Philanthropy and the Future of Local News

Free Press Action Fund News Voices Director Mike Rispoli testifying in the New Jersey State House in favor of the Civic Information Bill. (Photo by Tim Karr for Free Press Action Fund, June 2018. Democracy Fund did not make grants or earmark funds to support Free Press Action Fund’s lobbying efforts.)

In January, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy released $1 million in a groundbreaking effort to shore up local news across the state. Dedicated advocates fought hard for years to pass this first-of-its-kind piece of legislation that dedicates taxpayer dollars to expand access to civic information: things like where to vote in the next election; what city council is up to; and how to find shelter in the face of an impending hurricane. This win was built on nearly a decade of journalism innovation, community organizing, and philanthropic collaboration, and in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis, it seems prescient. Across the country, more than half of state governors have declared news media an essential service. Communities are turning to their local journalists for information on how to stay safe, and newspapers are dropping their paywalls to ensure all people have access to vital local coverage. However, as businesses close, revenue from advertising is drying up and journalists are facing layoffs, furloughs, and the possibility of their newsrooms closing down—just when we need them most.

In this moment, as our nation and our nation’s newsrooms face profound challenges, what happened in New Jersey holds lessons for all of us.

Local news and information is profoundly important for our democracy. When people have reliable access to local news and information, they vote more—according to a 2009 study, simply reading a newspaper can mobilize 13 percent of non-voters to vote. People with access to local news are also more likely to run for office and politicians work harder for their communities when local reporters are holding them accountable. Local news helps keep government waste and corporate pollution in check. Lastly, local news quite literally brings communities together, improving social bonds and reducing political polarization.

Local news is also a critical part of our public health system. In a 2018 piece for Stat News, journalist Helen Branswell looked at how “disease detectives” use local news to track the spread of illnesses like the flu. One epidemiologist called local news the “bedrock” of how they monitor disease spread across the country. In his book, Democracy’s Detectives, Stanford economist James T. Hamilton quantifies these kinds of social impacts and shows that every dollar spent on investigative local reporting produces hundreds of dollars of public benefit.

Unfortunately for our democracy (and our health), even before this most recent economic downturn, local news was in a precarious position. The situation in New Jersey, for example, was grim. In 2016, Gannett, one of America’s largest newspaper chains, bought the North Jersey Media Group, including The Record, the second largest daily newspaper in New Jersey, and cut staff in half, laying off 426 people. Months later, they announced another 141 job cuts. This is happening all over the country: out-of-state corporations come in and strip local newsrooms for parts. Between 2008 and 2018, newspapers in America lost nearly 50 percent of their newsroom employees, leaving 1,300 communities with no real source of local news. And it isn’t just newspapers—when you turn on the TV in New Jersey, it’s almost impossible to find local stories because nearly every station is based over the border in New York City or Philadelphia.

However, there is a quiet, hopeful change taking shape. Across the nation, entrepreneurial journalists and concerned citizens are starting up a new generation of local news organizations. According to the Institute of Nonprofit News, new nonprofit newsrooms “have been launching at a pace of more than one a month in the US for almost 12 years.” And that number is even higher if you include small hyperlocal for-profits. Every day, their reporting helps people learn about their community, make decisions about their families, engage in their neighborhoods, and of course, participate in our democracy. But without bold ideas for community support and new revenue models, these start-ups struggle to fill the gaps of what has been lost.

That is why the New Jersey Civic Information Bill, which created and funded the Civic Information Consortium, is so remarkable: The funding will support a range of efforts and experiments from local news, to civic technology, to government transparency, with a focus on underserved communities, low-income communities and communities of color. And, because the bill was developed with journalist and community input around a core commitment to press freedom, it also sets up a series of checks and balances to ensure there are multiple firewalls between the government funding and the journalism it supports. None of this happened overnight—in fact, one of the most important lessons from this effort is the invaluable time spent laying the groundwork.

Lesson #1: Playing the Long Game Means You’re Ready to Seize Opportunities When They Arise

The campaign to establish the Civic Information Consortium began in 2017, when New Jersey announced it would sell a portion of its public television airwaves back to the federal government for $332 million. Public interest advocates Free Press and Free Press Action Fund saw an opportunity to make sure some portion of those dollars were reinvested in public interest media. They crafted the bill, ran the campaign which mobilized thousands of local residents, and won support from a bipartisan majority of the state legislature.

While the campaign took three years, it was built on a foundation of work and investments in New Jersey that dates back almost a decade. Since 2010, local and national foundations had been collaborating on efforts to build a more connected and collaborative media ecosystem. Working with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, newsrooms in the state began investing in community outreach and engagement to rebuild the social contract between newsrooms and communities. They held community forums, brought the public into the journalism process, and developed partnerships that helped realign priorities and reimagine reporting.

Alongside this work, in 2016 Free Press mobilized a grassroots campaign that showed that local people still care deeply about trustworthy, authentic local news and are hungry for information about the places they live. In addition to door-to-door outreach, and innovative online organizing through email, social media, and text message, Free Press held a series of events for civic groups and policymakers focused on media coverage of critical community issues. They expertly connected media coverage to issues of public health, education, poverty and more, showing that no matter what issue you care about, quality reporting and information matters. In doing so, they built a broad coalition of organizations across New Jersey who turned out for state house lobby days and rallies. Without funders and grantees who were willing to work together toward one shared vision, the Civic Information Bill never would have happened.

Lesson #2: Putting Innovative Philanthropic Structures in Place Makes You Flexible and Ready for Action

For foundations, jumping into policy debates can come with reputational and legal risks, since foundations and nonprofits are limited in the amount of lobbying they can do. Fortunately, both Democracy Fund (where I work) and Free Press have separate, but related 501c4 organizations (Democracy Fund Voice and Free Press Action Fund, respectively). While Democracy Fund (c3) had long supported Free Press’s community engagement efforts in New Jersey, Democracy Fund Voice (c4) was able to step in and provide dollars to support the lobbying work around the bill. Other funders supported charitable activities that helped educate the public and rally support for the idea, but none of the other funders could provide the c4 dollars that were crucial to getting the bill over the finish line. Foundations are increasingly exploring hybrid structures that provide different kinds of flexibility, and in this case having two different legal structures set us up for a quick response when the moment was right.

Lesson #3: A Focus on Building Relationships Will Continue to Build Trust and Expand Support Long After the Effort Is Over

Relationship-driven work is slow and doesn’t show up easily in annual grant reports or short-term evaluations. It demands a model of patient philanthropy that can listen more deeply over time and witness subtle but powerful changes in trust, connection, and resilience. It also demands that local media outlets and supporters of local news invest in people—engaging them on a regular, meaningful basis—if they want people to invest in the news. None of this comes without some risk.

While we were clear-eyed about the risks, we knew that opportunities like the one in New Jersey don’t come around often. There was game-changing potential for this bill to unlock millions of dollars to support public interest media and to provide a new model for other states. But we also recognized that the work of advocating for the bill had value in and of itself. Even if the bill never passed, there would be huge value in a sustained effort to engage thousands of New Jersey residents in meaningful conversations about the future of local news and information in their state. We wanted to create positive feedback loops—changing journalism in ways that build trust and expand support—that could help sustain communities and newsrooms for a long time to come.

While Free Press and Free Action Fund spent some dollars on lobbyists and political ads, most of their budget went toward building powerful and diverse networks of people across the state. Building community support takes hands-on work and face time, there is no replacement for that. Over the course of the campaign, thousands of residents joined public events, contributed to online forums, signed petitions, and called or visited their representatives. Sixty organizations across the state signed a letter to state lawmakers, and the state’s colleges and universities took up the cause. This critical new set of stakeholders is ready to advocate for local news and information efforts beyond this bill and will help hold the new Civic Information Consortium accountable as it takes shape.

Finally, It’s Worth Taking Big Philanthropic Risks

Foundations can be risk averse, and there were many moments when we thought the campaign had run aground: a legislative deadline passed, an administration changed, a budget battle buried the bill. Free Press Action Fund found a way to move the campaign forward: circumventing the challenges, cultivating champions who helped carry the bill forward, and mobilizing a passionate constituency who kept the pressure on. But these moving targets required funders be comfortable with uncertainty, trust our grantees and partners, and be willing to stick with this project through the ups and downs. 

And there were ups and downs, especially when it came to the state’s troubled budget process. Advocates began by asking for $100 million from the state, which was scaled back to $20 million in early drafts of the legislation. In the end, after many rounds of budget negotiations, the legislation called for $5 million, but so far only $2 million has been allocated in the budget and $1 million has been released. In other words, advocates got 1 percent of what they asked for—and it is still a major victory because it represents a new social contract between the public and the press.

The last few weeks have reminded many about that social contract, and about how when disasters strike, journalists are often on the front lines with other first responders. In response to the vital role journalists are playing at the same time as they’re facing steep losses in revenue, commentators in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Columbia Journalism Review have called for new ideas for government funding that can preserve vigorous, independent local news.

The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium offers one possible path forward—and is a reminder that people across the political spectrum can and will support access to news and information. Promisingly, the work in New Jersey has already sparked new policy inquiries and efforts in other places, like Massachusetts, Ohio, and Colorado. In those states, and others, foundations are working with local journalists, universities, civic groups, and policymakers to advance bold ideas to rebuild the public’s access to civic information. In other states, like North Carolina, New Mexico, and Illinois, funder collaboratives are mobilizing around a shared vision for healthier news ecosystems, building on the New Jersey model while adapting to local contexts. Notably, those states have been some of the quickest to build news and information into their coronavirus recovery and response efforts.

It will look a little different in every place, but one thing is clear: Those who care about the future of journalism can make meaningful change by focusing on building resilient relationships between communities and newsrooms. Our access to news and information depends on it, and so does our democracy.

Read more stories by Josh Stearns.