How work in Knight communities informs our journalism investments
Local networks and sources support experiments in local news
While lesser-known than our national funding of local journalism, Knight Foundation has long supported communities where the Knight brothers once ran newspapers. And Akron, Ohio, holds a special place in the heart of the foundation, since it’s where the brothers launched their first paper.
One of the best parts of this job is when I visit one of the 26 Knight communities sprinkled across the nation and hear about the positive impact our funding has had. I was reminded of this again on recent visits to Macon, Ga., and Akron with our new CEO and president Maribel Pérez Wadsworth.
In Macon, we met with the National Trust for Local News, which recently launched the Georgia Trust for Local News and will also soon launch a new newsroom in Macon, thanks largely to a $5 million grant from Knight. The National Trust was already operating in Georgia, having recently purchased newspapers there, and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have them build on the strong work already being done by the Macon Newsroom and Mercer’s Reg Murphy Center for Collaborative Journalism. So, instead, the National Trust will work with both as part of a larger plan to grow Macon’s news ecosystem.
We had a similar fortuitous situation in Akron in 2022, when the American Journalism Project (AJP) was down the street working on launching Signal Cleveland. We thought having AJP’s expertise so close by was too good an opportunity to pass up, so we provided $5 million to create Signal Akron, which launched in December. So it was with great satisfaction that we heard such positive feedback from public officials and other city VIPs about the work being done at Signal Akron. While some of those public officials noted they were not thrilled with every story (and what public official is?), they appreciated having a new, strong journalistic voice in town.
Partnerships are just one element of how we can improve our journalism investments. We consider the Knight communities as laboratories for our larger national work. We can test out ideas, with the help of local boots on the ground, with Knight program officers in larger cities, and community foundations and stakeholders in the smaller cities. Their feedback and experiences with journalism projects help inform the work we can do in other communities.
The collaborations we helped to fund in Philadelphia (Resolve Philly) and Charlotte (Charlotte Journalism Collaborative) are also good examples. We learned that journalism collaborations need to have strong leadership to sustain themselves and strong connections to the community. In the case of Charlotte, there was also the active involvement of the public library hosting the collaboration’s website as well as meetings.
What else might we try? The Journalism team at Knight is exploring joint funding we might do with our Arts and Communities programs, on various projects so we can assess the impact on the communities we are trying to serve. Having a role as a national funder is a privilege, but it is this local work that helps inform our broader thinking so that we aren’t flying blind from Miami. The local intelligence we gain from our work in our 26 Knight communities is where we find the ideas or learn the lessons that can then be scaled to places across the U.S.
Other news around the horn…
Launches
🚀 Spotlight Delaware launches as statewide nonprofit. With $1 million in funding from the American Journalism Project in January, Spotlight Delaware wasted little time in launching recently with a mission to “serve underrepresented communities in innovative ways.” Former journalist and nonprofit executive Allison Taylor Levine founded the Local Journalism Initiative in 2019, which has run an internship program and helped organize the Delaware Journalism Collaborative. Spotlight Delaware has an early focus on public policy, education and land use. Spotlight’s mission states: “We’re building the future of local news and ensuring that all Delaware communities have access to the stories that impact their daily lives and a voice in its decision-making.”
Investments
🗞️ National Trust buys a printing press for Colorado. Stop the presses… and start them again! When Gannett closed down a printing press at the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain, many newspapers were stuck, some moving to digital-only and one closing down. So the National Trust for Local News came up with an old-school/innovative solution by buying a used printing press and bringing it to Colorado to create a low-cost solution for its own newspapers at Colorado Community Media and other community papers in the state. “What’s really important and exciting about this development is that we’re basically showing how we can begin, from scratch, a right-sized, mission-driven commercial printing operation,” National Trust CEO Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro told Nieman Lab. Even more impressive is the way that multiple funders came together to raise $900,000 to help so many publishers. If this model works, it could be replicated in other places. As Hansen Shapiro pointed out, the shuttering of printing presses—and resulting high cost of printing—is happening across the country.
💸 Press Forward Pooled Fund application opening soon. The gears are turning and the engine is rumbling into action as Dale Anglin takes the wheel at Press Forward. In her first “Letter to the Field” last week, Anglin noted that the Pooled Fund will begin accepting applications in April “in one or more of our priority areas.” Plus, she outlined how aligned grantmaking by funders, now at more than $54 million in grants, has helped support outlets such as Conecta Arizona, Enlace NC, Documented and El Tímpano, along with infrastructure at URL Media and Catchlight, and public policy at Free Press and Rebuild Local News. “Press Forward is working behind the scenes to help those funders share the news of their investments and help aligned funders learn from one another and encourage increased giving to local news,” she wrote. Plus, Press Forward Chicago opened its first grant applications to support capacity-building with $100,000 to $125,000 over two years to each grantee.
Impact
📈 How revenue diversification helped the Black press. Legacy print media outlets have seen their traditional business models crumble due to changing media and advertiser habits. But many Black newspaper publishers in the Knight x LMA BloomLab have found success by diversifying revenues, according to BloomLab director Robert Walker-Smith. How did they do it? They focused more intently on their digital presence, selling online ads and subscriptions. They leaned into community engagement events including town halls, cultural festivals and educational seminars, selling tickets and sponsorships. They’ve also garnered support from foundations and government agencies, with some BloomLab participants even transitioning to becoming nonprofits. Walker-Smith says that preliminary revenue data from 2023 vs. 2022 shows growth in print, digital and philanthropic revenue. “Diversification not only ensures financial stability but also reinforces the crucial role these organizations play in representing and serving their communities,” he concludes.
Elections
🗳️ INN, Google to bolster election coverage for nonprofit newsrooms. If you haven’t heard, this election year is the most important in a generation (or so they say each election year). And if journalism is to strengthen democracy, election coverage is vital to informing communities. With that in mind, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) and Google News Initiative (GNI) have a whole host of programs to help nonprofit newsrooms cover local elections. For instance, the Salt Lake Tribune will share its best practices in getting donor support during election coverage in a toolkit coming out this spring. In a similar vein, INN and GNI will release a guide to help newsrooms turn casual election readers into regular donors. Plus, INN’s Rural News Network will launch a collaboration among 10 newsrooms reporting on challenges rural communities have with voting access. “Offering that support is essential to helping newsrooms be as prepared as possible to accurately report on this year’s election results,” wrote INN’s Jonathan Kealing.
Social Media
👥 LinkedIn remains a friend to publishers. Meta shuttered its News Tab and is fighting new laws to support publishers. X and its owner Elon Musk have been hostile to journalists—and to advertisers. But LinkedIn has remained a constant for publishers, partnering with more than 400 news providers globally, reports Axios’ Sara Fischer. LinkedIn helps publishers optimize content, whether it’s text, newsletters, podcasts or even video. LinkedIn editor-in-chief and vice president Daniel Roth says they are testing a video sponsorship with a small group of publishers. "We're working on making sure that [the videos are] actually showing up in LinkedIn, and we want to make sure that they are also being rewarded for that content," he told Axios. LinkedIn has its own podcast network and is working with dozens of publishers to help monetize their content, while also seeing a 150 percent increase in newsletters from publishers and journalists on the platform. Unlike Meta and X, LinkedIn is actually trying to increase reach for publishers on its platform. Imagine that.
Jobs
Sahan Journal, Executive Director
Learn more here.
Reynolds Journalism Institute, Innovation Team members
Learn more here.
Austin Free Press, Founding Editor
Learn more here.
Honolulu Civil Beat, Editor in Chief
Learn more here.
Richmondside, Editor in Chief
Learn more here.
Fellowships
McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism
$15,000 for “follow the money” reporting
Apply by March 31
New America
$10,000 to tell a “comprehensive American story”
Apply by May 3
Local Investigations Fellowship
New York Times
One year; fellows stay in their newsrooms
Apply by September 2
Training
Essential Skills for Rising Newsroom Leaders
Poynter Institute
In-person, May 6–10, $1,500
Apply by March 26 (today!)
Tools for Covering the 2024 Elections
Institute for Nonprofit News, Google News Initiative
4-week series, free and online
First training is March 28 at 1 pm ET
Upcoming Events 📅
Open Source AI Hackathon from Hacks/Hackers
New York
April 5–7
International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ)
Austin
April 12–13
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)
Las Vegas
April 13–17
Collaborative Journalism Summit
Detroit
May 9–10
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
Oklahoma City
July 25–27
National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
Chicago
July 31–August 4
LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit
Chicago
September 5–7
The Association for LGTBQ+ Journalists
Los Angeles
September 5–8
Online News Association (ONA24)
Atlanta
September 18–21
Quote of the Week
“We need journalists whose only obligations are to the facts and the society they serve, not to lenders; who are concerned with the public interest, not with interest rates; who can make risky decisions and take the difficult path if that’s what the mission requires, free of financial burden. Journalism schools can help achieve that. In tough times, it is natural to mourn the past or lament the present, but what we really need is bold action.”
—Graciela Mochkofsky, dean of CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, in an op-ed in the New York Times about making journalism school tuition-free
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Jim Brady, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman