletters and website, but the memberships go beyond advertising. They provide an opportunity for clients to align with their audiences, which are communities of color in Wisconsin. The business receives recognition for its investment in the news that serves those communities. It’s more like a brand alignment opportunity. They’re finding a lot of success with this type of offering.” 

GNI and INN recently released a new playbook to help nonprofit publishers increase revenues from display ads, event sponsorships, sponsored content and more.

5. Driving revenues related to pandemic coverage and projects.

During the pandemic, local news publishers have become trusted sources of vital information in communities, so it follows that they have been able to sell more subscriptions and donations by building more trust and proving their value. But it’s not always obvious that the special coverage of a disaster would lead directly to increased revenues. In fact, most coverage has been put outside of paywalls, but still led to more paid subscriptions.

Kristen Hare, editor of the Local Edition newsletter at Poynter, told me that many newsrooms grew their audience by covering “the story that will define us for generations – the coronavirus.” She also ran down a list of the ways publishers creatively brought in new revenues, based on the great reports from API’s Better News collection on diversifying revenues:

• The San Antonio Express-News created a timeline around COVID-19 news that brought in 600+ new subscribers to the newspaper, as well as thousands of new email newsletter subscribers.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution generated more than $35,000 from sponsorship of an “Art from the Heart” project asking children to create artwork related to front-line workers and send it to the paper. They received 268 submissions along with sponsorships from local hospitals and even the city of Atlanta.
• Scalawag pivoted to offering an array of virtual events targeted to people of color, and raised $1100 in donations from one documentary screening online.

Local publishers have had to change their mindset to include themselves as front-line workers during local crises, so that the future fundraisers will go to their journalism as well as to other nonprofits in the community.

Succeeding against the odds

In the crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic, local news publishers were forced to grapple with once-in-a-lifetime stories while facing a challenging business climate. And despite the many publications that suffered furloughs, layoffs and closure, many local outlets persevered. Their business creativity was often awe-inspiring, and will serve them well in years to come, in the cycle of disasters we have come to expect.

Most importantly, these local news publishers have shown their staying power in diverse communities, and a growing cohort of funders and donors means that journalists can do more by working together and serving the best interests of their audience. That’s an important lesson from 2020, and one that will resonate long into the future.

*****

Interested in supporting the work of local nonprofit newsrooms? Find out how your donations can be doubled at the NewsMatch website, and keep an eye out for your local nonprofit newsroom’s fundraising campaign, running through the end of the month.

Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund

Photo (top) by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

As legacy media struggled during the pandemic, many nonprofit outlets shone, with NewsMatch as a catalyst for bringing in more donations

In the narrative about the struggling local news business in America, we hear mostly about layoffs, pay cuts and even closures of publications this year due to the pandemic. But what we rarely hear about is the resilience, the staying power and the growth of nonprofit local news. In 2020, the membership of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) rose by more than 25% — reaching a total of 300 nonprofit news organizations for the first time. 

“Perhaps the most striking change over the past few years is that so many more people now get their news from nonprofit sources,” said Sue Cross, executive director of INN. “Our membership has just about tripled since 2016, and our distribution channels have expanded, to the point that when you add in social media, we can’t quantify how many millions of readers the INN network is reaching every day.”

Yes, it’s true that nonprofit is a tax status and not a business model, and the need for diversified, sustainable long-term revenue remains a constant issue. But nonprofits have led the way in seeking out reader revenue, donations and memberships that have longer staying power than advertising – and have the added bonus of bringing community members closer to the publication. They’re also more likely to have female executives than legacy publishers, and have started to reflect the diversity of their communities.

This is not a new phenomenon, but just one that’s flown under the radar. The nonprofit Associated Press and public media stations have been around for decades serving local audiences. And public media honed the “pledge drive” crowdfunding idea with perks long before Kickstarter or Indiegogo were launched. National investigative outlets such as the Center for Investigative Reporting (launched in 1977) and the Center for Public Integrity (launched in 1989) showed just how impactful the nonprofit model could be for doing deep dives into important topics.

But only with the more recent wave of local online nonprofits such as Voice of San Diego and Texas Tribune has the idea of replacing lost newspaper reporters within nonprofit newsrooms become viable. But even this first wave of local nonprofits was often a group of laid-off newspaper journalists who had no idea how to make money. The solution: “let’s launch a nonprofit newsroom so we don’t have to figure that out!”

The reality is that nonprofit news outlets require the same dedication to the bottom line, even if they are not beholden to shareholders or investors. And on that front, the latest INN Index of member revenues showed less reliance on foundation grants and more income from recurring donations and memberships. The American Journalism Project (AJP) has been instrumental in supporting a range of nonprofit newsrooms by making sure they have the business resources to succeed.

This year, that kind of stability is important, as the pandemic has required clear and accurate information for communities that are hurting.

“The last year has made clear the importance of timely and truthful information that helps us to better understand the issues of our day and each other,” said Josh Stearns, program director of Public Square at the Democracy Fund. “COVID-19, economic recession, racial justice uprisings, and a polarizing election have demonstrated with glaring clarity the vital role of local news to our personal health and safety as well as the health and safety of our democracy. But even before this year, the data was clear that when communities lose local news we see lower voter turnout, fewer contested races, and more government corruption and waste.”

(To see how INN has grown around the country, or to see the AJP grantees mapped out, check out Knight’s Civic Bright Spots Map and choose those layers.)

The following are five reasons nonprofit news has come of age this year.

1. A business model tailored for tough times.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit all newsrooms hard, but nonprofits were much less reliant on advertising from local businesses, which have struggled under lockdowns. And while it’s true that a recession and massive layoffs meant that there is less money in the economy at large, community members are more attuned to charitable giving, especially when news organizations are providing a crucial, timely resource.

Not only is nonprofit a tax status for the news organization; it also means that donors can write off their donations on tax returns.

“Nonprofit newsrooms do have a leg up when it comes to generating revenue from individuals in the form of membership, individual donations, etc.” said Cierra Hinton, executive director and publisher of Scalawag, who also coaches newsrooms at the Facebook Sustainability Accelerator and UNC-Knight Table Stakes Initiative. “Especially when we think about major and institutional gifts, gifts that are large enough to immediately and significantly contribute to the sustainability/expansion/growth of an organization, tax deduction and the rules of grant making are easier to navigate for nonprofits—though not impossible for for-profits.”

Hinton also noted that nonprofits have more consistent revenue sources than for-profits, who have benefited this year from a massive boost in election and census advertising dollars, as well as government assistance through COVID-19 relief programs. 

“I especially wonder what that means for next year when elections and census [revenues disappear] and we have no stimulus in sight. How recession-proof is the advertising stream?”

2. NewsMatch connects more funders to nonprofit news.

As INN has grown, so has a companion program called NewsMatch, which doubles and sometimes triples each donation to a nonprofit newsroom from November 1 to December 31 each year. That funding comes from a growing list of foundations. Some local newsrooms have even tapped into local foundations to triple-match donations. The combined philanthropic, corporate, and donor investment in nonprofit news through NewsMatch has gone from $2.5 million in 2016 to nearly $9 million in 2019.

Democracy Fund’s Stearns noted that NewsMatch has been key in the growth of nonprofit news in three areas:

1) as an on-ramp for new funders for media
2) equipping newsrooms with the tools and strategies they need for fundraising
3) helping publishers grow as they make deep connections to their communities

“Through NewsMatch, thousands of new people have donated to local news and investigative reporting, dramatically expanding reader revenue as a source of funding for nonprofit journalism,” Stearns said.

More than just providing money to nonprofit newsrooms, NewsMatch also includes hands-on support for fundraising, helping to build infrastructure for years to come.

“It’s really helpful at connecting the work we do to donors and foundations,” said Candice Fortman, executive director of Outlier Media. “NewsMatch chips away at that. When you are small and don’t have a development person, it makes you sit down and think about your strategy around fundraising. For two months you have a development person at INN and NewsMatch who helps you think about emails and social media, and  who you should be targeting, and small newsrooms don’t typically have that help throughout the year.”

Along with NewsMatch, there have been specific days like #GivingTuesdayNow this  past May 5, which helped bring in an influx of donations for nonprofit newsrooms.

3. For-profits are becoming more like nonprofits (or just converting to them).

Let’s face it. Many “for profit” publishers in local news are barely scraping by, let alone making huge profits. Most large newspaper chains are owned by extractive hedge funds more interested in stripping away assets than serving the public.

Is it that big of a stretch for many for-profit publications to become nonprofits? In fact, there have been three interesting threads happening as for-profit newsrooms look more and more like nonprofits:

• Many local newspapers have run donation campaigns for the first time this year. That includes the Local Media Assocation’s COVID Relief Fund, which brought in more than $1 million for 130+ for-profit publishers. And Report for America requires newsrooms to fundraise to pay for corps members, which has led to new campaigns and donors for many legacy outlets.

• Some for-profit news organizations have started adjunct foundations or funds to help process donations. The Seattle Times has raised more than $1 million for its Investigative Journalism Fund, and Washington state’s smaller Everett Herald has an Investigative Journalism Fund and Climate Change fund. In my new hometown, the alt-weekly Santa Fe Reporter created a foundation to take donations for its “Friends of the Reporter” program.

• Rather than just dip their toe in the water, some for-profit publications made the total conversion to nonprofit status, including the Salt Lake Tribune, Chicago Reader and Berkeleyside (now known as Cityside). Berkeleyside took the journey from for-profit, offered a direct public offering to its community and then converted to nonprofit, winning the LION Publisher of the Year (in the large publisher category) this year.

Increasingly, the line is blurring between for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms. However, nonprofit newsrooms that are members of INN are required to abide by designated standards in editorial independence, ethics and transparency.

4. Nonprofit news outlets are becoming more diverse and covering underserved communities.

It’s been a long road to diversity at nonprofit newsrooms but this year showed some progress. Half of nonprofit news executives and 60% of employees are women, according to INN’s report on diversity, equity and inclusion this year. According to INN, nonprofit news organizations are more diverse than traditional newsrooms but still less diverse than the public at large. Moreover, only 1 in 5 executives and board members are people of color at nonprofit newsrooms. 

One bright spot is among newly launched nonprofit startups over the past few years; 10 of 24 startups that joined INN from 2017 to 2019 reported that people of color made up 40% or more of the staff. Plus INN notes that many of its publications are now serving bilingual or communities of color, including Canopy Atlanta, Documented, El Timpano, Indian Country Today and Sahan Journal. And those newsrooms are also transforming how news is produced and distributed, with Canopy Atlanta selecting news topics in collaboration with local residents.

“Diversity is a real question for nonprofit journalism,” said Sarah Alvarez, founder and executive editor of Outlier Media. “It’s easier to start from scratch, like building a new house versus renovating an old one. Smaller news organizations can create from scratch instead of just fixing old problems, which is great, it’s a real pathway to doing news. At the same time, what we’re up against is tremendous, including a toxic legacy in our industry, and we aren’t resourced the same way that an organization meeting these challenges needs to be effective. Very few nonprofits are funded to do the work that they’ve set out to do.”

Scalawag’s Hinton says she does feel like she’s seeing more non-white people in the business than a few years ago, but “there are still not nearly enough.” But she sees potential for change.

“Nonprofit news definitely has the potential to be the way we bring in more diverse leadership and grow the number of journalists of color and other journalists with underserved backgrounds (we need more journalists that identify as poor and/or working class),” Hinton said. “Though there is something to be said for the for-profit model and people of color in particular having ownership and equity in the businesses they run, launching a business is hard, growing a business is even harder, and having at the very least a board of directors and an association and network like INN getting tools and resources to you certainly helps.”

5. Collaboration has become a way of life for many nonprofit newsrooms.

Some of those early nonprofit newsrooms like CIR and Center for Public Integrity were known for collaborating with larger, established news organizations to help distribute their work to wider audiences. And in some cases, the collaboration included reporting on a topic together as in the “Post Mortem” investigation by ProPublica, NPR and Frontline. That work has continued at the local level, with many city and regional collaborations funded by the Solutions Journalism Network, and ProPublica doing local investigations with partners in its Local Reporting Network.

Nonprofit newsrooms have worked together on election coverage, and also held Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot accountable to the promises she made on the campaign trail in the “Lens on Lightfoot” collaboration. That effort included newsrooms such as Chalkbeat Chicago, La Raza and Block Club Chicago, as well as the Better Government Association, with funding from three foundations.

INN has also helped to spearhead distribution deals with various partners, including Spotlight, News Break, Patch, Nextdoor and Flipboard, allowing more people to access their members’ work.

“With many of these new platforms featuring INN member content, members are exposed to thousands of new readers who can be converted into regular readers and, hopefully, sustainers with time and attention,” said Jonathan Kealing, chief network officer for INN. “A few platforms, in particular Patch, pay all members for the page views they generate on their platforms. Others, like SmartNews and News Break, are paying an increasing number of members based on a share of the revenue they generate, helping to augment other, primary revenue streams.”

There’s limitless potential for more collaborations (including with other local for-profit newsrooms), and perhaps in collaborative fundraising.

“Collaborative fundraising could be key,” said Outlier Media’s Fortman. “You will see more of that in 2021, especially from organizations led by people of color who need to find funding outside of [typical] foundations and donors—who need to attract major funders, but can’t do it alone.”

More Support Coming in 2021?

As nonprofit local news grows in stature it has an opportunity to gain on a front that has eluded public media in the past: funding from states and the federal government. While the U.S. government, especially on the Republican side, has been quick to cut public media funding in the past, there’s a growing movement of potential policy ideas that would support local news in its time of need. 

For now, though, the burden is still on foundations and charitable individuals. “The reality is that across the globe most democratic nations have a robust noncommercial public interest media landscape, mostly publicly funded,” said Stearns of Democracy Fund. “In the U.S. we have far less public funding but we have a much more robust nonprofit and philanthropic sector. As the traditional business model that has supported local news erodes it’s critical for philanthropy to help preserve and reinvent journalism as a public good.”

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Interested in supporting the work of local nonprofit newsrooms? Find out how your donations can be doubled at the NewsMatch website, and keep an eye out for your local nonprofit newsroom’s fundraising campaign, running through the end of the month.
Mark Glaser is a consultant and advisor with a focus on supporting local and independent news in America. He was the founder and executive director of MediaShift.org, and is an associate at Dot Connector Studio, and innovation consultant at the New Mexico Local News Fund.

A new $2.23 million Knight Foundation investment will support the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local News and Table Stakes Newsroom Initiative

The News Reporter, a newspaper in Whiteville, N.C., with a proud history of public service, was on the verge of closing its doors. But support and coaching from the UNC-Knight Foundation Table Stakes Newsroom Initiative helped it return from the brink.

In Charlotte, newspaper veteran Glenn Burkins founded QCity Metro in 2008 to serve the city’s Black community, and he needed a way to make it sustainable. Burkins used the initiative to realign his goals, which increased readership, revenue and a stronger team. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a legacy newspaper that’s recognized on a national level, used Table Stakes to amplify their hyperlocal content, find untapped audiences and create community during COVID-19.

These success stories show the impact of an ongoing UNC-Knight Table Stakes Initiative that began four years ago, led by the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local News (CISLM) at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Hussman School of Journalism and Media. This initiative, part of the Knight-supported national Table Stakes Initiative, offers select media organizations like these a rare and often transformational opportunity: to spend a year working closely with committed experts in identifying and overcoming the challenges to success and sustainability they face in today’s fast-changing digital news environment.

With the training and guidance of media coaches and a diverse peer group, 32 organizations across the Southeast have now used their time with Table Stakes to build audiences, streamline operations and generate meaningful revenue, all while focusing on the kinds of local journalism their communities rely on most. 

This year, Knight is proud to continue its investment in the Table Stakes Newsroom initiative and the groundbreaking research of Penny Abernathy, a Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics, with a $2.23 million commitment to help more news organizations work toward the pursuit and resolution of critical performance challenges in their organizations and enrich their communities as trusted news sources.

Knight’s renewed support for the next three years comes at a crucial time for local news, as unprecedented pressures from these uncertain times affect newsrooms around the country. The impact of this program across the first three cohorts of UNC’s Table Stakes participants is inspiring. Collectively, the choices Table Stakes participants made have led to $3 million in incremental revenue, 82% growth in digital subscriptions, 52% growth in page views and 30% growth in digital revenue.

The newest Table Stakes cohort launched on Sept. 30. These organizations represent the most diverse cohort yet in both size and scope, covering everything from local news about the South, sports, Black innovation, Latinx communities and more. Joining UNC-Knight this year are:

• The Richmond Observer of Richmond County, N.C.
• New Digital Press of Charleston, S.C.
• A group of Gannett Co. organizations – The Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina, The Savannah Morning News in Georgia, The Clarion Ledger in Mississippi, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and a combined team from Tennessee, comprising members from the Knoxville News-Sentinel and The Commercial Appeal in Memphis.
• Southerly, covering the entire Southeast
• WFJX Fox Radio, covering the Roanoke Valley in Virginia
• Chatham News + Record of Chatham County, N.C.
• The Plug, based in Atlanta
• Enlace Latino NC of Siler City, N.C.
• HBCU Gameday, based in Charlotte, N.C.

Knight funding also supports Abernathy’s ongoing research and extensive outreach to address America’s expanding news deserts. Abnernathy’s newest report, released earlier this year, works to better understand the financial challenges local news organizations face and the impact news deserts (areas without access to local news) have on communities across the United States.

Together, the combined efforts of the Table Stakes program and Abernathy’s work will ensure that news organizations work to strengthen local news in the communities that need it most. At a time when information is crucial for civic participation, we’re proud to support these efforts, amplify the work of these organizations, and help communities stay informed. 

LaSharah S. Bunting is director for journalism at Knight Foundation. Susan Leath is director of the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at UNC.

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About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.

About the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media

The Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media exists to support established and emerging local news organizations through applied research on economic sustainability and entrepreneurship as well as innovative news and digital product solutions. The center is funded by grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and UNC’s Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost.

Photo (top): Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, leads an in-person UNC-Knight Table Stakes session