How to navigate a successful funder-grantee relationship
Some lessons from the KMF session “Funding Journalism 101”
Knight Media Forum 2023 was a great setting to have frank conversations about a number of topics, including the possibilities (and challenges) of partnerships between local news outlets and foundations.
I moderated the conversation “Funding Journalism 101,” featuring Andrea Hart, chief strategy officer of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and Jill Ozarski, program officer at the Walton Family Foundation. Neither held back when it came to discussing the tensions around how philanthropic dollars are distributed.
Philanthropy Deserts
The term “news deserts” became popularized after Penny Abernathy’s research at University of North Carolina was published in 2018 (Abernathy now works at Northwestern University). It sounded an alarm about the thousands of newspapers being shuttered across the country. While local radio and television stations also distributed local news, it was newspapers that had long generated most of the original civic reporting in local communities.
For close to two decades, residents in thousands of communities have had limited access to the kind of news that would help them manage their lives––information about schools, city government, how and why taxpayer dollars were being spent. Now that philanthropy has emerged as a strong revenue source for digital news properties (and let’s not forget, public media has partnered with foundations for decades) we examined the reality of “philanthropy deserts.”
According to Abernathy and team’s The State of Local News 2022, of the 550 active local and state news outlets, most are in or near major metro areas, where: Guess what? There happens to be more philanthropic funding.
Hart, a founder of City Bureau, shared what the fundraising climate was like in Chicago, where several foundations had an understanding of the need for local news and were willing to invest, as opposed to in Memphis, home to MLK50, where local foundations simply weren’t as plentiful. There are also real challenges around developing a membership program in Memphis, where the poverty rate is 22.6 percent and the target audience is the working community.
Hart shared two of her fundraising strategies:
Look beyond traditional journalism funders. Hart spoke about funders who supported MLK50’s reporting on economic inequity. Ozarski focuses on water issues, specifically related to the Colorado River. She funds a variety of nonprofit organizations. A handful of them are journalism outlets. Ozarski said there is a firewall between journalism grantees and the foundation. They do not interfere with the reporting.
Identify donors who will support your focus. With Memphis being a bit of a philanthropy desert, Hart has identified a number of donors and foundations across the country (and not just in Memphis) who want to support anti-poverty reporting. She said that she specifically focuses on well-meaning high-net-worth individuals who get MLK50’s larger mission.
General Operating vs. Programming Support
As you might expect, there’s a real tension point in philanthropy between providing general operating support and awarding dollars for programmatic work or a specific project. At least one audience member objected to the practice of institutional philanthropy only providing funding for a 12-month period, sharing the frustration that you have to start fundraising almost immediately after receiving the grant.
Ozarski shared that the Walton Family Foundation often provides programmatic support but that in some instances, a percentage of the grant award is allocated for general operating support. Knight Foundation has been a long-time supporter of NewsMatch, which provides unrestricted general operating funding to hundreds of news outlets. Outside of that program, Knight does require detailed budgets about how the dollars will be invested. As a funder, I also shared that, internally, we are always reminded that the dollars we award are not ours, that we must invest them wisely and honor the Knight brothers’ intent. That means, at Knight, we bring both a rigor and humility to funding decisions.
Ozarski also emphasized that you shouldn’t tailor your project to align with a foundation’s strategy. It must authentically align at the outset. At Knight, we often say, “people are always going to do what they want to do.” If your program officer sniffs out that you want to do something completely different than what you say, that you’re simply chasing funding, the project won’t deliver. The lesson here is to be true to your work. And grantees do have power. I often remind grantees that you never have to accept anyone’s funding.
Catch all the highlights from KMF
Did you miss the 16th edition of the Knight Media Forum in Miami or online? We’ve got you covered with all the highlights:
And if you missed us this year, there’s always next year in Miami! Thanks to all the great speakers, attendees and organizers. It was great to see so many people in person (and online) this year!
Other news around the horn…
Launches
🏎️ Indy gets its mega-million nonprofit. Signal Cleveland. Houston Landing. Baltimore Banner. It’s truly been raining money when it comes to new metro nonprofit newsrooms, but what about in smaller markets? There’s new energy as the American Journalism Project (AJP) announced the launch of the Indiana Local News Initiative, with $10 million in local and regional funding alongside AJP’s. The initiative is multifaceted: a new statewide nonprofit will be launched with a Documenters program; a new Capital B outlet in Gary, Indiana, will serve the Black community; more news outlets will be able to remove paywalls; and 13 newsrooms in the state will be partners in the project. The Hoosiers win big.
Research
🤝🏾 Americans are more trusting of local news than national. Most Americans, especially independents, are turned off by the squawkbox of national news on cable TV and elsewhere. But that shifts when it comes to local news outlets. The second part of the Gallup-Knight American Views survey found that a record-low number of people – just 26 percent – have a favorable opinion of the news media, but that 75 percent have high-to-moderate trust in local news. Furthermore, 53 percent believe that local news organizations care about how their reporting affects the community and 47 percent believe they care about the best interests of their audience. Respondents also report higher levels of trust in news on TV, in newspapers and in magazines versus on the radio and from online sources.
✨Go beyond objectivity with the Trustworthy News Playbook. That old notion of “objectivity” in reporting has not led to increased trust in communities, according to a new report. As former executives-turned-academics Leonard Downie Jr. and Andrew Heyward found in their “Beyond Objectivity” report for Arizona State University, the time is right to move toward new standards to build trust. Their Trustworthy News Playbook includes tips on increasing diversity, creating a clear policy for social media, being more transparent about journalists’ work, and defining your newsrooms’ values. “Producing trustworthy news for the communities of today requires a new kind of news leader, committed to the kind of newsroom we have described and confident enough to replace yesterday’s top-down model with an inclusive culture,” the authors conclude.
Impact
💡 API reports on Inclusion Index in Pittsburgh. When it comes to diversity in newsrooms and serving diverse audiences, many newsrooms around the country have fallen short––and won’t even answer surveys about it. The American Press Institute decided to dig deeper, creating an Inclusion Index to measure diversity in four Pittsburgh newsrooms. While the report found that some improvements have been made, newsrooms still need to work on retaining staff of color, finding more mentors for young staff and overhauling the ways they cover communities of color to go beyond sports and crime stories. You can read the full report here.
🤑 Seattle Times winning with reader revenues. Many metro newspapers have moved toward reader revenues and philanthropic support, but few have matched the success of the Seattle Times. The paper started moving toward reader revenues (and away from advertising) 10 years ago, and now earns 70 percent of its income that way, according to Times president Alan Fisco in a report from WAN-IFRA. The Times now has 176 journalists, second only to the Los Angeles Times in the Western United States, and 27 of those jobs (or 15 percent of total newsroom staff) are funded through philanthropy. “You can have the most sophisticated funnel, the best retention tools on the planet, spend a fortune on your tech stack, but if your content is bad, if you’ve gutted your newsroom…you’re still going to fail,” said Fisco.
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Jobs
🔍ProPublica is hiring an Editor for the Northwest region. ProPublica is seeking an experienced editor to lead its new investigative unit in the Northwest. The editor will hire and supervise three reporters who will be based in Washington, Oregon, Alaska or Idaho, as well as edit three Local Reporting Network partners based at newsrooms in the region. Learn more here.
🗞️National Trust for Local News is hiring a Chief Portfolio Officer. The CPO would oversee the community news titles and news conservancies created by the Trust. They would also collaborate on the Trust’s strategy with other executives and the board. Learn more here.
📈Pew is hiring a Research Director, News and Information. Pew Research Center is looking for an innovative and accomplished director to lead the News and Information research unit in the Washington, DC, office. The director oversees a research team seeking to understand the changing ways Americans learn about the major trends and events shaping society in the face of a rapidly changing media and information landscape. Learn more here.
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Written by Karen Rundlet, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman
A Knight + Dot Connector Joint