UPDATE: Saving Local News
/By Russ Walker
April, 2022
(Editor’s Note: In the fall of 2019 we devoted an entire issue to the crisis facing local news organizations—TV, radio, print and online. You can find the umbrella article in that issue here. The following piece is an update from someone who’s been fighting that battle first hand for years: Russ Walker, an original contributor to this site.)
come to you as a twice-failed executive editor of nonprofit newsrooms. A model leader, I am not.
Consequently, I’ve tended to look on warily as media thinkers boldly declare the nonprofit approach to be a good and viable one for startups and legacy newsrooms alike.
Until recently, I’d say there are far too many problems with how nonprofit journalism organizations are forced to raise money, and how they’re often matched against better funded and staffed organizations that have the edge when it comes to landing big grants and other support.
That jaded view was based on my first foray into this world, which came in 2008 and 2009, a challenging time for any sort of enterprise given the global economic tsunami and the resulting Great Recession.
Amid that financial chaos, however, there was actually money available for nonprofit newsrooms, from big institutional grant-makers and rich individuals alike. Even herding many hundreds or thousands of small-dollar donors (members!) to cover a significant portion of newsroom expenses wasn’t impossible.
But what was frustrating to me then – and why I failed in that role – was the chase for big donations, whether in the form of grants or the generosity of high net-worth individuals.
Then, and even still today, there were lots of funders offering handsome sums for journalism projects. To tap into those funds, however, required tailoring pitches to suit each donor’s whims. That meant hours of research and drafting pitches, then more hours of phone calls and the inevitable revisions to the pitches. When luck struck and the check was cut, newsroom leaders still faced the task of updating the funder, meaning more phone calls and written reports.
A scrappy, under-resourced newsroom like the one I ran was stretched thin. Sure, my leadership was far from perfect, but the never-ending hunt for funders, and the reorienting of newsroom priorities to secure those funds, felt like a long road to madness.
I believe that model – chasing piles of money designated for very specific editorial projects – favored the few big, well-connected operations, places like ProPublica.org, Kaiser Health News and the Texas Tribune, to name just a few. With their mastheads of rock star editors and reporters, they could lure lots of no-strings-attached donations, and they always had the inside track on the generous grants from the Big J journalism foundations.
Good for them.
Ten years later, I took on a similar role, just in time for COVID-19 to upend the world. The circumstances were different in this case, as the sponsor organization was searching for a way out after a change in leadership and a fear that the pandemic would dry up donations. A year after I arrived, the project was merged with a similar one to most everyone’s satisfaction.
But in my time leading it, I found myself back to chasing rich people, grant programs and trying to build a membership model. All that, while also running a small newsroom.
It’s hard enough to do one thing well, but raising money AND managing staff was a recipe for failure on my part. I focused my energy where my strengths lay – journalism – and reluctantly engaged in the essential task of raising money.
That’s the background that influenced my thinking for this piece – frustration, shame and too much cynicism.
Then, in late February, I tuned into this year’s Knight Media Forum, an annual gathering of the top news media elites and nonprofit funders. It’s where big ideas to save journalism are introduced and debated, with plenty of show-and-tell from participating organizations.
This year’s agenda included sessions on business models for local journalism, strategies on hiring and mentoring journalists from diverse backgrounds, and encouraging more collaboration between publishers.
What I saw throughout the forum surprised me in a very good way. Journalism leaders and funders are talking openly about how the nonprofit business model requires training and support for the all-important administrative and financial side of the house.
Unlike a decade ago, there now are multiple organizations built around growing the business and management skills needed to create effective development teams capable of chasing big grants, wealthy donors and individual members. Like any type of business, running a nonprofit takes practice and experience to succeed. It left me with some ideas—but first, I want to credit some of the people who impressed me:
Sue Cross, who leads the Institute for Nonprofit News, which works on everything from coaching nonprofit newsroom leaders on how to grow and increase the diversity of revenue streams to honoring the best reporting from nonprofit journalism outlets.
There was Steve Waldman, a co-founder of Report for America, which places journalists in newsrooms around the country and pays up to half of each reporter’s salary. You may have seen him profiled on 60 Minutes where he talked about how his organization not only places journalists in newsrooms where they are needed, but also coaches editors and publishers on how to raise the funds to cover their portion of a reporter’s salary.
Kinsey Wilson spoke about the work of Newspack, a Google-backed effort to help nonprofit publishers adopt the WordPress publishing system. Another presenter was Mary Walter-Brown of the News Revenue Hub, which educates and trains nonprofit newsroom leaders on how to raise money.
There are more organizations out there providing these types of vital support, including LION Publishers, a trade group for local independent media outlets, and the Membership Puzzle Project, an open-source research and education effort focused on helping publishers develop memberships that fund and support their work.
So, color me less cynical, but the realist in me knows this: the nonprofit model requires leaders with a “business” sense – people committed to the very difficult problem of raising money. It’s like running a combined sales and circulation department, selling the news organization to multiple potential funders. That’s not the work I personally got into journalism to do, and that’s probably 85% of the reason why my two forays were failures.
If I had to do it over, here’s what I’d try to do:
Budget more of my time for … the budget. I’d make sure I understand the burn rate of existing funds and make sure projections for future revenues were based on more than wishful thinking.
Insist that there’s a knowledgeable development officer either working full-time (ideally) or part-time raising money for the project. And that officer would be someone I’d talk to daily, tracking opportunities and updating each other on the status of grant applications and other fundraising deliverables.
Spend a minimum of 50% of my time on development, spreading the word about the project, courting funders and networking with peers to steal their ideas and, when possible, collaborate on the money chase. That means making use of all the resources offered by organizations like the ones mentioned above.
Finally, I’d make sure there’s a strong editorial vision for the newsroom, one that everyone understands. This, I believe, would make it easier for me, as executive editor, to spend time on fundraising while the journalists produce high quality work that funders want to support.
I’m not sure I’ll try the “third time’s the charm” theory in nonprofit journalism. But unlike the past few years, I won’t sit in the corner and pooh-pooh the nonprofit model. I’m rooting for it, and my checkbook, light as it is, is open.
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