Knight hires Marisa Kwiatkowski as a new director of journalism
She brings investigative journalism, nonprofit skills to the team
I am thrilled to announce that longtime investigative journalist and nonprofit board leader Marisa Kwiatkowski (Muh-riss-uh Quit-cow-skee) is joining our team as a new director of journalism at Knight Foundation. Her deep experience in investigative journalism gives her a keen understanding of the benefits and challenges of doing important watchdog work. Marisa also has served in nonprofit leadership roles for the past 15 years, including with Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and as board president of the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
Marisa is probably best known for her work with colleagues on the “Out of Balance” investigative series at the Indianapolis Star that exposed widespread sexual abuse within USA Gymnastics, including by team doctor Larry Nassar. She’s won more than 60 awards, including IRE's Tom Renner Award, the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award and a Sigma Delta Chi Award in public service journalism.
Marisa understands the rigor involved with investigative work, the importance of keeping journalists safe and the necessity of strong legal support for complex investigations of high-profile people and organizations. Marisa is someone who pushes back on things that don’t make sense, and is happy to engage in the spirited debates we have about our work on the journalism team. You don’t have to spend a lot of time with Marisa to see just how curious she is about everything and anything.
“I’m excited to be working at Knight because it aligns with two of my passions: journalism and philanthropy,” Marisa said. “It's important work to help ensure the future of journalism. I want to help the industry not just survive, but thrive."
After traveling the world last year (27 countries!) while on sabbatical, Marisa has landed with our team here in Miami, and we look forward to getting her important insights as we continue to look for ways to help local journalism thrive in these heady times.
We need more pro bono lawyers for journalism
As legacy media cuts back costs, including on legal support, and more startups come into the field without legal aid, there’s more need for pro bono lawyers to make sure publishers are protected from lawsuits and can get access to key government data and documents. Former Knight executive Eric Newton writes a great piece for our website outlining all the great work done by pro bono lawyers over the past few years, and also how the need for lawyers has grown.
“When local journalism works best, it helps people understand each other and solve common problems,” he wrote. “But the more impactful stories require special effort. Enter the lawyers. Someone must sue to liberate public information. Someone must review stories before publication to protect journalists from frivolous lawsuits.
“Knight Foundation and a relatively small group of other funders have over decades helped nonprofits create a legal safety net for journalists and news outlets. But much of it still lives on year-to-year funding. And it’s still too small. Rebuilding local news won’t go far without pro bono lawyers. With news philanthropy increasing, it falls to the network and its funders to explain why legal aid grants are essential to the enabling environment—the infrastructure—that helps make American journalism essential to the communities it serves.”
Other news around the horn…
Launches
🚀 Signal Ohio launching newsroom in Cincinnati. The Signal is getting stronger in Ohio, with the upcoming launch of Signal Cincinnati. This will be the third nonprofit newsroom launched in the network, following those in Cleveland and Akron, making it the fastest-growing nonprofit news initiative in the nation. Along with the newsroom, there will be a new Documenters program happening in Cincinnati to expand on the 900 Documenters who have covered more than 1,000 government meetings in Cleveland and Akron so far. “Cincinnati is a crucial city in Ohio with engaged leaders and residents who have told us they want more news and information in the Greater Cincinnati area. Our mission includes providing good news and information to help [them] make informed decisions,” said Rita McNeil Danish, CEO of Signal Ohio.
💰 The 51st rising from the ashes of DCist. Local news in the nation’s capital has had a sordid history. Not only did the Washington Post close its hyper-local efforts, but DCist was shut, then taken over by WAMU public media, and then shut again. But maybe the folks from DCist are onto a winning combination now, with six former staffers launching a new worker-run nonprofit outlet, The 51st, along with a crowdfunding campaign. The goal was to raise $250,000 in 30 days, but they brought in more than $100,000 on the first day and more than $50,000 on the second day. It’s also nice to have a prominent profile in the Washington Post, helping its new competitor along. “This is something new, of wanting to take the best pieces of what we did together [at DCist], and build upon that and expand,” co-founder Eric Falquero told the Post. “We’re in it for the long haul.” If they follow the path of Block Club Chicago, which rose from the ashes of DNAinfo Chicago with a crowdfunding campaign, they are on their way.
⛰️ NPR to launch Appalachia collaboration with new funding. NPR has had to cope with declining revenues and audiences in recent years. But a recent gift of $5.5 million from tech billionaire Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt (a former journalist) will help the public radio giant expand its regional collaborations with a new one. The Appalachia newsroom will start with six public media stations in Kentucky and Tennessee, with the possibility of more joining. The investment will also strengthen the Mountain West News Bureau with an Indigenous affairs reporter/producer and provide funding for a short-form video pilot in the New England News Collaborative. “This type of regional collaboration has allowed us to pool resources to create editorial positions that each of the partner stations couldn’t support alone,” NPR senior vice president and editor in chief Edith Chapin told Nieman Lab. Other benefits of the collaborations include shared services, including investigative reporting, along with increased underwriting dollars.
Elections
🗳️ AP, Knight make election content free for newsrooms in key states. As the election kicks into high gear (hopefully you weren’t offline last weekend; you might have missed a few things), relevant news in battleground states will be important for folks trying to follow the presidential reality show, er, election. That’s why Knight is supporting a new initiative at the Associated Press to offer free access to AP election content and services to local newsrooms in battleground states ahead of the presidential election. To qualify, these outlets have to be members of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) or Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers and have less than $5 million in annual revenues. “Our hope is that this support not only will provide voters with the information they need to make informed decisions in November, but that it also provides news organizations with the boost they need to sustain their capacity to engage communities well into the future,” said Knight President and CEO Maribel Pérez Wadsworth.
Socials
🎥 How AfroLA started a TikTok guide. We know more people are getting news on TikTok and that the platform isn’t just about beauty tips and dancing. So what’s a small newsroom to do? AfroLA teamed up with the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) to create a guide and best practices to help encourage staffers and interns to make more TikTok videos. First, they decided on the kinds of videos they wanted to create. Next, they worked on the style of text and branding for the videos, and worked out tips for specific types of videos (e.g., if featuring a business, keep it short and simple). They considered what works best in terms of microphones and video editors, and made sure to follow up in the comments on TikTok to engage with viewers. “The hope is that the AfroLA newsroom will continue to add onto the guide with examples and tips as they experiment further,” wrote RJI’s Kendall Williams. Anyone is welcome to use the guide and adapt it to their newsroom.
Research
🦁 Social down, newsletters up for referrals to LION publishers. While some publishers are turning toward social media platforms such as TikTok, others are turning away from those like Facebook that are shifting algorithms away from news. That leaves publishers with a dilemma: How do they build and stay connected to their audience? It turns out that email newsletters, events and more direct connections to communities help, according to data from LION Publishers’ sustainability audits. For instance, more than 75 percent of publishers say email newsletters are an effective way to help audiences find their publication, with “word of mouth” and direct search also remaining strong. Plus, publishers report a shift in the products they are offering, with 95 percent producing newsletters vs. 81 percent just two years ago, and 60 percent producing events vs. just 34 percent in 2021. The report’s authors believe that “these trends will accelerate as publishers move to ‘own their audiences’ rather than building their businesses on unstable third-party foundations.”
Jobs
American Journalism Project, Head of Emerging Markets
Learn more here.
MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, Co-Executive Director
Learn more here.
Investigate Midwest, Editor in Chief
Learn more here.
The Trace, Director of Development
Learn more here.
The Overlook, Founding Editor in Chief
Learn more here.
Fellowships
Solutions Journalism Network
Receive $10,000 and nine months of training
Apply by July 31
Local Investigations Fellowship
New York Times
One year; fellows stay in their newsrooms
Apply by September 2
Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship
IRE
Investigative program with stipends for travel
Apply by September 21
Trainings
Revenue generation for publishers: Aligning profit with purpose
Indiegraf and Amanda Zamora
Free and online
July 25 at noon ET
Voter demographics, access and turnout
Free and online
July 25 at 2 pm ET
Data for journalists covering climate change and gun violence
Maynard Institute & Society of Environmental Journalists
Free and online
July 30 at 3 pm ET
Talk with membership director Andrea Faye Hart
Free and online
July 30 at 3 pm
Documentary
Directed by Don Colacino
66 minutes
Shows how trust in news eroded, how to find trustworthy news, and ways to protect good journalism
Upcoming Events 📅
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
New Orleans
September 13–15
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
“The fastest-growing industry categories for reporters, other than internet publishing, are independent journalists and a category that includes newswires and other distribution services. Similarly, while nonprofits cut across industries, the number of reporters working at such outlets has more than doubled over the past two decades. Today, nearly 1 in 10 reporters work at a nonprofit, whether an upstart neighborhood newsletter, a revered public broadcaster or one of several fast-growing public interest investigative shops.”
—Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, on a data story titled “Wait, does America still employ a ton of news reporters?” Spoiler alert: it does, but not so much at newspapers.
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Jim Brady, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman