KMF 2024: Fulfilling the promise of past convenings
Press Forward is catalyzing local funders around the country to support local news
For 17 years, Knight Media Forum (KMF) has brought together funders from around the country to evangelize the importance of supporting local journalism.
The progress toward that goal has been consistent, but this year is the one where it feels things have actually crystalized. That’s because Press Forward—the huge collaborative of funders (including Knight) that has committed $500 million over five years to boost local news—is coming into focus right as we meet this week. The collaborative has an inspiring new leader in Dale Anglin (see item below), and will announce new local Press Forward chapters at KMF.
In short, this feels like a propitious moment for local news, one that goes beyond the doom and gloom of layoffs, newspaper closures and news deserts, and brings us together to lift up the industry and envision a sustainable and thriving future. And our gathering in Miami this week will be a great place to momentarily savor that moment before starting the hard work necessary to make Press Forward the success it needs to be.
One of the best things about KMF is being among smart foundation leaders, news publishers and academics brainstorming solutions for local journalism and democracy. And if you can’t be there, we have a livestream for you to check out, and of course our live tweeting (live-X’ing?) will happen throughout the conference.
Here are some highlights of the days ahead:
9:00 a.m. Wednesday: Knight’s new President and CEO, Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, will kick off her first KMF by discussing the urgency of this moment for local journalism and what we all can do to meet it.
9:15 a.m. Wednesday: “Empowering Local Journalism” panel will discuss Press Forward in more detail, with MacArthur Foundation President and CEO John Palfrey, S. Mitra Kalita from URL Media, Alicia Bell from Borealis Foundation and Graciela Mochkofsky from City University of New York.
10:15 a.m. Wednesday: “Unlocking the Future of Journalism Sustainability” panel will look at essential services and tools for local news, with yours truly moderating, along with Wendi Thomas of MLK50, Sonny Messiah Jiles of The Houston Defender, Mukhtar Ibrahim of Sahan Journal and Matthew Copeland of WyoFile.
9:00 a.m. Thursday: “Silent No More” panel will explore the importance of whistleblowers, with Kathy Kiely of University of Missouri moderating, along with Mark MacGann of Moonshot Ventures, Anika Collier Navaroli from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Wendell Potter from Health Care Un-Covered.
Plus, we’ll have some wonderful breakout sessions, including discussions about Press Forward local chapters, how funders can help sustain news organizations, and the role of colleges and universities in supporting local news.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in Miami, and while we will all be running in a million directions, I do hope we can take advantage of this moment to keep pushing for historic change in our industry.
Press Forward announces new director, funders
I’m thrilled that Dale Anglin has been hired as Press Forward’s founding director. Dale comes to Press Forward from the Cleveland Foundation, where she served as vice president for proactive grantmaking. Dale has a deep background in funding journalism, and will lead a growing movement to bring more funders to support local news while deploying millions to support the field. And the number of cats to wrangle happily got even larger with the addition of new Press Forward funding partners: Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Scripps Howard Fund. “I’m excited to work with the Press Forward local chapters and carry the message of Press Forward to potential new funding partners as we seek to catalyze more chapters,” she said. “By design, Press Forward is a movement where all types of donors/funders can get involved, whether they care about democracy, journalism, climate or the arts. We hope funders will see these news and information endeavors as tools to support a wide range of strategies.”
Other news around the horn…
Education
👩🏽🎓CUNY J-School to go tuition-free, launches veteran fellowship. Craig Newmark, proud nerd and founder of Craigslist, gets our nomination for Philanthropist of the Week with a $10 million gift to help make the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY free of charge by the end of the decade. The gift boosts the school’s endowment to $30 million, allowing them to offer free tuition to half the class in 2025, with plans to raise another $30 million by 2027 to make the offer to all students. “If we believe journalism is public service, a service that is essential to our democracy, then we need to eliminate the barriers that stand between the people who want to go into journalism and a successful career in news media,” said Graciela Mochkofsky, dean of CUNY J-School. The school also helped launch its first Newmark Veterans in Journalism fellowship, in collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) and Military Veterans in Journalism (MVJ). The first fellow is Christopher Janaro, a Navy veteran who will be working at City Limits in New York covering zoning, land use and development.
Impact
🤑 News Revenue Hub helps newsrooms hit $100 million jackpot. What started out as the fever dream of some staffers at Voice of San Diego in 2016 has turned into a stalwart support system for local newsrooms: News Revenue Hub. The Hub recently hit a big milestone, helping newsrooms collectively raise more than $100 million. The Hub has grown to support more than 150 newsrooms and has a staff of 20 along with many specialized contractors. How did they pull off the milestone? “Our team is constantly learning, testing and developing new strategies with our most advanced clients, like The Guardian and Texas Tribune, and then we scale them out to the rest of our cohort,” said Hub honcho Mary Walter-Brown. In fact, there’s been even more momentum recently, with the Hub helping newsrooms raise $16 million in the past six months alone. One big driver is the release of the free RevEngine service to get newsrooms up and running quickly on taking donations. They have plans to release a new ad and sponsorship support service and metrics offering later this year.
✨Newsrooms make progress in transforming crime reporting. With the help of innovative crime reporting trainings at Poynter Institute, more newsrooms are shifting from “when it bleeds, it leads” to “when it bleeds, it needs context and data.” Not as catchy, but also not as damaging to communities. Cheryl Thompson-Morton, who co-leads the training with Kelly McBride, says participating newsrooms have already started seeing benefits to changing their crime reporting. The Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader, for instance, changed its one-off crime reports into more stories on police accountability and public safety. That led to fewer page views, but a higher subscription conversion rate on those stories. “Have patience and be OK with [losing pageviews] in the short term because as you reshape your coverage and start figuring out what you are doing with that time that you’re no longer spending on those shorter stories, you’re going to see the depth of your reporting improve greatly,” said Herald Leader breaking news editor Jeremy Chisenhall. Utah’s KSL NewsRadio and Minnesota’s Star Tribune also were successful in implementing new policies on crime coverage and allowing staffers to reflect on how their work affects communities.
📫 How The City broke through with geo-targeted postcards. Many online-only news outlets have a problem: How to reach people who don’t have broadband access or use social media. The nonprofit site The City decided to test out sending geo-targeted postcards to New York City residents who would be most interested in their stories. For instance, one postcard about getting your landlord to turn on heat was sent to people in ZIP codes with the most 311 complaints about heat and hot water. The postcards included QR codes so that residents could learn more and even fill out a survey about their experience. The team also tested Facebook ads with similar messages to find out which method might be more effective. While the Facebook ads generated more clicks, the postcards led to people spending more time on The City’s website. “As journalists speculate about whether news is entering a ‘post-social media’ era, we raise a lot of questions about…reaching new audiences,” wrote Owen Berg, a recent NYU journalism graduate who worked on the project. “I believe local news is in an interesting position to innovate here because of its unique ability to establish a physical presence in the communities it covers.” Berg even wrote up a handy guide for other newsrooms.
Collaboration
💡 The 19th launches new network for deeper collaboration. Nonprofit news site The 19th, which focuses on gender, politics and policy, has always allowed other news organizations to republish their work for free. But they wondered if there was a way to drive more meaningful collaboration, including co-reporting on stories. That’s the thinking behind the launch of The 19th News Network, which includes a mix of nonprofit local and topical news publishers. The goal is to increase community coverage and include more voices and topics from around the country. “[The network] means dreaming about what we can accomplish with our strengths combined, working on projects covering some of the most pressing issues in our country, and co-reporting pieces by leveraging the expertise of partner newsrooms and The 19th,” wrote Abby Johnston and Amanda Zamora, who will be running the new network. They hope to create more community conversations and resource-sharing to lift all boats in the network.
A CBS News report on stolen cars included data-sharing with local affiliates so they could localize their coverage
📺 In the age of streaming, TV news stations increase collaboration. TV news has had to rethink the traditional 30-minute slots for news on the air. Now they have to feed streaming services, social media and the web, meaning a growing need for content. The result is an increase in collaboration within national TV networks and their affiliates, a rise in data journalism and even outside collaboration, according to an in-depth report from Will Fischer for the Center for Cooperative Media. One of those collaborations includes a data journalism report from CBS News, organized by its Local News Innovation Lab, about how 9 out of 10 car thefts go unsolved. Many local stations contributed to the larger national report and dug deeper in their own markets. Fischer notes that both Gray Television and Scripps News have worked with ProPublica to deepen reporting on train safety and health insurance, respectively. “The more we share, the more audiences see how important journalism is. We really do believe if we partner up, across competitors, it’s better for the greater good,” said Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News.
Training
CUNY
In-person and online, free
Apply by March 12
Essential Skills for Rising Newsroom Leaders
Poynter Institute
In-person, May 6–10, $1,500
Apply by March 26
Fellowships
Indigenous Journalism Fellowship
College students or recent graduates
Six weeks of virtual trainings and mentoring
Apply by February 27
Upcoming Events 📅
Miami
February 20–22
Baltimore
March 7–10
Austin
March 8–16
International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ)
Austin
April 12–13
Collaborative Journalism Summit
Detroit
May 9–10
San Diego
June 11–12
LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit
Chicago
September 5–7
Online News Association (ONA24)
Atlanta
September 18–21
Quote of the Week
“For three years, I have not seen myself reflected anywhere. I don’t see any other Latinas with a very thick accent that are immigrants that have red lipstick and are loud like me in leadership positions. It’s very lonely. But if I open the door for more Latinas and more languages to be sitting at those tables, that would be amazing.”
—Maritza Félix, Conecta Arizona, talking to Poynter about her challenges as an independent publisher
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Jim Brady, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman