Knight’s funding philosophy for 2024: ‘field ROI’
We seek a return for our investments that strengthens journalism’s role in local communities
We know this will be a year of big change in local journalism – and at Knight Foundation. Everyone knows about the significant collaborative funding initiative called Press Forward that will ramp up in 2024. We also have new leadership at Knight, as Maribel Pérez Wadsworth starts as our CEO and president on Monday. And we are seeking a new team member to fill the large shoes of Karen Rundlet, now the CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News. (By the way, if you’re interested in working at Knight as a program officer, drop us a note at recruiter@kf.org; a formal job description is coming shortly.)
With so much afoot, it felt like a good time to spell out the Journalism team’s grant-making philosophy for 2024. Our primary goal is for our grants to deliver what Knight’s Marc Lavallee calls “field ROI,” a return on investment that increases the likelihood local, independent journalism providers survive and thrive. You’ve probably heard of socially responsible investing (SRI), in which investors want to help make society better while also getting a return on their investments. Of course, Knight itself makes no money on successful investments; the return we seek is for strong, resilient, sustainable communities informed by local journalism. Good grant proposals contain good investment cases, and more experimental projects demonstrate a clear understanding of the risks they face.
Yes, this is the philosophy that has guided us for some time, but it’s important to reiterate that for the year ahead, as we and other funders operationalize Press Forward. A good analogy is renewable energy––the government invests in companies providing solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal energy, allowing communities to develop new energy sources, thus lessening or eliminating the need for recurring investment.
And the areas where we want to see that field ROI remain the same: sustainability; infrastructure; diversity, equity and inclusion; and technological and product innovation. Yes, sustainability is something we have hammered home time and time again, but it’s worth repeating that nothing newsrooms do—developing talent, expanding community engagement, experimenting with AI—matters if they can’t stay afloat. You can’t make a lasting impact if you can’t last.
Knight will—along with other Press Forward funders—directly support more newsrooms, but that won’t change our commitment to helping build the infrastructure of local journalism.
Talent development and DEI have also been an integral part of Knight’s DNA and, in 2024, that will continue apace, as you’ll see in some grants we’ll soon announce. Press Forward funders have also committed to deeper support for publishers of color and those news outlets that serve underrepresented communities.
On the product and tech strategy side, we’ll—of course—focus on new opportunities for artificial intelligence to support local news, and continue to invest in projects that make data more accessible to local newsrooms and deepen consumer engagement. Also, we know more Americans are turning to Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok to get their news, so we’re interested in projects using visual platforms to tell important local stories.
In the next few newsletters, we’ll go deeper on some of these individual priorities.
Whichever area we invest in, we will do it through the lens of field ROI. We will closely track how our investments help move publishers closer to sustainability—because sustainability creates the independence newsrooms need to best support their communities.
Other news around the horn…
Technology
🗳️ How to report on AI during elections? A recent poll from Associated Press (AP) showed that most Americans believe that artificial intelligence will be used to spread misinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election. So where does that leave reporters trying to sift through fact and fiction? IJNet recently ran a guide for reporters trying to cope with AI during election coverage around the world. One tip is to get to know exactly what AI is and isn’t, including understanding what algorithms and large language models such as ChatGPT actually do. Reporters should also consult various AI resources from the AP and Aspen Institute, and consider whether campaigns are even tech-savvy enough to use AI tools. It’s also important to tell the stories of people affected by the technology rather than just focusing on the tech. Most of all, don’t think of AI as a scary, out-of-control monster (at least, not yet). “Get grounded in what these models can do or can’t do in order to think about how they can be used to spread electoral disinformation or deepen threats to the public trust,” said AP global investigative journalist Garance Burke.
Mergers
🤝🏽 Mother Jones, Center for Investigative Reporting to merge. Two prominent investigative reporting nonprofits based in the San Francisco Bay Area—Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR)—agreed to merge to become a multimedia powerhouse. Both have been around since the 1970s, with Mother Jones being a progressive magazine and website, while CIR has been known mostly for its Reveal podcast and radio show. “By putting them together, it’s really a one-plus-one-equals-three situation,” said Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery. The two news outlets have a long history of collaborating, including on a recent Reveal podcast related to Mother Jones’ report on foster kids in psychiatric hospitals. The combined entity will have 73 journalists, and will be led by Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein. It will also have the benefit of a more diversified revenue stream, with Mother Jones’ individual donors and CIR’s foundation support. Learn more about the merger here.
Research
🗺️ Pivot Fund to map the news landscape of the Great Lakes. If Press Forward is to succeed in supporting newsrooms serving historically marginalized people, it will have to understand which news outlets communities of color trust. To help in that effort, two Press Forward funders, Joyce Foundation and McKnight Foundation, are investing in news landscape research of the Great Lakes states by The Pivot Fund, which has a history of doing similar work in Georgia. The project, which will start in Minnesota, will identify which local news outlets have earned the trust of communities of color. During its work in Georgia, Pivot Fund found seven trusted news outlets that mostly focused on social media platforms, and invested $2 million in their work. “This is a validation of the model we pioneered in Georgia to identify emerging news ecosystems,” said Pivot Fund CEO Tracie Powell. “The future of local news looks very different from its past.”
🔎 Diversity among investigative journalists still falling short. The folks we depend on to root out corruption and help vulnerable citizens—investigative reporters and editors—sadly do not reflect the communities they serve. That’s the finding from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), which surveyed 22 metro newsrooms (23 didn’t respond), and found that 60 percent of investigative reporters and 77 percent of investigative editors are white, with Hispanic and Black investigative reporters and editors coming in below the U.S. population breakdown. While the New York Times and Washington Post didn’t respond to the survey, others have been more responsive, with the Los Angeles Times adding three new diverse hires to its investigative team. Plus, the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica were lauded for efforts to diversify their workforce, including ProPublica’s new Investigative Editor Training Program, with all 11 participants identifying as people of color.
Impact
💰Early NewsMatch numbers are promising. NewsMatch is the holiday gift that keeps on giving for nonprofit newsrooms. The program gives national and local funders a way to support newsrooms with a pool of money to match what the newsrooms bring in from individual donations. And the campaign that ran last November and December had a record $7 million in matching funds from 18 funders, including Knight. The overall numbers aren’t in yet for the hundreds of participating newsrooms, but the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), which runs NewsMatch, reports that anecdotal evidence points to more individual donors participating. In one example, Voice of OC ran two stories that prompted a new major donor to contribute $60,000 from their donor-advised fund. That’s exactly the kind of contributor that NewsMatch can help newsrooms identify.
🚀 How the Henrico (Va.) Citizen boosted reader revenues. For many for-profit local news outlets, asking for donations has been an alien concept. But that’s slowly changing, and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative (a.k.a. Table Stakes) has helped change the equation. One good example is the Henrico Citizen, which has been around for 22-plus years, but has only started to focus on donations in the past few years. Citizen publisher Tom Lappas writes in Better News about how they have improved their “funnel” of readers to increase email newsletter subscriptions, which has led to more donations and donors. How did they do it? Lappas says they employed OptinMonster to improve their email subscribe pop-up messaging, leading to 40 to 50 new subscribers per day, and nearly doubling their subscriber list last year. Lappas also sent out 37 direct emails asking for donations, experimenting with timing and messaging, bringing in nearly $35,000 in donations from 574 donors. Plus, the news outlet has a Citizen Advisory Board that’s been helping them reach Black and Indian audiences.
Fellowships
Stanford University
Stipend of $125,000
Apply by January 24
Advancing Democracy Fellowship
Improve elections coverage
Hearken, Solutions Journalism Network, Trusting News
Up to $5,000 stipend per newsroom
Apply by January 19
Diverse editors and managers
In-person and online, with most travel costs covered
Apply by February 12
Upcoming Events 📅
Miami
February 21–22
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
“A successful strategy doesn’t just mean adding ‘en Español’ to a ‘lighter’ version of a news product, or creating a Latino section or vertical separate from the core product…To successfully approach Hispanic and Latino audiences you need to think big, create a business strategy you believe in, and give it time to grow. It’s about making a standalone business with its own brand personality.”
—Benjamin Morales Meléndez, managing editor of Diario Libre in the Dominican Republic, in his 2024 prediction for Nieman Lab
News @ Knight Credits
Written by Jim Brady, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman
A Knight + Dot Connector Joint