Last week the American Society of News Editors announced that it is extending the deadline for its 2018 Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey because only 234 out of nearly 1,700 newspapers and digital media outlets have submitted data to this year’s survey. In response, Farai Chideya, Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation; Molly de Aguiar, Managing Director, News Integrity Initiative; Jim Friedlich, Executive Director & CEO of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism; Tom Glaisyer, Managing Director of the Public Square Program at Democracy Fund; Jonathan Logan, President & CEO Jonathan Logan Family Foundation; Jennifer Preston, Vice President of Journalism at the John S and James L Knight Foundation; and Andres Torres, Program Officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, released the following joint statement:
As foundations committed to furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism, we stand together today to call on newsroom leaders to take seriously the work of building newsrooms that truly represent the diversity of our nation.
The ASNE diversity survey has been collecting newsroom employment data since 1978 and was relaunched this year with a focus on making it a more actionable tool for the nation’s newsrooms. We frequently read about outlets’ commitment to diversify their coverage and newsrooms; and from newsroom staff on the need for change. To deliver on that promise of change, there needs to be more transparency and accountability. That starts with fully participating in the leading survey of newsroom diversity in the nation. The response to this year’s survey is deeply disappointing.
Newsrooms today have invested enormous amounts of time and money in tracking data about our journalism. Editors and publishers understand the necessity of using good data to drive decisions. Diversity is no different. That is why journalism funders recently released five years of data about funding for equity, diversity, and inclusion. As funders, we know the philanthropic community needs to prioritize this work as well, and tools like the ASNE survey inform our work. That is why we will require annual completion of the ASNE survey for our journalism grantees in our grant agreements going forward.
A healthy, diverse democracy requires a robust, free, and diverse fourth estate. The work of diversity is the work of journalism today. We believe the ASNE survey is a critical tool in creating a more responsive and representative public square, and we call on the industry to respond with the urgency this moment demands. If you haven’t already, we strongly encourage that you respond to the survey by Oct. 12.
Newsrooms with questions about how to respond should contact lead researcher Dr. Meredith Clark, mdc6j@virginia.edu, or ASNE Executive Director Teri Hayt at thayt@asne.org.
How can we help local news survive, transform, and thrive? This question will not be answered by one person, one organization, or one innovation. Instead, it will be answered by local ecosystems that have many players, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, coming together to be greater than the sum of their parts. It will look different everywhere around the country, but without this systemic approach, local news cannot survive.
This theory is at the core of the work of the North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, which is announcing $500,000 in grants today. NCLNL’s goal is to support people and organizations working to build a healthier local news and information ecosystem in North Carolina. It is a collaborative fund at the North Carolina Community Foundation, established by a group of local and national funders who believe in the power of local journalism, local stories, and local people to strengthen our democracy.
The grants were selected by an advisory board with representatives from the following foundations: A.J. Fletcher Foundation, Democracy Fund, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Prentice Foundation, and Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, as well as subject matter experts from North Carolina Central University and NC Congress of Latino Organizations.
The fund’s first grants go to organizations working to expand access to critical news and information for all North Carolina communities. This cohort represents the fund’s commitment to supporting a diverse set of organizations pursuing meaningful projects to better serve local communities and strengthen the news and information ecosystem overall. Each of these grantees also represent vital networks of people, communities, and organizations that will engage and collaborate with their work.
It is, as Fiona Morgan wrote in “Learning from North Carolina,” a manifestation of how “North Carolina’s news ecosystem will likely succeed best as a network of networks, with distinct areas where people join forces, share resources or collaborate.”
These grantees are working to build new infrastructure for independent media, recognizing that we have to work together to meet the full needs of our communities. Across these efforts we saw a deep commitment to community and collaboration and a generosity and determination to openly share and jointly build a bold future for North Carolina.
Individually these are all great projects and organizations, and taken together they begin to connect people and communities across North Carolina in new ways. We are thrilled by the work these organizations will do, but this is just the beginning. We had more than 70 ideas submitted to the NCLNL through the application process, many of them addressing important needs and opportunities that we want to work on in the future.
Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes trainees learn how to tell stories in Asheville. Photo by Sekou Coleman.
The grantees are:
Asheville Writers:Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes – Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community provides creative writing and arts programs for young people in local schools and community programs. Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes is an online magazine with a program that mentors and trains youth of color to gather and publish news that engages their communities and builds racial equity.
Carolina Public Press: North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative – Carolina Public Press is an independent nonprofit news organization established in 2011 with a focus on in-depth and investigative news in Western North Carolina. In 2018, it expanded to cover the entire state. CPP will lead the North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative, which will launch collaborations between state and local media outlets, organize listening sessions between residents and members of the media statewide, and experiment with new ways to generate its own self-sustaining revenue.
Colectivo de Comunicación Participativa de Carolina del Norte (CCPNC): Enlace Latino NC – Enlace Latino NC is a Spanish-language website that offers local, state, and national immigration and policy news during a critical time of need in the Latinx community in North Carolina. With this grant, Enlace Latino NC will focus on building their capacity, adding more resources, and reporting on key issues.
Duke University Reporters Lab: North Carolina Fact-Checking Project– The North Carolina Fact-Checking Project is a collaborative effort focused on the 2018 state elections and 2019 state legislative session, providing rigorous fact-checked content for publications and broadcast programs statewide. The project aims to increase fact-checking coverage of public officials and candidates. It brings together partners with deep experience in substantive fact-checking with an innovative edge, including the Duke Reporters Lab, the News & Observer, and the Reese News Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
NC Health News: General Operating Support – North Carolina Health News is a leading news source on information about health care for residents, policymakers, lobbyists, and healthcare workers across North Carolina. With this grant, the NC Health News staff will continue and strengthen the organization’s work.
NC Press Association: Training Program – The North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) supports newspapers statewide, offers a legal hotline, and hosts an annual convention. The NCPA is focused on a defending “the public’s right to know” by advocating for open government and championing First Amendment freedoms.
UNC Center for Public TV: Public Media NC and HBCU Radio Together – Radio stations at historically black colleges and universities in North Carolina are a valuable resource for local, relevant, and timely news for the communities they serve. This collaboration between HBCU radio stations and UNC-TV will give all involved an opportunity to learn from each other and collaborate across mediums.
UNC School of Media and Journalism: Trail Blazer – The Trail Blazer project will help sustain long-term coverage of stories by simplifying the research process for journalists in North Carolina. Through a mobile-friendly website, it will provide a comprehensive, updated, simple-to-navigate repository for journalists, including limited-scope facts, timelines, annotated documents, and links to existing articles. The core concepts of the Trail Blazer project were developed by veteran journalist Vaughn Hagerty, who broke a story about the presence of the chemical GenX in Cape Fear River.
WNCU: Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists – WNCU is a public radio station that serves partly as a hub to train young journalists at North Carolina Central University. The Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists project will train a diverse, inclusive, and underrepresented group of student reporters via the WNCU radio station and the student newspaper, The Campus Echo.
Working Narratives: Wilmington Ecology Project – Working Narrativesfocuses on reporting on pressing social challenges such as media justice, mass incarceration, and health equity. Founded in 2011, the organization works at the local and regional level to “tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy.” The Wilmington Ecology Project will train citizens to produce and report their own stories through performance, radio, video, and other forms.
The advisory board of the Fund — Brett Chambers (North Carolina Central University), Elena Conley (Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation), Damon Circosta (A.J. Fletcher Foundation) Teresa Gorman (Democracy Fund) Bobbi Hapgood (Prentice Foundation), Ivan Kohar Parra (NC Congress of Latino Organizations), Sorien Schmidt (Z Smith Reynolds Foundation) and Josh Stearns (Democracy Fund) — were inspired and challenged by the scope and creativity of the proposals we received. It was incredibly difficult to pick just a few grantees in this round.
In partnership with the advisory board, funder partners, and others, including Democracy Fund Senior Consultant Melanie Sill, the NCLNL will continue to explore ways to support and strengthen North Carolina’s local news ecosystem. This will include future grantmaking and convenings. It will not be done in a vacuum. We will strive to live the NCLNL’s stated values of learning, diversity, equity, inclusion, innovation, and transparency, and continue to share updates from our grantees and others here on the Local News Lab.
As trusted information providers, local and nonprofit journalism organizations play an essential role in providing news that communities rely on to stay informed, make decisions and participate in civic life. In the wake of the digital disruption of news and declining trust in the media, there is an urgent need to redouble funding for local and state coverage to ensure the nonprofit journalism sector can fulfill its democratic mission.
That is why the Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came together in 2017 to launch NewsMatch, a national matching-gift campaign to grow fundraising capacity in nonprofit newsrooms and promote giving to journalism among U.S. donors.
A new study released this month by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University revealed that from 2010 to 2015 nearly $1.8 billion in grants were given in support of journalism. However, only a small fraction, about 4.5%, went toward nonprofit local and state reporting. The report also found significant and troubling geographical gaps, with the majority of philanthropic dollars ending up in a few coastal cities.
NewsMatch was designed from the ground up to respond to the gaps that the Harvard research now highlights so clearly. It supported newsrooms in almost every state, brought new foundations and donors in, and expanded the capacity of journalism nonprofits to develop support from their community.
In 2017 NewsMatch provided 109 newsrooms with more than 500 hours of fundraising training, a professional campaign toolkit, national marketing around the importance of contributing to nonprofit news, targeted advertising using $100,000 in ad credits donated by Facebook, and a 1:1 match of individual donations, up to $28,000 per news organization. Nearly all 109 organizations who participated in NewsMatch raised more money, from more donors than ever before. In total NewsMatch helped raise nearly $5 million for local and investigative journalism and inspired 43,000 new donors to give to nonprofit news. Those are just the topline results. The report dives deep into how NewsMatch was structured, what worked and what didn’t.
We are currently raising dollars for NewsMatch 2018 in hopes of making it even bigger than last year. Several updates to the 2018 program reflect the evaluation’s suggestions:
As in 2017, NewsMatch is open to members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. The deadline to apply is Aug. 1, 2018.
We will support nonprofit news organization’s membership models by matching the full-year value of new recurring donations during NewsMatch.
We will offer extra bonuses to small and medium organizations that show they have measurably improved their fundraising capacity over 2017.
We recognize that individual donors support nonprofit news in many ways and will match gifts made by individuals through their businesses and family foundations.
This Fourth of July, Democracy Fund will celebrate its fourth anniversary as an independent foundation. Little did I know in the summer of 2014 just how profound the threats facing our country would turn out to be or the degree to which the health of our nation’s political system would become a near-universally recognized problem. Lately, I find myself thinking that this organization was created for this moment — though I did not realize it was coming.
Fittingly, July Fourth will also mark an important milestone in our growth as an institution — $100 million in grants made to organizations strengthening U.S. democracy. It has been our privilege to make these resources available to a remarkable group of leaders working to ensure that our democratic institutions deliver on their promise to the American people.
While Democracy Fund’s core mission has not changed from its founding, this organization looks very different from four years ago when we had a staff of three and a dozen or so grantees. The events of the past two years demanded that we clarify our core convictions and to dramatically expand our commitment to strengthen American democracy and defend the United States Constitution.
The purpose of this open letter is to share how we have changed, to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to our core programs, and to explain why we think it is so important that philanthropy stand up patriotically in this moment.
With today’s publication of our vision for a healthy democracy, I acknowledge that our commitment to bipartisanship cannot come at the expense of our core values. Indeed, we believe that being bipartisan cannot mean being neutral when actions are taken that threaten our republic.
At Democracy Fund, we believe a healthy democracy requires at least two competitive political parties — and that democratic institutions work best when they have broad support from across the political spectrum. We deeply value our ability to work with Republicans, Democrats, and independents to find ways to ensure that our democracy works for all Americans.
But we also believe in the dignity of every individual and in the equal protection of their rights under law. We believe that checks and balances, as well as respect for the rule of law, are critical to protect against abuses of power. We believe that political leaders bear an uncommon burden to act with integrity. And we believe that threats to the health of our democracy — as well as solutions to these — can come from all sides of the political spectrum.
Over the past two years, I have seen alarming and sometimes unprecedented violations of our country’s democratic norms. For an organization committed to strengthening democracy on behalf of the American people, this isn’t just disturbing — it’s humbling.
Over the past two years, I have seen alarming and sometimes unprecedented violations of our country’s democratic norms. For an organization committed to strengthening democracy on behalf of the American people, this isn’t just disturbing — it’s humbling.
Our first priority was to articulate the beliefs that underlie our work, and clearly assert those core democratic principles for which we stand. Working with our advisors and a diverse group of scholars, we created a healthy democracy framework to help explicate the values that motivate our efforts. The framework will serve as a compass, inform decision-making, and provide clarity about the principled positions underlying our actions for ourselves and others.
Having articulated these beliefs, we knew that staying the course in the face of new and widening gaps between our vision for a healthy democracy and the realities of America today was not an option. We rebooted some of Democracy Fund’s core programs and added new, bipartisan initiatives to stop abuses of government power, secure our elections, defend press freedom, and combat misinformation. We increased our staff by more than 40 percent and tripled the size of our grantmaking budget. We also created three new special projects that include two-year commitments of:
In addition, we launched the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group to help policymakers keep in touch with the beliefs and attitudes of ordinary Americans.
Even as we continue our ongoing work to strengthen American democracy, we’re taking a stand against real and direct threats to our Constitution.
Combatting the Abuse of Power
Core to our understanding of a healthy democracy is the notion that constitutional checks and balances protect against abuses of power and preserve the rule of law. Over the past year, Democracy Fund has worked to reinvigorate government accountability in a challenging environment in which government leaders have openly flouted ethics rules and challenged the independence of everything from the courts to the Justice Department.
Democracy Fund’s grantees are fighting back aggressively. Collectively, they have participated in more than 35 lawsuits targeting government corruption, secrecy, and ethics violations. In addition to exposing abuses, these legal actions are helping to protect institutions that have come under attack. For example, a FOIA lawsuit filed by Lawfare helped secure the release of 100 F.B.I. emails that contradicted the White House’s false narrative that former F.B.I. Director James Comey had lost Bureau support before his firing.
Other grantees, like the National Security Archive, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), and the Government Accountability Project, have filed more than 2,300 FOIA requests to expose government corruption, misconduct, waste, and conflicts of interest. Work by POGO and Open the Government has led the Department of Homeland Security to release an Inspector General report criticizing initial implementation of the Muslim travel ban.
POGO, the Lugar Center, and the Levin Center are also continuing to encourage bipartisan congressional oversight by training nearly 300 Hill staffers on how to hold the executive branch accountable. In addition, POGO and the Government Accountability Project have distributed whistleblower education materials to more than 2,100 federal employees, NGO employees, journalists, and engaged citizens.
Another grantee engaged in especially urgent work is the Protect Democracy Project, which was established in February 2017. In its first month of operation, the Project successfully helped force the Trump administration to release a policy restricting communications between the White House and the Department of Justice. Then, it helped expose instances in which the White House had violated those restrictions. In just a year, the Protect Democracy Project has forced important public disclosures on issues ranging from potential executive overreach into a major healthcare merger, to alleged intimidation of federal workers, to the legal rationale behind military strikes in Syria.
Three grantees of our affiliated 501(c)4, Democracy Fund Voice — R Street Institute, Stand Up Republic, and the Niskanen Center — are working to build bipartisan networks to push back against threats to our democracy. These networks are working to stand up for democratic norms while building consensus on a vision for American democracy over the long term.
To stop the abuse of political power, our grantees are cutting deep into the weeds of government. But we are confronted by threats that go deeper still, undermining the most basic feature of our democracy: free and fair elections.
Securing Our Elections
We believe that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy; but when it comes to elections, Democracy Fund worries less about who wins than about whether people have faith in the outcome. False claims that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in 2016 have the potential to undermine faith in our elections — while creating a spurious justification for erecting barriers that make it more difficult for Americans to vote.
M.I.T.’s Election Data and Science Lab and the Center for Election Innovation & Research played a leading role in pushing back against these false claims that the Pence-Kobach Voter Fraud Commission sought to justify. These efforts to correct the record — alongside legal actions by Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the Campaign Legal Center, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, and others — contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Commission.
We believe that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, but when it comes to elections, Democracy Fund worries less about who wins than about whether people have faith in the outcome.
At the same time, we know malicious foreign actors made a concerted effort to undermine the 2016 presidential election and that the security of our next election cannot be taken for granted. For more than 12 months, Democracy Fund Voice worked with its partners to persuade Congress to provide state and local election officials with the resources and training necessary to maintain the highest possible security. This work paid off last month, when Congress included $380 million in grants to the states to improve cybersecurity, replace paperless voting machines, and perform post-election audits (among other measures). Lawmakers also approved $10 million in funding for the Election Assistance Commission — a 10 percent increase — and provided the F.B.I. with an additional $300 million to bolster election cybersecurity.
Democracy Fund grantees have also found innovative ways to get ahead of the next attack on our election infrastructure. The bipartisan duo of Robby Mook and Matt Rhoads (former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, respectively) launched a new program at Harvard to help campaigns and election officials protect sensitive data against intrusion. The effort is organizing “tabletop exercises” that simulate attacks on election systems — and allow election officials and security experts to practice their response.
Additional grantees with a focus on money in politics have also played important roles. The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) developed a symposium and report about whether current laws are sufficient to prevent or deter future intrusion. Campaign finance complaints filed by CLC and Common Cause forced other actors, including President Donald Trump’s lawyer, to disclose more information about alleged foreign interference than otherwise known. Additionally, CLC and others have done important work to promote greater disclosure on social media platforms.
Defending the Fourth Estate
At a moment when journalists face profound economic and political threats, Democracy Fund is helping to ensure our fourth estate remains free and resilient. In the healthy democracy framework, we assert that journalists provide a critical check on power, holding our leaders accountable and revealing corruption, wrongdoing, and conflicts of interest. They provide Americans with the information they need to uphold the promise of a democracy of, by, and for the people. That’s why Democracy Fund has made a two-year commitment of $11 million to strengthen investigative reporting. It’s also why we’re supporting press freedom watchdogs, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders, and the Student Press Law Center.
Grants to the nation’s premier investigative watchdogs have enabled these nonprofit newsrooms to pursue a wide range of stories that have held administration officials accountable for wrongdoing, forced divestitures, and changed laws.
ProPublica has taken on biased algorithms, forced changes in Facebook’s advertising rules, and prompted New York City lawmakers to pass the country’s first bill to address discrimination produced by social media algorithms. And Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross divested from his global shipping company after an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity showed significant conflicts of interest.
Too often, journalists become targets for threats and abuse as a result of their work to advance the public interest. Trump administration officials have gone so far as to call out Democracy Fund grantees by name. One grantee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom ProPublica, faced a cyberattack that took down its entire email system — an attempt to silence ProPublica journalists in retribution for hard-hitting reporting on hate crimes and extremists groups. In the face of these attacks, Democracy Fund’s support provided these grantees with the resources and independence they needed to stand firm, fix their systems, and continue their indispensable work.
Local newsrooms are, in many ways, the building blocks of our democracy, covering stories that matter to residents and holding local leaders accountable in a way that no other organizations can.
Local newsrooms are, in many ways, the building blocks of our democracy, covering stories that matter to residents and holding local leaders accountable in a way that no other organizations can. Yet, across the country, we’ve seen an increase in “trickle-down” attacks on the press, where those in power use their positions to undermine — or even encourage violence against — local journalists. These attacks have come at a time of severe economic turmoil for many local newsrooms, when their business models are failing — and their continued viability is in serious question.
That’s why Democracy Fund has worked hand-in-glove with peer funders to launch NewsMatch — an unprecedented campaign to strengthen nonprofit journalism and make 2017 a record-breaking year for giving to local investigative news. With the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and a partnership of five additional funders, we matched donations to nonprofit newsrooms for the last three months of 2017, helping journalists raise more than $4.8 million. Among the more than 100 nonprofit newsrooms that participated, nearly all raised more dollars from more donors than ever before.
Even as we work to ensure that all Americans have access to quality local news and investigative reporting, Democracy Fund’s grantees are also striving to combat the misinformation that pollutes our public square. For instance, long before Cambridge Analytica captured national headlines, we published a report examining the ways in which social media platforms exacerbate information disorders, spread hate, and threaten our democracy.
But declining trust in media is not only a product of this political moment. It also stems from the ways journalism has at times stood apart from communities and failed to deliver stories that matter to them. Grantees in our Engaged Journalism portfolio continue to experiment with tools that foster a deeper connection between newsrooms and the public. In the context of that work, we’ve made significant commitments to making newsrooms more diverse and representative of their readership.
Through all of our efforts in this space, Democracy Fund is working toward a future where we can trust the headlines we see — and the democracy we shape together.
Protecting the Dignity and Rights of Each Individual
First among our core beliefs is a fundamental dedication to the dignity of every individual in our democracy, and the protection of their rights under the law. Without a recognition of our common humanity and a common American identity, our democracy cannot function. All too often, however, divisive rhetoric targeting Muslims and immigrants — rhetoric that has been embraced, over the past year, by policymakers, government officials, and media figures — encourages bigotry among the public while creating political momentum for policies that demean individuals and threaten to violate basic civil rights.
Nationally, as well as in individual communities throughout the country, Democracy Fund grantees are fighting for greater inclusion — and pushing back against policies that undermine what it means to be an American. While some leaders in government and the media blamed the hate-motivated violence we saw in Charlottesville on “both sides,” Democracy Fund grantees like Faith & Public Life were training clergy in nonviolent strategies to protect peaceful demonstrators from gun-wielding white supremacists. In the aftermath of that conflict, Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) acted to prevent it from happening again. ICAP lawyers discovered provisions of Virginia law — dating back to 1776 — that prohibit “paramilitary activity.” This discovery became the basis of a 79-page lawsuit ICAP filed in Charlottesville last October.
As activist groups, members of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) communities, and allied organizations came together, over the past year, to challenge the Trump administration’s Muslim and refugee ban, the Proteus Fund’s Security & Rights Collaborative (SRC) played a critical coordination role. Through the #NoMuslimBanEver campaign, SRC helped facilitate mobilization efforts across the country — and also provided direct monetary and strategic support to MASA organizations. Their and their grantees’ work continued this spring, when ICAP’s Neal Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor general, argued against the ban before the Supreme Court.
In our effort to maintain a just and inclusive society, Democracy Fund has also partnered with Freedom to Believe, an organization that brings people of all faiths and backgrounds to mosques to learn more about Islam and forge connections with Muslim communities. Similarly, our grantee Veterans for American Ideals is using proven strategic communications tactics to promote tolerance. Their #WhatIFoughtFor campaign showcases moving collaborations between refugees and military service members that are helping to make America, in every sense, a more perfect union.
In recent months, Democracy Fund staff have also worked closely with Civic Nation and NBCUniversal to support the re-launch of their “Erase the Hate” campaign to combat prejudice, hate crimes, and the spread of hate speech online.
Understanding the American Public
The concept of robust representation is embedded throughout our healthy democracy framework and is fundamental to the proper function of our democratic republic. In this unique and consequential moment, it is as important as ever before that America’s leaders — in public office and at every level of civil society — hold a nuanced understanding of the American public, their experience and preferences, and how their changing attitudes are reshaping our politics. To this end, Democracy Fund created the Voter Study Group to dig deep into public opinion data — and then to analyze and share those results with policymakers, government officials, and the media.
There are two key attributes that distinguish the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group from other polling efforts. First, the group itself is made up of a diverse group of scholars from across the political spectrum, ranging from the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution on the left to Heritage Action and the American Enterprise Institute on the right. This remarkable diversity of opinion not only increases the quality of our analysis; it also means we have been able to gain attention and interest from media and policymakers in important and unusual ways. Second, the use of a longitudinal dataset — which surveys the same group of people who have been questioned since 2011 — has yielded deep insights into how the American electorate is changing in ways that are quite unique. We believe that the collaborative nature of this project lends itself especially well to the vigorous, informed dialogue across ideological difference that is necessary to sustainable policy and sustainable politics.
Since its launch, the Voter Study Group has released ten reports. Initial analyses focused on understanding the 2016 electorate, examining the composition of President Trump’s political base, and considering how party coalitions are changing. More recently, the group published “Follow the Leader,” a report that sought to assess the health of American democracy by better understanding authoritarian attitudes among the public.
What we found was alarming. Nearly one in four Americans say it would be good to have a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections. Nearly one in five say the same of military rule. In aggregate, 29 percent of respondents showed at least some support for an authoritarian alternative to democracy.
And yet, the cause for hope was clear: when offered a direct choice, the overwhelming majority of Americans chose democracy. Moreover, we didn’t see a correlation between dissatisfaction with democracy and support for authoritarian options.
Frustration and anger at the state of our democracy are well founded; openness to autocracy is not. The big question for us — as an organization and a leader in the philanthropic space — is what more we can do to strengthen our democracy, both for the next election and for the next generation.
Our Commitment to a Healthy Democracy
We live at a time when the principles articulated in our healthy democracy framework are threatened by uniquely dangerous circumstances. At Democracy Fund, we firmly believe these threats demand a full-throated response.
Admittedly, the approach I have outlined above is far more aggressive — necessarily so — than the one we took during our first few years of operation. In the face of unprecedented threats, philanthropists — including Democracy Fund — can’t just do what we’ve been doing. This moment demands something more than business as usual. That’s why Democracy Fund is calling on our peer organizations to take action — and why, moving forward, we will be proud to serve as a partner and resource to any funder willing to stand up and speak out for our Constitution.
Even as we respond to the current crises, we know the conditions that gave rise to this moment will still be with us for the foreseeable future. So we all need to commit to the long-term health of our democracy. Beyond the work outlined in this letter, Democracy Fund continues its work to reduce polarization, modernize elections, diversify newsrooms, and perform other essential tasks to strengthen our political system. Our hope is that peer funders will also join us on these longer-term projects.
At a time when our political institutions are under tremendous strain, Democracy Fund and its partners have been inspired by ordinary Americans who are standing up in extraordinary ways to help protect our republic. Their examples are proof that the vision outlined in our healthy democracy framework is not too much to hope for. That is why we’re rallying experts, activists, political leaders, and patriotic philanthropists to renew their personal responsibility for the greater good of our democracy.
Efforts in journalism to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the past decade have been ineffective in creating dynamic change in the stories, sources, and staff of news outlets in the United States.
Clearly, the dramatic financial downturn in newspaper advertising revenue has placed strain on all legacy journalism organizations. However, those dynamics alone do not explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism following college graduation. Or excuse the historic leadership failure of large and profitable outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks, which has an outsized impact on communities of color given the dearth of opportunity at smaller newsrooms.
The purpose of this report is to begin to understand philanthropic interventions supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism from 2009 – 2015. As a foundation new to DEI funding in journalism, which has not made any grants in this area during the period under consideration, we plan to use this report to identify major funders and recipients of institutional grants.
This report represents our first attempt to get at this information using data from Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. We are aware of the many limits of this data set due to self-reporting and challenges in categorization. Even with those challenges we are proud of the work that Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done so far to illuminate larger trends and we plan to use this report as a launchpad into further analysis of the organizations supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism.
We are already getting started. We are partnering with funders including the Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society; News Integrity Initiative and Gates Foundation in leadership training from the Maynard Institute; Ford Foundation to support the National Association of Black Journalists; Google News Initiative with the revamp of the ASNE Diversity survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark; Nathan Cummings in support of DEI initiatives at CUNY; MacArthur and McCormick Foundations with new approaches in Chicago like City Bureau and the Obsidian Collection; and Heising-Simons Foundation in paid internship with the Emma Bowen Foundation.
At Democracy Fund, our approach to journalism is focused on building trust and engagement. We break our Engaged Journalism Strategy into three tracks focused on (I) Audience-Driven Storytelling, (II) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and (III) promoting Transparency.
Through our Audience-Driven Storytelling work we invest in innovations and projects that support journalists in reorienting their work towards a focus on the concerns of their audience. This involves building inclusion into newsroom practices, supporting universities as teaching hospitals for innovation, creating communities of practice around engagement, and developing new practices, people, and products hard-wired for engagement.
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work focuses on improving the diversity of sources, stories, and staff in news outlets. This work involves creating an inclusive environment at news outlets; recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff, including leadership; and working to develop and sustain minority ownership of media properties.
In our Transparency work, we seek to help news outlets and the public better understand one another. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration to strengthen the Fourth Estate and the democratic principles on which our nation is founded. This report is part of that commitment. We will continue to seek opportunities to collaborate with news outlets, journalism support organizations, and partner funders to achieve this goal.
Journalism has long struggled to reflect the diversity of the communities it serves, and over the past decade, most efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in news outlets have been unsuccessful in creating meaningful change within the stories, sources, and staff of newsrooms across the United States.
New research released today by Democracy Fund traces half a decade of philanthropic investment in organizations, programming, and research aimed at increasing DEI in journalism. We commissioned this report to learn from the important work undertaken up to this point, to guide our future investments, and to spark discussions across philanthropy regarding the urgent need to address these challenges with significant new resources.
This report is based on data from the Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. The data set has some important limitations due to the nature of self-reporting and challenges around how grants are categorized. Even so, Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done great work to reveal larger trends in the field.
From 2009 to 2015, $1.2 billion was invested in journalism, news and information in the U.S.
Recent research by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and Northeastern University, using the same Foundation Center data as well as a study of foundation 990 tax forms, found that there is simply not enough philanthropic dollars flowing into journalism to make up for the gaps in what has been lost from legacy newsrooms. Amongst the funding that does exist there are troubling gaps and disparities. Our report provides a deeper look at one of those gaps, showing that there are even fewer dollars are going to DEI efforts within the industry.
Here are a few interesting takeaways, according to data as of February 2018:From 2009 to 2015, there were 1,105 grants totaling $105.6 million from 274 funders to 294 recipients pertaining to either racial and ethnic groups, women and girls, or LGBTQI populations.
Funding has declined in these areas overall, both in terms of dollar value by $1.3 million and total number of grants by 18.
When it comes to funding that serves racial and ethnic groups, relatively few dollars go towards financial sustainability compared to programming and project-specific funding.
There has been significantly less investment in gender-related news and staffing compared to racial and ethnic groups.
Funding serving LGBTQI populations in journalism remains extremely limited.
Here’s a breakdown of philanthropic support strategies for funding DEI in journalism.
The past efforts represented in these numbers faced stiff headwinds and real challenges, including a dramatic financial downturn that strained the news industry. But tight budgets alone cannot explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism. Nor does it excuse the historic leadership failure of legacy outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks.
Reviewing this history, we are left with more questions than answers: How should we think about supporting programs and investigative projects looking at inequality when they may be housed at news outlets with a weak history of supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion internally? How do we rethink equitable funding so that program-specific funds at ethnic media outlets don’t exacerbate financial and structural uncertainty? And how do we ensure that investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion have broad and measurable impact across the industry?
Democracy Fund isn’t represented in the data released today because we only became an independent foundation in 2014. However, in our first few years we’ve prioritized this work. So far we are:
Working with News Integrity Initiative, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Gates Foundation in diverse leadership training from the Maynard Institute;
Collaborating with Google News Initiative to help revamp the ASNE Diversity Survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark;
Investing in new models like City Bureau with the MacArthur Foundation
Partnering with funders like Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society;
Working alongside the Heising-Simons Foundation to support paid internships for aspiring journalists of color through the Emma Bowen Foundation.
Together with these funders, we are learning from the research we released today to ensure that our strategies are as effective and equitable as possible. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration. This report is part of that commitment.
The ability of journalism to serve as our Fourth Estate—to be a check and balance on government and powerful interests—is under increasing threat. Journalism today faces multiple challenges: a faltering business model with shrinking resources; a political environment in which they find themselves under attack; and a climate of deep distrust by the American people.
In a 2017 survey, the Poynter Institute, a Democracy Fund grantee, found that only 49% of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. We believe this distrust is connected to another problem: journalism’s lack of deep engagement with its audience, exacerbated by news organizations whose staff and coverage do not represent the communities they serve.
At Democracy Fund, one of our goals is to ensure that every American citizen has access to audience-centered, trusted, resilient journalism. To meet this goal, we are working to build a media landscape that truly serves the public interest. Through our Public Square Program, we support projects and organizations that enable newsrooms to build meaningful, trusted relationships with their communities through audience-driven storytelling, inclusion, and transparency. We call this work “Engaged Journalism” and have seen firsthand how practical investments in these organizations and ideas can have a transformative effect on newsrooms.
As a part of this effort, we’re re-launching the Democracy Fund Engaged Journalism Lab on Medium. The Engaged Journalism Lab will focus, not on how to get a grant from Democracy Fund, but rather on what our grantees and partners are doing and learning. We’ll also discuss the big ideas shaping the field and shine a spotlight on the people helping to make journalism more collaborative and engaged with its community. We hope it will serve as a resource for those working at the intersection of media and democracy.
Managed by Paul Waters and Lea Trusty, the Engaged Journalism Lab will feature content on a variety of subjects, including how newsrooms can better:
Engage their communities in content generation, production, dissemination, and discussion;
Address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within journalism through inclusive newsroom policies and practices, including recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff and supporting minority ownership of independent media properties;
Experiment with new tools and technology that aim to help the public and news distribution platforms identify quality, trusted news; and
Rebuild and fortify trust between the media and Americans.
We recognize that these are not small goals—and we know we can’t do it alone. We believe that collaboration is the only way we can begin to solve journalism’s most pressing challenges, and as a systems change organization, we are committed to learning, iterating, and partnering in ways that strengthen both our work and the field at large.
It is our hope the Engaged Journalism Lab becomes a place to highlight new ideas and uncover new solutions that we haven’t thought of yet. If you have a question or a thought, please share it. If there’s an idea or project that we should know about, please let us know. We don’t pretend to have all answers to journalism’s problems, but we hope this will be a place where we can work through them together.
Journalism plays many roles in our democracy. At its best, it informs people about critical issues in ways that builds agency; it reflects the diverse lives of our nation back to us in ways that strengthen communities; it provides a public square where ideas can be debated; and it interrogates systems and institutions in ways that hold power to account.
Since Democracy Fund was founded, we have been investing in people and organizations who are working to strengthen journalism and local news to ensure a brighter future for our democracy. We are helping rebuild local news business models, fostering bold new collaborations, and reimagining the social contract between newsrooms and communities.
That long-haul work continues, but one year ago Democracy Fund announced a new effort focused specifically on bolstering and defending journalism’s ability to serve as a robust fourth estate. Alarmed by the escalating political attacks against journalists and concerned about what those threats meant for the public’s access to information, we made the largest grants in our organization’s history.
Defending America’s Fourth Estate
In March 2017, along with our colleagues at First Look Media, we committed $10 million over two-years to the Center for Investigative Reporting, Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, and ProPublica. Recognizing the essential role of local and state investigative journalism we also contributed $1 million to NewsMatch, which helped 109 nonprofit newsrooms raise nearly $5 million in the last few months of 2017 (read more about the results of NewsMatch here). Together these grants make up our special project on investigative reporting, which seeks to ensure nonprofit newsrooms are prepared to face new and mounting challenges.
The last year has been a profound reminder of the critical role of a bold, trustworthy, and free press. Our grantees have produced hard hitting public interest reporting on the financial conflicts of interest in the current administration, social media’s impact on democracy, the rise of hate crimes, as well as on the upheavals and changes shaping education, environmental issues, and immigration.
Every single one of our grantees had at least one story that revealed conflicts of interest or wrongdoing that resulted in meaningful policy change, divestments and resignations.
ProPublica’s reporting on social media platforms and algorithms sparked Facebook to change its advertising policy and spurred NYC to pass the country’s first bill to address algorithmic discrimination in city government.
The Center for Investigative Reporting and Center for Public Integrity launched a “Citizen Sleuths” program to engage thousands of people in digging into the financial disclosure records for more than 400 appointees.
The Center for Public Integrity compiled state disclosure reports into a searchable library, revealing how state lawmakers use their position to enrich themselves.
These are just a few of the headlines from the past year. Our grantees also produced life-saving reporting on maternal health, revelations about housing discrimination, and an Oscar nominated film on the opioid crisis that was picked up by Netflix.
Accountability Reporting and Being Accountable Ourselves
All of these investments were general operating grants, which means there were no strings attached to how the grants had to be used. Grantees had total freedom to use the funds as they saw fit for the unique needs of their organizations, communities, and beats. In addition, Democracy Fund has an editorial policy written into our grant agreements that mandates we cannot speak to our grantees about content decisions. We believe this kind of independence is critical, especially with grants of this size.
In the end, the freedom these grants provided didn’t just produce more journalism, but also created opportunities to rethink and reimagine how that journalism was done. In an era of dwindling trust for journalism, integrity has to be at the heart of newsrooms and foundations. Each of these newsrooms have opened up their process to their readers, engaging people in the reporting process, and bringing profound transparency to their process.
The Center for Investigative Reporting held community forums and opened up a text message line to answer questions from communities across the country about their investigation into modern day redlining. ProPublica built a crowdsourcing app called the Facebook Political Ad Collector which collects ads on Facebook to enable ProPublica to better monitor political ads on social platforms. The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University paired journalism students with NPR and Frontline journalists to investigate the housing crisis.
These are not just clever innovations, but critical interventions that put the public at the heart of investigative journalism. The ability of the press to serve as a check and balance on power is rooted in the legitimacy and trust bestowed upon it by the public. As such, to hold our leaders accountable, we need to hold our communities close and be accountable ourselves.
We look forward to continuing to share, and to be accountable, as this special project continues.
Grantees of the Investigative Journalism Project include the following:
This announcement comes amidst a firestorm of attention focused on the social media giant’s role in allowing vast amounts of personal data to be released, data which was then used to target shady and divisive political ads at Americans. Last week Facebook revealed that tens of thousands more people were affected by that breach than was first reported. As a foundation fundamentally concerned with the health of our democracy, we have been following this story closely.
In fact, Democracy Fund and the Omidyar Network have been raising the alarm about these issues for sometime. Late last year, the organizations published an in-depth paper asking, “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” and identifying six ways in which digital platforms pose direct challenges to our democratic ideals. We have signed on to support this research initiative, but are realistic about the complexities and risks of supporting this effort and are approaching it as one part of a multipronged strategy to create a safer, stronger and more meaningful digital public square.
We are deeply committed to working on meaningful solutions that help rebuild trustworthy spaces for communities to connect, share information and participate in our democracy. We currently fund a range of efforts focused on combating hyper-partisanship, ensuring the integrity of our elections, and fostering a robust fourth estate locally and nationally.
Grantees like Prof. Zeynep Tufekci and ProPublica are doing powerful work on algorithmic accountability. Prof. Young Mie Kim tracked political ads on Facebook in 2016 and Politifact is helping sort truth from fiction on the platform. The German Marshall Fund is tracking Russian misinformation and Free Press is organization diverse communities around the rights to connect and communicate. The Center for Democracy and Technology is helping strengthen election cybersecurity, and spreading best practices for data privacy in voter registration databases and campaign data. Launched in 2017, the Social Science Research Center’s Media & Democracy program encourages academic research, practitioner reflection, and public debate on all aspects of the close relationship between media and democracy, including how changes in the political landscape, such as increasing polarization, have affected the media.
However, in our work with activists, organizations, and scholars in the field we have consistently heard that we can’t address what we don’t know. Through this new research effort Facebook says it will give researchers unpresented access to its data in ways it never has before. The research will be driven by a diverse coalition of scholars. Research projects will have to go through relevant university Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviews, will be rigorously peer reviewed, and may be vetted to ensure Facebook lives up to its legal and ethical commitments to users. Crucially, the research results themselves will not be subject to approval by Facebook
The emphasis of this first announcement is on Facebook’s role in elections, but the committee is also expected to address how Facebook’s systems influence viral deceptions, polarization, and civic engagement. Democracy Fund believes the American people must have effective ways to understand and be a part of the democratic process. As the internet transforms political life, it opens exciting new pathways for public engagement but has also created a fertile ground for abuse, harassment and manipulation that hurt our communities and our society. As this research is planned Democracy Fund will pay special attention to ensuring that the voices and the priorities of those disproportionately harmed by social media are included.
The flood of news about bad actors gaming the system have revealed a troubling disregard for the critical responsibility social media companies have had over our personal privacy and public debate. Facebook, and other platforms, need to acknowledge the oversized role they play in our society and truly prioritize privacy, embrace transparency, and accept accountability. We are realistic about the complexities here, but see this research partnership as a key step towards that goal. Through this program, and in separate endeavors, we are deeply committed to working on meaningful solutions that help rebuild trustworthy spaces for communities to connect, share information and participate in our democracy.
Research Aimed at Identifying Actions and Policies that Affect Elections and Democratic Norms
Washington, D.C. and Redwood City, CA (April 9, 2018) – Earlier today, Facebook announced the launch of a new research initiative that will enable independent researchers to perform an assessment of the role the social platform plays in elections. Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network have joined an effort led by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support this potentially important step toward addressing how Facebook’s algorithms and vast storehouses of data are shaping elections, the social fabric, and democratic life.
The two organizations’ support is a continuation of the collective work Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network have done to address the unintended consequences of technology and its impacts on democracy. Democracy is under attack from many directions, and the influence social media has on elections is a critical front. While the full extent and impact of the role of malicious domestic actors on the 2016 election remains unknown, it has been verified that social media platforms were misused and that networks including but not limited to Facebook – violated the public’s trust. It’s now incumbent on these platforms to regain trust by urgently implementing technology solutions and supporting policy solutions where appropriate.
Key to finding these solutions will be Facebook’s support of independent, peer-reviewed analyses performed by a diverse committee of academic researchers, including voices who have been disproportionately harmed by social media. In particular, the committee must have diversity across ideology, race and ethnicity, geography, gender, expertise, and life experience. Today’s announcement is a first step in that direction. Notably, the research committee will independently solicit and prioritize research. They will have access to secure, privacy-protected data, which will be critically important in understanding the dynamics and effects of social media on the public square and arriving at informed recommendations about potential solutions. Ultimately, the academics will publish their findings without prior review or approval from Facebook.
The committee is expected to address misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda; polarizing content; promoting freedom of expression and association; protecting domestic elections from foreign interference; and civic engagement. It will answer two critical questions: Does Facebook have the right systems in place to fight misinformation and foreign interference? And how can Facebook help make social media a net positive for democracy?
“Each new story of nefarious actors abusing the platforms – often to foster divisiveness and intolerance – proves just how critical it is that social media companies take responsibility for securing our personal privacy and protecting public debate,” said Tom Glaisyer, managing director of the Public Square Program at Democracy Fund. “If the social media platforms are going to regain the public’s trust and live up to the outsized role they play in our democracy, the platforms must truly prioritize privacy, embrace transparency, and accept accountability. To protect and uphold meaningful rights we need richer, better informed research into the digital public square.”
“At Omidyar Network, we believe that technology can be a massive force for good, but that technologists must take broader responsibility for the implications of their products on society,” noted Paula Goldman, vice president and head of Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab. “It is urgent that we find solutions that are based on sound analysis, which we cannot do without access to data. We’re hopeful this is first in a series of efforts by platforms to open up their data in a responsible way to help find robust solutions to the problems at hand.”
Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network, both part of The Omidyar Group, are deeply committed to determining how to leverage the potential of technology while addressing its unintended consequences. Late last year, the organizations joined forces to ask “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” identifying six ways in which digital platforms pose direct challenges to democratic ideals. To help address these and other issues, Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network are pursuing multi-pronged strategies to help ensure the public square is vibrant, trusted, and informative in the digital age.
Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab is designed to test, build, and scale solutions that address the unintended consequences of technology – and, more importantly, help maximize the tech industry’s contributions to a healthy society. For example, the Lab has invested in Tristan Harris, a former Design Ethicist at Google, who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology in part to develop new models for how technology could contribute to individual and public health. The Lab is also partnering with tech, media, and civil society leaders to support a grassroots campaign to create a code of ethics for the data science community to adopt principles of responsible data use and sharing.
Democracy Fund believes the American people must have effective ways to understand and be a part of the democratic process. As the internet transforms political life, it opens exciting new pathways for public engagement while challenging models that used to work. Democracy Fund is deeply committed to solutions that combat hyper-partisanship and ensure that elections have integrity. Some examples of this work include Professor Zeynep Tufekci’s research on algorithmic accountability and the “Eye on Elections” project led by Professor Young Mie Kim. Democracy Fund has also supported a number of specific efforts to address misinformation in news including Politifact, Hoaxy Bot-O-Meter, the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy program, the Documenters Project by City Bureau and more.
All of these projects have the shared goal of increasing the accountability and responsibility of the technology industry and social media platforms. Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network are realistic about the complexities and risks of supporting this effort, but believe it has the potential to be a new avenue through which the public, platforms themselves, and policymakers will be able to better understand the implications of social media for the future of democracy.
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ABOUT DEMOCRACY FUND
Democracy Fund, part of The Omidyar Group, is a bipartisan foundation created by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to help ensure that our political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $70 million in support of a healthy democracy, including modern elections, effective governance, and a vibrant public square. To learn more, visit www.democracyfund.org or follow @democracyfund.
ABOUT OMIDYAR NETWORK
Omidyar Network, part of The Omidyar Group, is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. Omidyar Network has committed more than $1.2 billion to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple initiatives, including Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance & Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. To learn more, visit www.omidyar.com, and follow on Twitter @omidyarnetwork #PositiveReturns
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