1p Transforming Local Journalism_ A Guide to Next-Generation Approaches to Rebuild Capacity

4:07PM Sep 6, 2023

Speakers:

Alma Martinez

Joaquin Alvarado

LaSharah Bunting

Bob Moore

Kinsey Wilson

Manami Kano

Keywords:

work

journalism

community

newsrooms

funders

philanthropy

years

talk

local

ai

el paso

organizations

central valley

question

manami

news

challenge

news organizations

rooted

folks

So uh welcome to the panel. And again, I apologize, we don't have more seats here for you. But thank you for being here. My name is Joaquin Alvarado with Studiotobe, I have had the privilege of working closely with everybody on this panel, this is really meant to be a discussion. We want this to be as practical and as directed as possible. And we're looking at two big things: What have we learned in the last 12 to 15 years of this movement? And I like to call it a movement because it actually gives us more language than just saving journalism, or transforming public media or all the good things happening. I think of it as a movement. And it covers a lot of ground. And I'm sure everybody in this room has their own piece of it. And it's all equally valuable. Quite frankly, there's a lot of stars, there's a lot of folks who have had, you know, enormous amounts of resources invested in them. And they've done great things with those. And then there's a lot of scrappy people that I've never heard of. And every time I meet them, I'm like, you're part of the movement. This is why we're doing a movement. So thank you for being here to discuss this movement. Second thing I want to talk about is again, with some questions, what's coming next, what's evolving here, I know, we got a lot of AI in the house. But we still have a lot of AI, which I refer to as human intelligence, trademark. So I feel well prepared, honestly. And I didn't start in journalism, I started in a whole other world. But about 13 years ago, I took a hard left into it. And I've always been remarkably just reinforced in my belief that we're gonna get there because of all the good people working on it. So I want to have the panelists introduce themselves quickly. I'm going to throw out some questions to get us started. And then again, get ready with your questions. I may just call on some folks in this room, but I'm going to start with the incredible leader of ONA LaSharah. Please introduce yourself.

Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, LaSharah Bunting, CEO and Executive Director of a winning I come to ONA after 20 year career journalism, most of which was spent at the New York Times and in a good chunk was spent at the Knight Foundation, where I oversaw investments in many things, including local news. So I think a lot of what I'll talk about might be coming from that perspective as well. So great to be here.

Alma.

Thank you. My name is Alma Martinez. I'm the Executive Director of the Central Valley journalism collaborative and I come from a background I am a bilingual radio reporter. I worked at ITV link where for 12 and a half years I was their first environmental health reporter, and healthcare reporter. Then I moved on to the corporate world, PR and the public sector. And I'm back to my journalism roots. I always say I'm a journalist at heart. So here, so honored to be here. Thank you.

Bob.

Hi, I'm Bob Moore. I'm the founder and CEO of El Paso matters, which is a nonprofit news organization that we founded in 2020. On the US Mexico border. This is my 40th year in journalism. Most of my career was spent at the El Paso Times with some other speed bumps in Colorado along the way. And it's good to be still in the game, I guess, after 40 years.

Kinsey

I am Kinsey Wilson. I'm the founder and head of news pack, which is a shared services platform for small and medium sized news organizations, independent news organizations, that is designed to help you publish great stories a little more easily and find some path to sustainability. So I've spent a long career before that sort of at the intersection of technology and journalism at various large media organizations.

Thank you Kinsey. Manami.

Hello, my Manami Kano. I'm an independent consultant now. But I think Joaquin asked me to be here because I have been in the funding space funding media and journalism for about 15 years. And one of the core projects that I continue to work on with journalism collaborative, called the racial equity and journalism Fund, which funds bipoc news publishers and network building. So that's why I'm here.

Thank you. Manami. I'm gonna start with you. And I see Jim just walked in Jim, if you can find a path. I have a chair for you here. Jim Brady from the Knight Foundation. Give it up for Jim Brady to please. Jim can work his way through any conference setup guys, including this complete improv night here? Manami I'm gonna take goes back. I think it's 13 years ago, you hosted a meeting at the Gates Foundation. This is when the Education Lab was still on mommy's desk at gates from solutions journalism network in the Seattle Times, flash forward. Many of these models have been promulgated, you're still on the front end of designing ways for philanthropy to have impact in this space. Can you talk a little bit more about why Reg, and how you see philanthropy being able to interact in its most productive form with local news and the transformation that's occurring?

That's a big question. Because I have both hopes for the ways that philanthropy has helped kind of catalyze new models and helped think about how we rebuild during this kind of time of massive disruption that's been occurring for the last 20 years. And I think one of the commitments that I've had is how do we use this disruption to reimagine a new form of journalism that really serves all communities, and that we don't recreate the past mistakes, harms, misrepresentations and exclusion that we've had? So the example that Joaquin talked about with the Seattle time solutions journalism was how do we even have a legacy paper of record, like the Seattle Times become much more community focused listening to community first, before it kind of designing its editorial agenda, on education in this example, and then, as I was doing the funding at the Gates Foundation, still working with many legacy, folks, Kinsey was NPR at the time. And it's just really hard to move these massive institutions to become more equitable to kind of think about transforming the way it does. Its does its work. So a group of funders, Ford Foundation, and others, I'm just like, the good group of funders have kind of changed over time have come together a Knight Foundation was also at the table. And in thinking about how do we also invest in new new publishers, and particularly, publishers of color, both the legacy but folks that are wanting to do do new startups to serve different forms of their community. And that's why the reg Fund was created. And we're still a drop in the bucket of what's needed, we generally give out about 5 million per year and what's needed is something close to it's crazy, like 16 billion annually for to serve all communities. But I think it's important that we start showing the experiments that can work and how how things can be done differently.

Bob, I want to go over to you because El Paso is a majority Latino community. It's on the border, you built a collaboration, not only with Spanish language media in the market, but also with journalists and a newsroom on the widest side. Can you talk about both that responsibility to serve an incredibly diverse place like El Paso was, while you're also building a startup along the way? And how do you embed that within the mission?

Yeah, thanks. The missions of both the collaborative and passive matters kind of overlap. In this sense, the the US Mexico border region, and El Paso and Juarez, specifically, is a community that has had its narrative hijacked by political forces. And very deliberately so and one of the reasons I think that's been able to occur is because of the lack of strong local storytelling to sort of respond to some of that. El Paso, and Juarez have similar challenges. They also have some very unique challenges individually. We're going to talk a lot today about the challenges that US media face. That's nothing compared to the challenges that our colleagues in Mexico are facing right now. So trying to figure out how to work through all of those obstacles, while main, you know, kind of keeping this North Star of telling accurate stories about a really diverse community has been challenging, but we've had a lot of success over the last three years, I think, particularly around not surprisingly, immigration issues, and bringing some some more, shall we say, realistic coverage to what's actually happening at the border. I am cringing in advance of the presidential debate tonight. Because that hijack narrative is going to play out in full force but just for anybody else watching if you hear the word invasion, if you hear the words war zone or something like that, it's bull Oh, shit. And we really need to make sure that we're pushing back on that. And that's not to say that we don't have challenges related to immigration along the border or anywhere else. But we have to be really careful that this, those stories are told to accurately and for people in El Paso, we take it quite seriously because that bullshit cost the lives of 23 of our neighbors in 2019. When a gunman bought into all of that rhetoric about invasion, that's the stakes here that we're talking about when we're trying to reclaim that narrative. And it's not my narrative to reclaim by the way, it's the community's narrative, we're just a tool to be able to help the community do that.

Let's Shara there's an amazing amount of AI on the schedule over the next couple of days. And I know OMA has has a strong vision for how to bring that kind of work for it just to expand a little bit, you know, Bob's building a digital first newsroom on news PAC, we'll come back to that. We need to introduce these tools, but they might also drive the misinformation, the disinformation that is exacerbating many of these political problems. From a programming standpoint, what is your leadership? What's your perspective on how to sort of address that?

You know, it's complicated, right? When we think about any technology, any emerging technology that we have been confronted with over the last 1015 years, there's a sort of pattern of it comes and we're really surprised, and then there's fear. And then there's, you know, and then there's adoption, right, and then we figure out how to use it, you know, as a tool for the work that we do. And I think the opportunity with AI, right, we're all we're all behind the curve, right? With AI, even people who work in tech. And I think the opportunity with AI is to confront that fear and say, Okay, we know that this can be a tool that's used for harm, but how can we use it for good, right? There's the fear that Oh, my goodness, this thing is going to take jobs away from us. And I think that's something that, you know, we watch, and we understand how we can use the how those tools can be used in that way. But I think that the focus is, how can we use this to, to make our journalism easier to do we can move that sort of human intelligence to the places where it needs to go? What are the ways that we can use AI to report on things that maybe a human did, bringing to light public meetings and other things like that? And so I think that's the that's the opportunity here, right? To sort of step back, take a deep breath, and say, Okay, this is here, we're here, let's not fight it. How can we use it as a tool for good and take control of it in the way that we hadn't? With these other technologies at the

gym? Can I get you in here? So do a quick intro, Jim. Not that you need one. And then my question to you is, you've been, you've been in the middle of this digital transformation, which is actually it's like 25 years old now, guys, right? Like the internet. So how important is what Lazar just said, in terms of getting it right? And then what are the risks for the movement? If we were to get it wrong? What is getting it wrong look like? And I'm gonna stand over here because it feels like I'm like, clap. I'm just this is like when you call it. Detention? Yeah,

just sorry for being late to that. escalator. Got me a second floor escalator enclosure. I think I mean, I think anytime we've spent AI is the latest example of us having an opportunity to like, take advantage of something new, and use it for good. And I think we have a pretty crappy track record of that in this business, I think we tend to like to say we like to embrace the threat and manage the opportunity. And I think with AI, we better manage the opportunity. I mean, embrace the opportunity and manage the threat. Yes, there's copyright issues, there's all sorts of issues related to AI, that truck is out of control. And AI is here, whether you like it or not. And to sit around and try to, you know, say well, we have to protect ourselves from AI can do an amazing number of things around going through public records at some amazing rate to actually help suggest stories based on other stories that you've done, not even just for the public, which is internally in your own newsrooms. I did a call this morning with someone who's in Britain embedding it in their newsroom tools, and they're suggesting, hey, you might want to interview this person for the story because you interviewed them for a story like this five years ago, you know, so they can really can help us and I think if we focus too much on that, any whatever the next new thing is, I think we just have to get out of this cycle in German and journalism of always fearing the new thing because other people don't fear the new thing and they make much better use of it than we do. And so I think this is a case where it's like, sure, we got the challenges we have to sort out but let's not get too defensive about it or else we'll be talking in five years about we can't screw this one up like we screwed up AI, you know, because I feel like we've been doing that with the new thing like every five years for about 20 years.

Kinsey I want to bring you in because I You know, I think I've been involved with about four content management system projects that were all funded by philanthropy, none of which are currently being used by a single newsroom today. So AI is this enormous opportunity. It's also an enormous computational technological workflow challenge. We got a lot of newsrooms that are still struggling with the kinds of things that news pack seeks to resolve. Give us a sense of how it's going, number one, and two, what's what's the what's the hockey stick look like for news pack from where we are now to where you want it to be?

There's a lot to cover there. So broadly, it's going well, I mean, the last time I think there was a big investment like this, and a platform was when the Knight Foundation put $900,000 against the Texas Tribune and the San Francisco Bay citizen, and covering

it up. It was called Django let's not talk about

and and it's, it's still in use, and being you know, has been incredibly valuable for the Texas Tribune, but it never took off. I guess the advantage we've had is twofold. One is we're inside of a large technology organization, which makes it a lot easier, I can hire engineers easily. And we can scale this. But we've also recognized that we have to bring philanthropic dollars to bear because money is so tight within journalism, that it's really hard to run these businesses if you're charging what it costs to maintain a platform like this. So we're, we're walking this kind of tightrope, one of the unintended consequences. That's been a pleasant surprise. And it ties back to what you were talking about with AI is, we've also sort of inadvertently created a community that now I think we have 1200 members in Slack, who can test out various innovations that as they come along, I mean, the most recent example of this with AI is we invited a company called Noda, which is, was founded by a couple of folks from the LA Times who were specifically trying to use AI for constructive journalistic applications. We introduced them to our community asked for volunteers who might beta test stuff they were doing got about a dozen. And they're working together now. And I think it's a way to take some of the fear factor out of it, their colleagues can watch it and sort of see where they're taking it. And then we can take the best of that and either do an enterprise agreement with them or find ways to scale it, and make it easy to embrace and use the sort of testimonials from the folks who beta tested that to affirm that it's worth, not that it's just safe, but it's worth devoting time and energy to because so many of these organizations are hard pressed and struggle to even find the attention that they can pay to these kinds of things. How many newsrooms currently 232 I think, as of yesterday,

how far away is 2000 2000 is

a ways away. Six months, I mean, it's it's we can we can scale to launching more. It part of it is driven by, you know, it's a, it's a big decision, to shift and to move. And so, right now we're bringing 68 on board a month. But if there were larger interest, we can scale to take on a far larger number.

Well, I just will cite two examples when I'm closely involved with the Aurora Sentinel, which we have converted to community ownership and Colorado, serving the most diverse community in Colorado by far, and the team was amazingly accessible. And it was a lot of work, we had a really messy situation. This morning, I was on a call with Carmela from Wena, who is the Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. And as much as we all do, if you're stateside here, there's nothing compared to the risk that journalists are under in the Philippines right now similar what's going on in Mexico, they're going over to news pack. And again, the ability to have high touch feels like an important part of moving people towards shared solutions. What's the gap though? For others? I mean, it's there's one problem you need to solve to get more scale, what is it?

One problem we need to solve. I mean, I think it's mostly just introducing the platform to people and helping them understand the ease with which we can move them over. I mean, part of the we made a decision early on to migrate everybody for free. It's a five to six figure cost. And everybody's on a month to month contract. So if they only hang around for six months, we lose all that money. So we've got to be good stewards of the platform. But we did that specifically to sort of get the biggest barrier out of the way because it's both a financial burden. And it's a sort of psychic burden. If you have to take 10 years, 20 years, however many years it is of content and move it over and learn an entirely new system. So getting getting the word out and having people understand that it's easier than they probably imagined and maybe the biggest obstacle is scaling.

So Alma with that, I'm going to pivot over to you almost the new executive director of the Central Valley journalism collaborative. Do folks know what the Central Valley in California is? Like? How closely familiar are you? Okay. Just a little bit about the place. And then about what is the Central Valley journalism collaborative and we use a term called superstructure. What does that mean?

So first of all, the Central Valley in California is probably one that you guys all missed. But it's the heart of California. Without the Central Valley, a lot of us wouldn't be here. The food that we grow, feeds a lot of people. And the food that we grow is on the shoulders of a lot of people of farmworkers of people that have, believe it or not, lots of economic issues, lots of health issues. I mean, we are the Central Valley. If you look at it, we're a bowl and we have veins going through the bowl, which are the highway five, the highway 99 that transports this food in and out of our of our of our Central Valley and we are one of the places one of the basins that are the most dirtiest air in the country. The worst patient doctor ratios, the worst education like we are a community that has a lot of challenges, but we're up community has a lot of opportunities. So our general, the majority of the population in the Central Valley is Latino. We have a growing also Hmong, Punjabi population, Indian population, Hindu Indian, and an API community that's really vibrant. So we are a very, very diverse community and we are really a place that can be can be responsive to one of the most pressing needs in the newsrooms around the nation is of diversity. We're a very, very diverse place. And we're very resilient place. So I call the valley where the land of promise right because communities now parents, their children that you know, they came as farmers, my dad was a farm worker like I came to this country. I was three, we came undocumented, my dad was a sheep herder. He went on to the fields, he became a business owner. You know, I was I had the honor of, you know, going to Fresno State, studying journalism, working at Robby linguist for 12 and a half years and really learning what the challenge is, and, and the resiliency of our people of our handlers. So I feel that we are definitely a land of promise and coming back to the journalism world. As as executive director for the Central Valley journalism collaborative, I see us as being also that resiliency for the newsrooms, we are going to be the safety net for newsrooms in the Central Valley and is working very rightfully said, there's many deserts, many news deserts in our area. And the challenge is you guys all know, right for us, as in many areas across the country is it's not an issue like, oh, they don't have our newsroom. No, it's an issue of life and death when it came to COVID. Who were the people that were passing away with it, that were dying, who were the people that did not have access to broadband internet to find resources to connect to their doctors, it was people that were in rural areas that didn't have those connections, people that tattling wedge barriers. So I feel that the work that we're doing is so imperative and going back to your question, talking about the superstructure. So what we're doing is building basically a hub and spoke model our the center of our our spoke is going to be Merced the heart which is where I grew up, actually so I have this is very, very near and dear to my heart it's rooted into, I'm a valley Central Valley champion cheerleader. So the Merced Sun Star is really practically you know, non existent in the area. Last banjos enterprise which I grew up reading, and which helped me learn English Believe it or not, because I'm an English language learner is gone. So with that in mind, the jamesy McClatchy foundation established this organization to again start Merced as that center spoke with hubs around as we are really being very deliberate in interacting with other cities and really dreaming up with them. What will be theirs newsroom, we're doing that in Sacramento and Stockton, we're doing that in Modesto, really engaging the community because as I when I got this job, I'm like, it's such a big job. And I think Joaquin said it, not one person has the answer to this. I think all of us have a piece of the pie. And only then will we be able to to really make sure that our communities have the news that they need to make the decisions to make better communities and for them to thrive.

And I will point out, this is the culmination of about four years of work to bring more philanthropy into partnership with newsrooms, but there are significant gaps in available newsrooms a to work with and then the health and ongoing sort of leadership at other newsrooms. So but it's particular because it's A space. So I want to bring a question to Manami that I'm gonna then rebound over to Jim, with the racial equity and journalism fund. These are largely national funders, right? Or do you have play space funders? That's one question one, two, how can we get more place based investment into these kinds of initiatives? And then Jim, I don't know how much you can say or not say, but just what is the role of regional funders in accelerating the market transformation, but but we want you to start.

So that is true. Right now, the majority of the funders at the table are all national funders. But we the fit almost 50 organizations, news organizations, that the fund is supporting our local and community organizations. And it's primarily because the national funders can't actually make small grants. And the grants are in the site between 100 to about 250,000. So relative to the budget that the Gates Foundation night or Ford Foundation, those are considered small, and they're not able to do something in Merced, or in Pittsburgh, or just in Philly. So they're using the fun, but the funder collaborative as a mechanism to go into local communities. And again, as I mentioned, it's not large enough to do all communities. So it does have to make choices and it can't be everywhere. And so having local funders take up the mantle once say, we are able to do something in Memphis, Tennessee, from a national perspective, then hopefully, some of the local funders kind of see the opportunity there and fill in the gap. So that's kind of how we've been approaching it.

Jim, can you just comment insight on this?

Yeah, I mean, certainly, we look for local funders, you know, there are many things that we will partially fund, maybe even 10% 15%. But we generally will not go in and fund a brand new thing in a local market, unless there are local funders. And because that's the path forward, the long term path forward for those organizations is going to be local funders, because neither other national foundations are unlikely to fund the same local site for five 610 years. Because you know, the way I always try and people sometimes gonna wish that wasn't so but the way I always try to describe it is I, I want to be able to take this money I'm giving you next year and give it to the next you next year, and not keep giving it to you year after year, because there are a bunch of people who could also use this money who are not going to be able to get it if we have to keep giving the same amount year after year. So can you get some local funders and we're happy to be a seed funder, we're happy to jump on a call and explain why we think this is worth funding. But you got to get some other people at the table because that is the long term path. I should note too, though, that the worst kept secret in journalism, I think is a fun that's coming together to kind of put money into local journalism and heard about it. What is it? Yeah, exactly. That's the before

before you say anymore. Does everybody know what he's joking about? Does anybody not know what he's talking about? Oh, boy, okay, one person. Okay. You when you get the first grant? Well, let me because you've got the advantage of having a former night person next to you. And let's start. Let's start. Can I ask you to also lean into this question a little bit? Like, you know, Knight has an enormous power. I was not in journalism, but I was on the board at TechSoup. Does people know about TechSoup. Global. You all don't know about TechSoup? Look it up. And I went to the media learning seminar. So the ability to bring folks together. Go ahead.

Yeah, I was gonna add that. So one thing so I was at night for about four years in the thing that I noticed over my time, which was right before Jim joined the, the way that local foundations talked about journalism or eat were even willing to be in you know, in the game, right. So we have this innate, Not we but yeah, hard. I know. Now, the foundation has a night media forum, right. And it's it's a great place to come. Everybody wants an invite to it. But the the sort of secret like goal of that was always to get local funders get regional funders place based funders excited about journalism, that was a place to bring them in, they can hear about all the cool things that were happening. And we found success year over year, with funders who, you know, I'm thinking of Kansas, I mean, in Colorado, where there was just a lot of excitement that came as a result of that, I think also the are dying democracy. And is is, you know, pushing funders on the local scale to be to start to fund these things that they hadn't before.

Out of curiosity. Oh, go ahead, Jim. Yeah, no,

I was just gonna say I'm well, sure. I just said is absolutely true that a lot of funders who have who fund democracy historically have not put journalism under that umbrella are now moving it under that umbrella. So I think that's a very positive change.

I'm gonna give some props because the model that Manami seeded with the education lab was the foundation for the curriculum. My partner Seattle times when and LMA launched the journalism philanthropy lab. Has anyone been through that lab and hear that I don't see your eyeballs right now. We've trained about 90 newsrooms, we've raised over $20 million. And these are not again, these are all over the country, all kinds of newsrooms. So the methodology works from kind of collapsing these things. I do have one follow up with Shara now that you're running on a are there local funders here?

Um, I think we have a local funder. local funder.

Does anybody have money you do? Well, how much money do you work with?

What's the name of it? Coachella Valley journalism. Do you got to talk to Allah? I know different Valley. But it is a valley and you're a founder or you. Work with a New Jersey cific information? Which is the country publicly funded nonprofit? Does everybody know about this? Raise your hand if you know about this. So before we wrap up this meeting, and this is going to be the most dangerous time we spend together, I'm going to attempt to plug in my laptop and show you guys a top secret project we've been working on I'm calling it the news genome project to list everything happening in this movement. It's imperfect. And I want your help. Because if you go right now to find every single funder, every single award, every single fellowship, every single everything that's going on, it doesn't exist. And so as we were working on that guide book, we kind of had to build that for ourselves. And then we started to build a visualization. So I'm gonna give you a secret preview of it. You can't tell anybody about it. But I want to come back over here for a second and then get your questions ready. So I have I have one more question that it's questions over here. So, Bob, again, you came out of legacy news. And we know the story. What is the one thing that you wish you knew at the beginning of starting El Paso matters that you learned along the way?

I take it in part, it ties into this idea of regional funders. And I absolutely agree with the need to get regional funders involved. The challenge is that regional funders are not evenly distributed across the United States. And, and you mentioned Memphis earlier as an example, one of the smartest people in this space to me is Wendy Thomas from from MLK 50,

where's when they give it up for wedding?

So what Wendy says about her work in Memphis, I think is really illustrative. You know, she says her job is to blow up the status quo in Memphis. Many of those regional funders are the status quo. And so that's some difficulty that we run into in places like El Paso, which is a community where the average weekly wage is 62% of the national average, where wealth is incredibly low. We have a community foundation in El Paso that has been super supportive of us. We have two large family foundations that every nonprofit in El Paso goes to for funding that yet. And that's a city of 870,000. I think one issue that is certainly worth talking about, too, is the challenges faced in rural communities where you have zero regional funders. So I think understanding that that ecosystem would have been helpful. I've been very lucky to get a lot of national support as we've been building. But I do think it's true that the local response to this is what's going to make organizations work over time. That is an immense challenge that I don't think we're paying enough attention to right now.

Yeah, Jim, one thing, Bob's right about that there are huge chunks of the country that don't have philanthropy. I think one of the other focuses of a lot of national philanthropy has been to try to build systems that can bring down the cost of publishing so that where you don't have the money to go get the money, at least we can help you, you know, produce the journalism, you know, using news back, which is much certainly much cheaper than going and building your own content management system and mistake. Many of us have made that mistake, raise your hand, right. We all have, whether it's getting pro bono legal support, or whether it's tapping into a news revenue hub does to help people launch membership programs. I do think we're trying to focus on those kinds of systems. So that the cost of actually doing the work goes down to because there are places where that's not going to be an option to raise The money so at least let's make it cheaper to do the work. So there's a lot of us I know talking about that as part of this thing coming up.

Yeah. Menominee microphone Twitch there?

Well, I was also just thinking about the role of philanthropy in to be actually focused on those places that don't actually have the local resources. I think one of the major problems with where journalism has really, you know, especially, you know, I think nonprofit journalism is super important, but where it's been most successful is where there has been more affluence where there's been concentrations of wealth and, and then therefore, that the news gathering, the journalism actually serves that population, and we still haven't been able to serve the most marginalized in our country that you and El Paso's Central Valley are talking about. So I just wanted to flag that. And also, can I ask a question of Jim, who, you know, you started talking about the worst kept secret coming up. And I would love to just hear if if there was something you can share about that, and how it might actually remedy some of these, these huge gaps that we have, and kind of rebuilding, reimagining local journalism

a little bit. No, I mean, but it's basically a number of of national and local funders putting money into a five year effort to be able to significantly increase the amount of money put into local news in the United States. And so it's a lot of money. And I can't say how much yet because I don't actually know the number today, but it's, it's a lot. It's nine figures and going up. And I think the idea here is that we're starting to see gains in the system, we're starting to see interesting projects that are gaining traction, both from an audience perspective, and you know, and importantly, tonight, we focus very heavily on the sustainability a local journalism, because the more you can pay for what you do over and over again, the more people can be out there doing it. And so, so we're focused a lot on on trying to get people into the system to help with sustainability of local journalism to help launch in places where there are not news organizations right now. And places that don't have the, the local funding to create them. So I mean, it's about all I can say at the moment, just be ready for it. It's not far off the announcement. And it's a it's a lot of dollars, and that will have a local component as well. I'm sorry, a local funding component, like a place where local funders can get into the overall program to help very specifically their community as opposed to joining a big national fund.

Okay, let's hands up. If you have a question or a comment. That's good. Yes. All right, let's go over here. And tell us your name stand up, or

My name is Josh Landis and I founded a nonprofit news organization. So it's great to hear all of it. It's called Nexus media news. And it's based in New York, and it is all about climate change and environmental justice. One question, we've interacted with some folks who are funding local initiatives. And one of the things that comes up, we're distributed, we have people who work on under contract and staff in different places around the country. They say, Oh, where are you local to? And we'll say, Well, we're kind of local to multiple places. And they often say that's not local enough. So how do you, you know, expand the you know, the talent pool to these places, you mentioned that fill up the philanthropic dollars don't reach certain areas. And we actually, we produced the documentary out of the central value and love to share that with you with a person who lived in the Central Valley. So but anyway, how does that work? Because ultimately, you want a dispersed, you know, reporting, but you may not have individuals in all those places for the amount of time you need them in all those places to be considered officially local.

I'll take a stab at that.

Yeah, for me, homegrown is best. So I mean, we're thinking of increasing the pipeline, but I see what you what you talk about. It's really creating partnerships, right? With the universities with a really, I think the sweet spot is the community colleges, we had an amazing opportunity to visit Delta College in Stockton. They're doing amazing work around digital media. And they have students that are going to be actually applying to some of our jobs. So just I'm going to do a shameless plug here. We are hiring. So go to our website. So CV local journalism.org. So I think to that point, I understand that there is that that vacuum, but I really encourage folks to think about looking at those communities, again, making those relationships making efforts to really connect with the communities, even the community groups. Because the one thing I think, and I this is like what pains me what happens with communities of color communities that are hard pressed, is that, you know, people want to come and say, Oh, I'm here. I'm local. And you know what? No, like, it really takes rooted like people that know the issues. And I feel that making those partnerships, making those genuine communication, you know, efforts and partnerships really, really make positive results. And it routes, rich relationships, long term trusting relationships. So

we've had a weird unintended consequence of the community REPORTING LAB model where we get funded in markets that can't afford to hire reporters for this kind of coverage. They come for a year or two, and then they get poached up to larger markets. This has happened within reporting labs of different types. So it is a big one. And also, I would just say, I think I met Kinsey in 2008. If we had had a child together, that kid would be in high school. Okay, like the pipeline, we got time here to build a pipeline. And I'd be happy to pair it with you. Because anytime. Other questions or comments, Yes, over here on the right. And who are you who's holding the mic? Who's helping us? I'm Valerie. Valerie, thank you give it up for Valerie. stand please stand.

Oh, stand. My name is Abdullah Lee. I'm a freelance writer here in Philadelphia from Philly. You bring up an interesting point. I forget your name about rootedness. And in response to that person's question. So I want to talk about this this idea of local journalism. From the standpoint of Philadelphia, right, you have the inky, which is the Enquirer. And so this idea of of investing in local journalism is great. But oftentimes you find that the folks who are reporting on very vulnerable populations are not rooted here and rooted in the cities that they report on, even though there's language of local what does that actually mean? Like, let's unpack that a bit. And talk about what it means when folks aren't actually from the place that they're reporting on. Don't live in a place that you're reporting on, especially when it comes to crime, and gun violence. So let's, let's actually get to that question about local journalism, what it is, what does it mean to be local? I love I loved your framing of rootedness. And also, there has to be a way in journalism to get to where we want to be. I forget your name you mentioned, like very clearly about like those investments in underserved communities. And you said something that I think it's brilliant around like how in like a flu in places you have better, you know, coverage or better storytelling. There has to be a way to cultivate relationships with people in communities. That should be actually working. And these newsroom is not a privilege is there right, as people who have been generationally rooted in a place to be stewards of those narratives, and these newsrooms will not hire them because of lack of experience, not the right credentials, then went on to award yet they haven't haven't worked in newsrooms, I want some conversation about that.

So one thing I'll add about that. When I was at night, I had this I remember having this realization, that when we, when we write the industry talked about local news, it was The Philadelphia Inquirer, right. That is what we talked about. Maybe, you know, maybe the alternative, maybe this other, you know, paper, this other thing that's come up, but it was very much rooted in the legacy. What was often excluded from those conversations, were news organizations that were founded and led by people of color. So for many people, and I think in you know, and I would challenge you all in the room, like when you think of local news, are you including those, you know, news organizations in your own personal definition of that, I think the challenge that exists with philanthropy, and it's improved over time, but I think the challenge is that thinking still exists. And I and I, you know, it's opened up a lot, you know, funding reg and all and all these other things have happened. But But I think that's, that's a challenge that we all have to navigate. Because these are the people who are giving the money. These are the people who are doing the convenings. These are the people who are writing the white papers. And there are a lot of people out here who are challenging those notions. And again, it's improved, but I think there's still a lot of work for us to do.

Do you want to get in there

on that real quick? I think when we talk about news deserts, too, I think the praises had a lot of power, and it's had a lot of resonance. But I think most cities have what I would call micro deserts, that there might be news organizations that are covering the city but they're not covering the entire city. They're not covering certain communities, often communities of color, are under underprivileged. communities. And I think that's, that's a, that's something we have to we can't just look at a city that has six news organizations and say, thumbs up, we're done. They're covered, because they're not. And that's why we did a grant 2021 I think I saw John Sela stand in here somewhere. The night LMA bloom Lab, which is helping 26 Black publishers kind of make the transition to digital from an economic, technical and editorial standpoint, because none of those none of those 26 organizations are technically in a news desert. But if those papers had gone away, or those publications had gone away, the hole would have been gaping in those communities. So Kinsey,

I mean, one of the things that I've observed that makes me hopeful about this is that it used to be, you know, media demands, scale and consolidation in order for the economics to work. And you saw it with chains consolidating and, and, you know, big metro papers coming together and claiming to represent the entire community. And part of that was was driven by the economics, the fact that it was, that was how you got scale. That's how you made the money work. What's interesting about the moment we're in now is you can provide services and technology that scale, and yet still support locally controlled individually owned small scale media organizations, and that have, you know, boots on the ground in the local community in a way that simply didn't work in an earlier era. And we're, you know, it's early days, we're right at the beginning of that. But part of what's been fascinating to watch where I sit is, you know, we've got organizations that consist of two or three people, in some cases, there are others that have 50. And they're figuring out how to begin to network together and form alliances, you know, and in states or across rural communities, and so forth. And that, that's a nascent part of this whole movement that I think is something to watch and something to encourage

something, just piggybacking on what Mushara said, and really looking at ethnic media. So what we've discovered in the Central Valley, and what I saw, you know, working, you know, for City Hall in Fresno, when I worked there is like, there are so many buckets of rich culture in the Central Valley. And I challenge all of you guys to look at those communities, and they are writing amazing news for their own lives for their own communities, that is really siloed and is not being shared throughout the community. So I do go back to your communities, go look at those communities that are doing amazing work in themselves. And you'll see what everybody else is missing out on because there's definitely golden nuggets there. And even a pipeline of potential journalists that can provide news with that angle to the mainstream. So

I'm gonna just freestyle, we have time for maybe 1.5 more questions. I see one here and there. But the other thing I would say, having worked in public media around these issues, strong advocacy, and accountability are required to make progress. Right. So I'm working with the community in Northern California, I won't name it. But it's about 50%, POC 50%, affluent white, the public broadcaster in that market makes a lot of money off donors in this community doesn't have a single reporting resource in the community. So I was like, Y'all are a community call the CEO asked for a meeting, because everybody who's in charge needs to also be accountable. Right. And so being able to have a maintained, like, respectful, but what it needs to have some pressure pressure conversation, and I will move on, I apologize, but

indirectly, because there's a ton of advocacy work by folks of color, black bowl. Next, folks, I think choir and outside have been acquired. So when we talk about countability, that's just such a word that gets used in the whole review.

Because to your point,

I forget your name, but I'm sorry, to say like, paid better storytelling better dollars, right or not better dollars more dollars and influence faces in areas that to the choir in mood music musicians that are are well, I mixed, they don't see folks who are marginalized as, as the community's age should. That's where the lack of accountability comes in. Maybe when we're talking for years, like, you're not, you're not doing right by these communities that are vulnerable. So we can't just throw accountability out there. As if that's, you know,

I totally hear you and I don't know the Phillies situation at that depth. So I definitely appreciate what you're saying. And I would like if you can hang out a little bit after we can maybe compare some more notes. Okay, I have a hand here. And then one more here go.

Yeah, actually, my question is very much in the same vein, but a little different. Have a perspective. So like, and I wrote it down just so I can be really pointed. In 2020. We saw a lot of fun. stations, journalism foundations general regional local foundations give money to non white LED organizations. This wasn't because they saw that you know, certain health disparities that are certain rise know, they saw a black man getting murdered right by a police officer. And they were then questioned right what their position in the broads kind of philanthropy sector is even in now they're gone. Right? A lot of that money is has not been consistently given to those same organizations that have always needed it. Even white LED, you know, media organizations that hire di folks or have long forgotten those positions. So and normally the conversation is around economics, business model better journalism. But, you know, I'm wondering Manami Mushara, if you could really speak to the kind of racism, adult ism and sexism that's based into the process of soliciting funds. And what local non white LED organizations can expect going forward. And this is speaking as a reg, you know, cohort member, right, shift press, he's a shift press over in Houston, Texas. So, you know, I'm wondering what can we expect right, going forward?

I mean, you want to start off?

Actually, I would love for actually, maybe, Jim to start on this one, if you wouldn't. Mind? Yeah.

I mean, I'm not going to, I can't speak to I'm not going to validate just say like, well, well, I have to be as racist if I'm not gonna go there. I mean, I think we all over the I will do the job two years. So sorry. Well, I can't speak for all i can only I can't speak for all philanthropy, I work at one foundation. So okay, well, that's an opinion.

No, I'm one I let me let me let me let me let me ask a little bit more pointed, just so I don't. I'm not gaslit. Right. So I really want to further the notion, right, for someone from a major journalism organization to say to me, Hey, I love your business model. This is really cool. But I don't necessarily believe that you all are the team to do it. What is that? Right,

that's a terrible thing to say, the whole idea of a good business model is that is what we fund, we're trying to find people who can put a good business model together. And the only way you can find out if that model works is to let somebody run it.

Yeah. I'm curious of like, how do we transform? Because this is about transformation? How do we transform our values in the major philanthropy space around who's worth funding? Right, who's worth getting that journalism job? That's in that local? You know, so that's where I want the conversation to go? You know, and actually kind of, there's no resolve to my to my question, for sure. But I really want like an honest conversation about it.

And my work, I honestly don't I mean, I, we have funded, we have funded the hundreds of things that I've taken the job that span, economy, race, gender, sexual orientation, I think we've I don't think we've I don't think it would be, I don't think he could really poke a hole in like what we funded over the last five years and said that we have focused too much on anyone, if anything, we get criticized, spoken too much on business models, that we should fund newsrooms have good ideas. But I think the reason we don't do that is because things I said earlier is we can't fund things in perpetuity. We want those organizations to come up with their own business models. And be honest, when we talk about this kind of infrastructure funding that we do one of the goals, my core goal for infrastructure funding is to democratize media because too long, the people have had access to money have actually been primarily been white. So that part of it I absolutely agree with you on think the idea of trying to build these infrastructure pieces so that anybody can plug in and use them is that we don't want I don't think I don't think philanthropy wants to be in the business of identifying winners. I think philanthropy wants to be in the business of building systems. So that winner is going to identify themselves. That means plugging into content management systems, and all these other things. So that a small publisher in a small town somewhere can start doing really good work, and have people notice it without them having to spend $10,000 $20,000 Launching a site. So I think a lot of the work that we're doing with this new initiative, and what we've done the last couple years is to try to build systems that are much more democratic than the old system of saying, Hey, I have a phone number, somebody at night foundation, I think I can get some money. You should be able to get money from philanthropy without knowing anybody who works in philanthropy. And I think it's probably been safe to say that's not how it's been for the last 10 years. Go ahead,

if I may. So, I think philanthropy is due for its own moment of reckoning. Right now It's a hard place to be in. And I can speak for myself as a black woman who worked in a philanthropy it was, you know, my experience is not unique to my foundation, I could have been at any foundation. And there's tensions that exist, right? There's things that I want to fund that I can't for any number of reasons outside of my control, right? MIP some are rooted in the strategic, you know, aim, some are rooted in someone else's unfair misgivings, right, of people of color, and maybe not thinking there are the people who can lead it, right. I'm speaking broadly. So yes, you both are absolutely correct, in that it is an uneven playing field that exists. I am hopeful, right, like, I'm a realist, but I remain very hopeful that philanthropy is shifting. This is it's a big institution. And it's gonna take a very long time for it to get to where it needs to be. But I am hopeful that with folks like yourselves who you know, even myself from the inside, who are trying to challenge those norms, right? To it for it to be okay to say, you know, philanthropy is often rooted in white supremacist notions, like, let's just be honest about that. Because when you're honest about it, you're able to really move forward in the way that you need to move forward, right. And so, but I do believe there's hope to get to where we need to be, and it's going to take a while to get there, but I think we can, we're

sure we're almost out of time. But just given where we are, in this conversation, you are leading this organization, we're all here because of your leadership and this conference, which you lead, you have some power now. So what's your plan to exercise? What do you what do you focus on?

Oh, my goodness. In the context of what we're talking about, or just why are we want to take speaking, um, so I believe really deeply in the power of collaboration and partnerships. Equal collaboration, right? And nothing that's extractive I think we are stronger together. That certainly has been a thing that's out there for news organization. And I think that journalism support organizations can do more to, you know, come together and serve the industry, too, to make us stronger, very interested in AI, very, very interested in AI in the ways that I talked about in the beginning, for us to take this technology, and not be fearful of it and take control of it and use it in a way that's going to serve, to serve the communities that we serve and serve the industry. equity, and inclusion is very, very important to me, one of the reasons why I loved OMA as a member for so long. And even as the funder as the relationship manager for OMA when I was at night is that this is a place that is inclusive, and it feels welcoming. And it feels like we can have these open and honest conversations and it is okay. And I want to do my best to continue to facilitate that. And you know, outside of that, it's all the other stuff, provide training, provide support, create a space for people to network and to connect. But we are going through we will be going through a strategic planning process over the next several months. And so we are examining everything and open to your ideas. email me my email is on the website if I could, if I could make that play. I really am interested in hearing people's ideas and what you want for the community.

Great. Okay, we're are out of time. Two quick housekeeping things. I'm going to now that we're done, I'm going to put this QR code up we're passing out these guide books, which we're distributing today. And is this room taken right after this Hannah? I will slowly put up this preview which I promised while I'm slowly trying to get this room back in order. I thank everybody for the questions that came up. I appreciate you all being here. Thank you to the panelists a little round of applause

Okay, and stay stay tuned for the QR code.