Help Knight scale vital infrastructure for local news
As we plan our second infrastructure summit, let us know how we can support publishers
Two years ago this month, we convened about 40 folks in Miami for an infrastructure summit. Attendees represented small and medium-sized publishers and organizations who support them, from membership groups to technology and service providers.
As an opening exercise, we collectively brainstormed the forms of infrastructure publishers rely on, and quickly drew up a list of about 60 items. It included the usual suspects like content management systems, but also various kinds of legal and consulting support, administrative and talent services, and funding.
That number—60—stuck with us and has guided our work. Based specifically off learnings from that very meeting, we’ve made progress on a number of specific fronts: building new ways to scale technology, helping Tiny News Collective support more news startups, and investing in organizations such as NPR station WFAE and Memphis nonprofit MLK50 who are poised to expand. This convening also helped to inform Press Forward’s formation and priorities.
But there’s still a ton left to tackle and we need to refresh our approach, so we’re hosting another convening in late June. If 2022 was about understanding the needs at the time, this go-round is about charting the course ahead.
Why? Simply put: We need to be thinking and acting bigger.
Giving publishers infrastructure they need
We're still early in the Press Forward era and there's momentum building toward some durable solutions, but we all know the scale of the local news crisis is much, much bigger than what can be fixed with a $100 million-plus a year.
We are also amidst a period of even greater uncertainty than usual, driven by rapid changes in technology that affect how we deal with information—and each other.
For all the hard work and progress in building a new, independent local media ecosystem over the past decade, our collective approach is wildly imperfect. A publisher has to navigate a rabbit’s warren of services. Finding the right support at the right time is tricky. And building diversified revenue streams often feels like this:
We should keep building on success, but also seek approaches that shift the trajectory of the coming decade toward an environment that gives publishers a better chance of success.
As we put this event together, we’re eager to hear from you, so we’ve put together an interest form. If you’d like to attend, or even just throw some thoughts into the mix, please check it out here.
There is no shortage of conversation these days about the state of local journalism: at conferences, in newsletters, and countless text threads and Slack channels. As we design this event, we aim to focus on the conversations that make the best use of in-person time to break new ground.
We are looking for people who can represent their own organizations but think about the field as a whole. Folks who can balance pragmatic needs with an exploration of the adjacent possible.
There are a handful of questions as prompts, but the goal is to get what’s really top-of-mind for you. The deadline to fill out the interest form is Thurs., May 16.
Pulitzer Prizes spotlight independent, nonprofit publishers
A decade ago, there was excitement when a nonprofit non-newspaper such as Center for Public Integrity or ProPublica would win a Pulitzer Prize. Now the tipping point has come, as this year’s Pulitzer Prizes featured 12 online news outlets and just eight newspapers as finalists, as Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton points out. Most inspiring this year were wins by City Bureau, Invisible Institute and Lookout Santa Cruz—all organizations for which Knight has provided funding. In fact, Invisible Institute, a nonprofit organization in Chicago, won two awards: one for its collaboration with City Bureau on racism in the Chicago police department related to finding missing Black women and girls, and another in collaboration with USG Audio for a podcast series revisiting a hate crime from the ’90s. Meanwhile Lookout Santa Cruz won in the Breaking News category for its coverage of catastrophic flooding and mudslides last year.
Other news around the horn…
Funding
💸 Press Forward opens the spigot for funding. After a lot of excitement and expectations, the $500 million-plus collaborative funding initiative Press Forward is cracking open its fat wallet. Press Forward announced its first Open Call on Closing Local Coverage Gaps, with $100,000 grants for general operating support over two years for at least 100 newsrooms around the country. The focus will be on investing in small, local newsrooms that provide original reporting in underserved communities. It is open to publishers with an operating budget of less than $1 million in 2024, and which have been publishing since Sept. 1, 2023. “Press Forward wants to ensure that local coverage meets the needs of communities of color, linguistically diverse communities, low-wealth rural communities, and others not adequately served, reached or represented,” its website explains. Not only will there be an information session today and a Q&A on June 3, but Press Forward is offering free help from fundraising coaches too. Apply by June 12.
Mergers
🙌🏽 CalMatters and The Markup merge. Nonprofit newsrooms are feeling the urge to merge lately, with the recent linkup of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting/Reveal. Now comes news that statewide nonprofit CalMatters is joining forces with The Markup, an innovative data-driven publication that watchdogs how institutions use technology. “Pairing our proven methodology with CalMatters’ deep expertise will deliver unparalleled investigative journalism in California, and serve as an example nationwide,” said Nabiha Syed, CEO of The Markup, who will stay on as a strategic advisor until July 1. CalMatters CEO Neil Chase will retain his leadership role for the combined nonprofit, with The Markup’s Sisi Wei getting a new role as chief impact officer. While The Markup is known for its tools such as the privacy inspector Blacklight, CalMatters has recently moved into a similar area with the launch of its AI tool for California public policy, Digital Democracy. The merger will close later this year. “I think consolidation is natural. I think it’s important. And I think you’re going to see more of it where it makes sense,” Chase told Nieman Lab.
Research
💻 More Americans getting news online, understanding its importance. A new survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative shows an interesting disconnect between how people view local news and whether they will pay for it—or even follow it. Nearly half of Americans prefer to get local news from websites or social media, while just 32 percent prefer TV or 9 percent from print newspapers. And a large majority say local news is important, and yet just 66 percent are following local news closely vs. 78 percent back in 2016. Plus, young adults are even less likely to follow local news, with only 9 percent saying they follow it closely. Only 15 percent of Americans say they paid for local news in the past year, while 63 percent think their local news outlet is doing well financially. The majority of both Republicans and Democrats think their local news outlets are doing their jobs well, while most think reporters should stay neutral in their coverage. However, 39 percent of those aged 18 to 29 think reporters should advocate for changes in the community, compared to just 20 percent of folks aged 65 and older. On topics such as government, politics and the economy, the majority are not highly satisfied with coverage.
🦀 Maryland news ecosystem has challenges, signs of hope. If we are going to solve the crisis in local news, we first need to understand the scope of the problem. That means putting hard data on what’s happening in communities around the country. Knight has supported this work through Impact Architects research while a recent Colorado collaboration created a news map that includes information sources from community groups and social media. The latest news ecosystem report comes from Maryland, with research from the University of Maryland led by professor and industry vet Tom Rosenstiel. There are plenty of challenges for the 176 outlets surveyed, including 39 percent saying they wouldn’t survive without more revenues in the next two years. Plus, most stories were about crime and simply came from government or law enforcement sources. Only 21 percent of stories were enterprise, mostly on food, arts and entertainment. But Baltimore Banner columnist Rick Hutzell, who attended a related summit in College Park, said there were reasons for hope, including the rise of nonprofit outlets and startups. “Despite the gloomy assessment, reinvention and the opportunity for change are healthy for local journalism, and not just for journalists. It matters to all of us,” wrote Hutzell.
👐🏾 Collaboration becomes ingrained in journalism. There used to be an argument for collaboration in news: We need to work together to survive and thrive. Now there is no argument needed as collaboration has become an integral part of the work of publishers, journalists and even funders. Ahead of this week’s Collaborative Journalism Summit in Detroit, Stefanie Murray of the Center for Cooperative Media laid out her annual State of Collaboration, noting that collaboration was now “expected, not simply encouraged.” She pointed out the collaborations happening at the national level, among Press Forward funders, NPR’s ten collaboratives around the country, and collaborative networks run by The 19th, Grist and the Local Media Association (LMA). She noted that LMA collaboratives such as Word in Black and the Knight x LMA BloomLab were proving that business-side collaboration can increase sustainability. “Journalism collaboratives [have] become more sophisticated—more science than art,” Murray concludes, saying there are now at least 50 stand-alone journalism collaboratives in the U.S.
Policy
🗽New York state makes record $90 million plan to help local news. New Jersey has granted more than $5 million to local news and information projects through its Civic Information Consortium, while California has spent $25 million on a local news fellowship program. But even those major successes pale in comparison to New York state’s new plan to offer $90 million in tax credits to local news outlets over three years. The bill is now part of the state budget, but needs to be approved by the legislature and governor. According to a summary from Rebuild Local News, the bill would provide tax credits to newsrooms based on the number of employees, with up to $25,000 per employee, and more for new hires. Publicly traded companies are excluded and no newsroom can get more than $320,000. “This is a landmark step—the first of its kind to be approved by any state,” said Rebuild Local News in a statement. “It is a dramatic effort geared toward helping news outlets maintain and grow their staff. We appreciate that the lawmakers especially made sure that small- and medium-sized outlets were treated fairly in the plan.”
Expansion
🔍 How LION Publishers will offer audits to all member publishers. While many news businesses prefer to keep their financial details confidential, the folks at the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers have found that giving publishers “sustainability audits” can pay dividends. These audits require publishers to fill out a questionnaire with 93 qualitative and quantitative questions, and have a 90-minute audit interview, resulting in a detailed audit report with action items. So far, LION has completed 350 audits, with 93 percent of publishers saying it helped them feel more confident in reaching sustainability. With funding from Knight and Google News Initiative, LION has also been able to offer $20,000 stipends to publishers (for a total of $7 million in grants by the end of this year) to help them implement those action items. But the association has a more ambitious goal: to offer every LION member an audit. How will they pull that off? LION’s Chloe Kizer says they will offer a “self-service audit” where members can fill in an online questionnaire and get an actionable audit report. “More independent news publishers would benefit from having access to this critical strategic tool—so expanding that accessibility is our number one goal right now,” Kizer concludes.
📹 Video Consortium to help revive video journalism in newsrooms. One of the more powerful ways that journalists tell stories is through visuals, particularly video. And yet many visual journalism jobs have been slashed in recent years at local news outlets. Video Consortium (VC), with funding from Knight, in alignment with Press Forward, aims to reverse that decline with an initiative to work directly with local newsrooms across the U.S. to help them use video to increase impact and engagement in their communities. Since 2015, VC has been serving thousands of people in the video journalism and documentary-making industries with unique resources, jobs, trainings, and community-building programs to tell powerful stories with impact. Now, they will also turn their attention to revitalizing video journalism in newsrooms so they can reach new audiences and tell more visual stories. “Video is a mainstay, and this grant will help ensure it is powerfully utilized so that newsrooms can sustainably forge into the future to effectively reach the next generation,” said Sky Dylan-Robbins, founder and executive director of VC. Newsrooms can fill out this form if they are interested in working with VC.
Jobs
Documented, Editor-in-Chief
Learn more here.
Rebuild Local News, Chief Operating Officer.
Learn more here.
Local Journalism Initiative (Delaware), Director of Operations
Learn more here.
Searchlight New Mexico, Executive Editor
Learn more here.
InvestigateWest, Development Director
Learn more here.
Student Press Law Center, Development Director
Learn more here.
Training
Navigating the 2024 Elections: Fundraising Campaign Guide
Lenfest’s News Philanthropy Network
Free, online
May 14 at 3 pm ET
Upcoming Events 📅
Media Impact Forum: The Stories We Tell
New York
May 21–22
Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Days
San Diego
June 11–12
Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA)
Milwaukee
June 12–14
National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ)
Hollywood, CA
July 9–13
Report for America Presents: Growing Statewide Support for Local News in Minnesota
Minneapolis
July 18
Oklahoma City
July 25–27
National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
Chicago
July 31–August 4
Minneapolis
August 15–16
LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit
Chicago
September 5–7
The Association for LGTBQ+ Journalists
Los Angeles
September 5–8
Journalism Women & Symposium (JAWS) CAMP
September 13–15
New Orleans
Online News Association (ONA24)
Atlanta
September 18–21
Local Media Association (LMA) Fest
Chicago
September 24–25
News Product Alliance (NPA) Summit
Online
October 11
JFunders: Journalism Funders Gathering
San Francisco
October 22–23
Quote of the Week
“Thank you Invisible Institute’s trina reynolds-tyler and City Bureau’s Sarah Conway [pictured above] for your bravery and tenacity in telling these important stories. So often the families of these missing women are dismissed. You listened and uplifted. May change be the real prize.”
—Sarah Karp of WBEZ, who was praising “Missing in Chicago,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning collaboration about missing and murdered Black women and girls (Photo by cai thomas)
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Marc Lavallee, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman