Knight considers who to serve, who to hire
Supporting agile, diverse leaders and audiences who don’t read news, but watch or listen
At a recent retreat focused on local news, I noticed a welcome shift: The local news community realizes we aren’t out to “save journalism.” Instead, it sees journalism as a pathway to informed communities. In recent newsletters, we’ve talked about news organizations' business practices, technology infrastructure and legal needs, but we haven’t focused on our customers — the people who need accurate, fact-based local news to function and thrive in our communities. It is these residents, citizens and leaders in cities, towns and rural communities across the U.S. that we must serve.
For these communities, what do we want to be true in five years? And how will Knight’s strategy support them and their information providers?
Here are a few areas where we want to see impact:
Attracting Talent, Leadership and Diversity
I’ve been listening to publishers, top editors, producers and their teams in recent months and, frankly, over my seven years at Knight. They’ve shared that journalism and local news needs to be a career of choice, competitive with other sectors and providing a future. In five years, we hope to see a network of agile and diverse talent and leaders who can be retained and promoted in the industry. The field of entrepreneurial journalism has moved well past seed to sprout to budding. But we still need solutions to reach full harvest and for that harvest to be sustainable and repeatable.
How might we make journalism and local news leadership a career of choice? How might we build news outlets that reflect the communities they serve? How might we attract, retain and promote talent and leaders in the profession? How do we keep talent safe in the field? How do we build stronger operations and workplace cultures? When we hear from journalists, the challenges are consistent. They fall clearly in the categories of salary, sanity and safety, and in the last, the profession is particularly risky for talent who are women, people of color and LGBTQ+.
Informing People Who Listen and View
At last week’s Local News Summit in Nashville, a participant shared a story about herself and a friend being hired to work in digital leadership positions at top national and international outlets. Her friend had been hired by a legacy newspaper brand, while she had been hired, for the first time, by a cable network. Their conversation went like this:
Friend: I am so excited about my job. The audience is huge. I had no idea how many people read the site.
Her: I am so excited about my job in cable television. The audience is huge. I had no idea how many people don’t read at all.
While Knight has invested in radio, television, audio and video, we can do more. I am reminded of the early work Knight funded in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation in 2019 to conduct a landscape study. Cleveland is a city with a 66 percent illiteracy rate. If you want to inform the good people of Cleveland, a reading-only strategy will exclude the majority of the city. So how might we deliver reporting and journalism to audiences who only (or mostly) listen and watch?
Increasing Philanthropy for Informed Communities
As grant makers, we encourage our grantees to increase their own effectiveness through partnerships and collaboration — where, of course, it makes sense and where they find alignment. If we ask that of our grantees, we should ask that of ourselves as funders.
Funders are continuing to coordinate, collaborate and partner where it makes the best sense. This is mostly internal work but I share it so you know we are working to activate more investment in local journalism, to increase the philanthropic pie, if you will.
To the funders reading our newsletter, I’m interested in hearing your ideas about bringing more philanthropy to the field. Please reach out to me. To grantees and new applicants, please consider how Knight might help improve journalism workplaces – the culture, the operations, making the career a destination, and informing folks who rely on TV, radio, audio and video. You can email me at rundlet@kf.org.
Other news around the horn…
Honorific
🎭 Knight CEO Alberto Ibargüen makes artful exit. Say it ain’t so, Alberto! Knight’s longtime CEO announced his upcoming retirement last Friday through a fascinating Q&A in the New York Times. A national search for his successor will begin immediately. The focus of the story was on how Ibargüen had moved the sleepy journalism foundation strongly into the arts, especially in Miami, raising the annual investment in arts to 25 percent of the portfolio, with a total of $466 million granted to arts during his tenure. Colorfully, the article notes Knight’s support for poetry dropped from a helicopter during a rock festival in Miami and its support for techno and punk concerts in Detroit. As for the reason for his retirement, Ibargüen said, “I’ve had my turn for almost 18 years. And the world has changed marvelously, radically — some of it awful, some of it beyond wonderful. I think it’s somebody else’s turn now.” We will miss you, Alberto. But not for a while yet. 💙
Research
🤝🏾 Americans want more solutions, positive news coverage. Feeling depressed when you scroll through your daily news? You are not alone. A recent survey from More in Common and the American Press Institute found that more Americans prefer news coverage that “celebrated what’s right” (88 percent) vs. “criticizing what’s wrong” (63 percent) with a large majority looking for solutions for society’s problems (87 percent). When comparing national and local news, Americans feel that national news better helps them “understand people with different views than me,” while local news is better at helping them have a voice in day-to-day issues and focus on matters that most affect them. “I would like for a newspaper to feature stories of communities coming together on issues and helping resolve current problems, instead of trying to create a greater divide,” said Amelia, a self-described moderate from California.
🤖 Updated ChatGPT makes misinformation campaigns a snap. Need to spread misinformation about the source of HIV, a conspiracy theory about the Sandy Hook shooting or about how Nancy Pelosi blocked reinforcements on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol? Apparently, the new updated ChatGPT-4 does a better job than the last version, according to a research report from NewsGuard. While the previous version included disclaimers and caveats, the newer version doesn’t include such disclaimers. Out of 100 prompts NewsGuard fed the old chatbot, it served up 80 false narratives, while the new chatbot actually served up all 100. “While NewsGuard found that ChatGPT-3.5 was fully capable of creating harmful content, ChatGPT-4 was even better: Its responses were generally more thorough, detailed, and convincing,” NewsGuard concluded.
Impact
🏈 Brett Favre’s loss is Mississippi Today’s win. Up against heavyweights like the New York Times, Associated Press, National Public Radio and the Philadelphia Inquirer, nonprofit Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe won the coveted Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. She is the youngest winner of the prize, and won it for her high-profile series “The Backchannel” about former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in a massive welfare scandal, which also ensnared former NFL football player Brett Favre. “In Mississippi, we’ve all been fortunate to witness Anna Wolfe’s impact and importance to the state for many years,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “It’s incredibly fitting and deserving that now the nation gets to see and recognize her work through one of the most impactful and shocking journalistic investigations in recent memory.”
🔥 How Substantial Media succeeds with diversified revenues. Started as a print magazine, Substantial Media now serves as a digital platform to amplify positive stories in the Black communities in Eastern North Carolina. How has it survived and thrived in a tough market for local news? It focused on reflecting the community in its profiles of Black- and women-owned businesses, as well as coverage of arts and culture, according to a profile in Better News. The site now has revenue sources as varied as memberships from readers, sponsored content and events such as the Substantial Awards and the Black Lens Symposium. As for advice to other publishers, Substantial’s CEO Greg Hedgepeth says, “Find a way to ensure your organization remains relevant, relatable, reliable and resourceful.”
Launches
🏀 “Faculty Champions” offer alternative to March Madness. If your NCAA basketball brackets are a mess (guilty as charged), you’ll be happy to learn about a new set of 33 university winners dubbed “Faculty Champions” by the Center for Community News (CCN) at the University of Vermont. Those champions include faculty who are supporting innovative local news partnerships at their schools. Out of the 33 champions, 15 work at minority-serving schools, with $54,000 in awards going toward their projects. Some of the interesting initiatives supported include the first collegiate-level, student-led Native news program, police accountability in Chicago, and Spanish-language reporting in California. “At the core of these local news partnerships are innovative and creative faculty,” said Richard Watts, director of CCN. “This program seeks to recognize them and support their work in connecting and creating more such partnerships.”
🔍 New York Times launches first class of Local Investigations Fellows. Imagine a local reporter given the investigative backing and chops of the New York Times to dig into one big story in their community. That’s the idea behind the new Local Investigations Fellowships at the Times, run by former executive editor Dean Baquet. The program announced its first class of seven fellows, with three based in Mississippi, and one each in Hawaii, Maine, Maryland and Wisconsin. They will investigate health care systems, juvenile justice, a water crisis and more. “There was so much talent out there and so many good ideas,” said Baquet. “These were hard choices. But this is a remarkable group of reporters. And their work will have an impact on their communities.”
Fellowships
Trainings in June and October 2023
Deadline to apply: March 31
Spring 2023
Deadline to apply: March 31
Trainings
Executive Women Leaders Salon from ONA
April 25 on Zoom, June 15 on Zoom, Aug. 23 at ONA
Applications open at the end of March
Free, March 30, 2–3:30 pm ET
Lenfest News Philanthropy Network
Jobs
📈AJP hiring a Head of Growth Investments & Support. Do you want to help transform the nonprofit news business? The American Journalism Project is hiring a Head of Growth Investments & Support to steward the organization’s $40 million investments through the end of 2025. You will get to help AJP’s return on those investments, doing due diligence, business coaching and helping grantees build a movement for local news in their markets. Get on your superhero cape and get busy!
🍀MassLive Media is hiring a VP of Content and VP of Sales. Now is a great time to become a Boston Celtics fan—and work at MassLive Media. They are looking to fill two senior roles: Vice President of Content and Vice President of Sales. And just to whet your appetite for a move to Massachusetts, the job ads say that “if you aren’t from around Massachusetts, you might like knowing that our state is pretty cool.”
Upcoming Events 📅
Public Media Virtual Career Fair
Online
March 29, 12–3 pm ET
Building and Expanding News / Academic Partnerships
Various locations, produced by the Center for Community News
April 14–August 6
International Symposium for Online Journalism
Austin
April 14–15
International Journalism Festival
Perugia, Italy
April 19–23
Online
April 26–28
Collaborative Journalism Summit
Washington, DC
June 6–7
Washington, DC
June 8–9
Chicago
June 8–10
Call for proposals (workshops, talks) due March 31
Philadelphia
August 23–26
Tweet of the Week
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Karen Rundlet, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman
A Knight + Dot Connector Joint