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Press Release

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to receive grants totaling $6.5 million

Democracy Fund

February 22, 2018

NEW YORK (February 22, 2018) — The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University announced today that Democracy Fund, First Look Media, and the Charles Koch Foundation will provide a total of $6.5 million to support the Institute’s work defending the freedoms of speech and the press. Democracy Fund and First Look Media, both part of the Omidyar Group, have pledged a total of $3.25 million over five years in general operating support. The Charles Koch Foundation has pledged $3.25 million over five years to help support the Institute’s litigation program, and this contribution will be matched by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation under a challenge grant that was announced when Columbia University and Knight Foundation established the Institute in 2016.

“We’re grateful to Democracy Fund, First Look Media, and the Charles Koch Foundation for their significant and vital support of our work,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director. “The freedoms of speech and the press are under extraordinary stress right now. The privatization of the public square, the emergence of new technologies of disinformation and suppression, the expansion of the surveillance state, the steady creep of government secrecy, the draconian treatment of whistleblowers, the demonization of the media by the nation’s most senior officials – all of these present urgent threats to First Amendment freedoms. These new resources will enable us to confront these threats with new vigor.”

The Knight First Amendment Institute was established in 2016 by Columbia University and Knight Foundation to fortify First Amendment freedoms in the digital age. The Institute seeks to address 21st century challenges and develop 21st century approaches to the First Amendment, with a current concentration on strengthening legal frameworks for government transparency, reviving the First Amendment as a constraint on government surveillance, and protecting the integrity and vitality of public discourse. In the past year, the Institute has developed a cutting-edge litigation docket, launched an innovative research program, and hosted public programs that have featured some of the most provocative and insightful thinkers at the intersection of law, journalism, and technology.

“First Amendment freedoms are essential to active civic participation in the public square and a robust free press that helps hold power to account,” said Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman. “The Knight Institute is well positioned to address the new challenges facing the First Amendment in our digital age. We are proud to join the ranks of the Institute’s supporters and to pair our support with the grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.”

“We’re heartened to stand alongside the Democracy Fund, Knight Foundation, and First Look Media, with whom we share a commitment to openness, free expression, and a strong, free press,” said Charles Koch Foundation President Brian Hooks. “The full range of First Amendment freedoms are vital to a dynamic and open society. As these freedoms confront new and concerning threats, the Knight Institute plays a critical role in defending and preserving them.”

“Journalism is under assault. It’s imperative we support the mission of the Knight Institute to ensure the First Amendment is vigorously protected for the good of the public,” said Michael Bloom, CEO of First Look Media. “We’re proud to stand for free speech, fearless journalism and transparency in government so that our democracy functions as it was intended.”

The grants announced today build on support from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Hewlett Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Laura and John Arnold, as well as from Columbia University. The grant of $3.25 million over five years from Democracy Fund and First Look Media will provide unrestricted support for the full range of the Institute’s programming. The $3.25 million grant over five years from the Charles Koch Foundation will help endow the Institute’s litigation program and will be matched by Knight Foundation, which committed in 2016 to provide the Institute with $25 million in endowment funding to be matched by Columbia University or other sources.

“These new contributions help ensure that the Knight Institute will be a champion of free expression as the First Amendment is litigated and interpreted in a digital media world,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president and Knight Institute board member. “The diversity of views among the donors is a thrilling testament to the foundational importance of free speech in our society.”

In the coming year, the Knight Institute will carry forward and expand its litigation docket, which currently includes a landmark lawsuit regarding government censorship on social media, a challenge to the Department of Justice’s refusal to disclose legal memos that constitute the binding law of the executive branch, and an effort to shed light on border agents’ practice of searching travelers’ laptops and cellphones. As part of its “Emerging Threats” series, which grapples with newly arising structural threats to free expression, the Institute will be publishing essays on the regulation of social media, antitrust, intermediary liability, over-classification, and the press clause. On March 23, the Institute will co-host a symposium with the Columbia Law Review on “Free Speech in an Age of Inequality.”

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About the Knight Institute
The Knight First Amendment Institute is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization established by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education.

For more information, contact the Knight Institute at ujala.sehgal@knightcolumbia.org.
About Democracy Fund
Democracy Fund is a bipartisan foundation established 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 effective governance, modern elections, and a vibrant public square. For more, visit democracyfund.org.

About First Look Media
A bold, independent spirit defines everything we do at First Look — from journalism that holds the powerful accountable, to art and entertainment that shape our culture. Launched by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look Media is built on the belief that freedom of expression and of the press, diverse voices, and fiercely independent perspectives, are vital to a healthy democracy and a vibrant culture.

About Charles Koch Foundation
More than 50 years ago, Charles G. Koch began supporting education in the belief that everyone has the ability to learn, contribute, and succeed if they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. The Charles Koch Foundation, founded in 1980, continues this work by funding research and education that helps people expand their horizons, develop their skills, and help others. Through grants to nearly 350 colleges and universities nationwide and non-profit organizations, the Foundation connects scholars, students, and partners with the resources to explore diverse ideas and solutions that meet the challenges of our day. For more information visit charleskochfoundation.org.

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Blog

$3.25 Million to Support Knight First Amendment Institute

Tom Glaisyer

February 22, 2018

A range of technological, economic, and cultural forces are putting new pressures on the First Amendment — a pillar of our Bill of Rights. The freedoms of speech and of the press protected in the First Amendment ensure that Americans can openly participate in civic life and have access to a robust, free press that helps hold power accountable. Without these freedoms, the promise of a vibrant public square — both physical and digital — can be easily manipulated and the health of our democracy suffers.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, under the direction of Jameel Jaffer, is a new leader in the fight to protect the First Amendment against both longstanding and emerging threats. Today, Democracy Fund with our colleagues at First Look Media announced a general operating support grant of $3.25 million to support the Institute because their research, litigation, and public education efforts are an important building block in our support for First Amendment freedoms — especially our commitment to ensuring freedom of the press.

There have been many rhetorical attacks on the press in 2016 and 2017, and many concerns that these attacks will chip away at trust in the press and consequently result in tangible constraints on the news media. This concern is one shared by experts outside the country as evidenced by the new Inter-American Press Association mission to the United States, where free press advocates from other countries in North and South America are visiting to talk with US legislators and others about their concerns for press freedom here. The founding of the Press Freedom Tracker by a consortium of groups, including Democracy Fund grantees Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, ASNE, Online News Association, PEN America, and Free Press is further evidence.

No less significant a concern is the fact that our First Amendment freedoms are under extraordinary stress from a parallel host of challenges associated with digital technologies. The move from print and broadcast to always-on digital distribution and engagement with news has yielded huge benefits in the free flow of information. Yet there is much that needs to be understood about how the platforms operate and how they address issues that concern press freedom. There is an emerging consensus that our new digital public square is subject to manipulation by nefarious actors, and we see example after example of how those who do participate in public conversation can be subjected to harassment and trolling. These trends raise profound questions that require serious answers, including an understanding of how the market place of ideas can work in a digital age where the limiting factor is often human attention.

This is why we have provided significant support to the fast-growing Knight Institute. Though it was only created in 2016 following a significant commitment by the Knight Foundation, it has made its mark quickly with strategic litigation, research, and public education efforts in three areas:

Strengthening legal frameworks for government transparency;
Reviving the First Amendment as a constraint on government surveillance; and
Protecting the integrity and vitality of public discourse

We are very pleased to announce this support in parallel with the Charles Koch Foundation’s grant of $3.25 million and to join the long list of other foundations and supporters who have previously invested in the Knight Institute — including the Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Hewlett Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Laura and John Arnold, and Columbia University. Broad support from such a range of foundations and donors underscores the critical importance of the freedoms of speech and the press to our democracy, ensures its independence, and reinforces the shared belief that the Knight Institute is well positioned to identify and navigate new threats to these freedoms.

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Blog

NewsMatch Leads to Record Setting Year for Nonprofit News

Josh Stearns

February 14, 2018

We launched NewsMatch — a $3 million fund to match donations to nonprofit newsrooms — because we believe that strengthening local and investigative journalism is critical to a healthy democracy. The fund was a partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation designed to make 2017 a record-breaking year for giving to local and investigative journalism.

The results are in, and NewsMatch was a resounding success. Nearly every one of the more than 100 newsrooms who participated raised more dollars from more donors than ever before.

From October 1 to December 31, NewsMatch raised more than $4.8 million from individual donors and a coalition of foundations.
Local newsrooms raised even more on top of NewsMatch: in total, more than 202,000 donors contributed $33 million to local, nonprofit newsrooms.
Of those 202,000 donors, 43,000 were new donors giving to an organization for the first time.

There is no doubt that NewsMatch helped strengthen journalism in America over the last three months, and supported the growth of charitable giving to newsrooms. Together, the 100+ local and national participants received nearly 320,000 more donations, from 77,000 more donors in 2017, compared to 2016.

What made NewsMatch a success? We are undertaking an in-depth evaluation of last year’s program to see what lessons we can learn from our efforts. However, we know three key things that made NewsMatch stand out this year.

1. Creating New Platforms for Journalism Philanthropy

We created the first one-stop platform for donating to nonprofit news. At NewsMatch.org, donors could give to more than 100 newsrooms with one transaction — simplifying the process for donors and inviting more to join.

Beyond individual donors, we also built the NewsMatch campaign as a platform for partnerships between local and national foundations. Over the course of last fall, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the News Integrity Initiative, the Wyncote Foundation, The Gates Family Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation all joined NewsMatch as partners, creating double and triple matches for many of the participating organizations. Around the country, local newsrooms also set up at least 20 other matching efforts with local funders and donors, further extending the reach and impact of this program.

2. Building the Capacity of the Nonprofit News Sector

NewsMatch has always been about more than raising money. From the start, our campaign was designed to build the long-term capacity of nonprofit newsrooms to connect with their communities and cultivate support from their readers. In partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News and the News Revenue Hub, we created a stockpile of campaign templates, provided weekly guidance for small newsrooms who lack big fundraising teams, and offered weekly coaching and training webinars.

We have seen the impact of this work in the dramatic increase of year-by-year giving and in the boost of new donors — both of which bode well for the field. “With the support of NewsMatch, we had a record setting year, more than doubling the donations we received in past years,” Lauren Fuhrmann of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism told us. “NewsMatch provided the roadmap, tech support, and national exposure that we needed to have our most successful year-end fundraising drive ever.”

3. Raising Awareness About the Need to Support Nonprofit News

While public media and some nonprofit magazines have been around for decades, the current generation of local and investigative journalism organizations are relatively new. For the most part, people aren’t accustomed to giving to nonprofit news. We understood that it wasn’t enough for NewsMatch to double donations if people didn’t understand the importance of donating in the first place. NewsMatch elevated nonprofit news through #GivingNewsDay, which saw journalists, celebrities, and politicians on both sides of the aisle talking about the importance of donating to nonprofit newsrooms. Public voices like Mark Ruffalo, Michael Kelly, Cara Mund (Miss America), Katy Tur, Greta Van Susteren, and others joined the effort. Additionally, Facebook donated $100,000 in free advertising to publicize NewsMatch and its participating newsrooms.

“One of the most important things we can do is increase awareness about the need for and benefits of nonprofit journalism — that is, to add to the usual American philanthropic checklist of schools, hospitals, churches, and cultural institutions the possibility of donating to journalism. NewsMatch helped enormously in that effort,” Richard Tofel, president of Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news organization ProPublica, wrote to us in an email.

This work would not have been possible without our partner funders, grantees, and newsrooms who brought such creativity and passion to the project. We are especially grateful to Lindsey Linzer at the Miami Foundation — which hosted the fund — and Jason Alcorn, who served as project manager.

NewsMatch catalyzed a lot of energy and proved that people support reporting they trust and rely on: but it is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. No one campaign can reverse what has been lost from local news and investigative journalism over the last decade of layoffs and cutbacks, but we are nonetheless optimistic. We continue to be encouraged by the rising nonprofit news sector and intrigued by what it can mean for renewing public service journalism as a core part of our communities. At Democracy Fund, we are committed to investing in the people and organizations who are helping build a brighter future for local news, and we look forward to continuing this work with NewsMatch in the future.

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Blog

Local People Will Create the Future of Local News

Teresa Gorman

February 7, 2018

Josh Stearns co-authored this piece with Teresa Gorman.

Local news is critical to a healthy democracy, and we believe that the future of local news is local. This simple idea has shaped the way Democracy Fund has thought about its work to support and strengthen the public square in America.

Today we are announcing two new locally-based and locally-driven funds — totaling more than $2 million — that will invest in ideas, people and organizations that are working to ensure people have access to the news and information they need in these communities. The funds will focus on building more vibrant news ecosystems as vital parts of just communities and a healthy democracy.

These funds are not focused on maintaining the status quo in local news, but on pushing forward changes that improve how journalism serves the public and makes news and information more resilient over the long term. Through these funds, we will work closely with local partners to increase giving to local news and invest in long-term solutions — over short-term fixes — especially in the areas of business models, collaboration and community engagement.

In New Jersey, we will build on our previous work in partnership with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Knight Foundation by establishing the New Jersey Local News Lab Fund with $1.3 million over two years. New Jersey has become a bold laboratory for new models of collaboration, revenue experiments, and community engagement (read more about previous work in New Jersey in this report). This new fund will continue that momentum and help broaden the work there beyond newsrooms to other civic information networks and institutions.

The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund is the start of a new multi-year commitment to the state. We are kicking off the fund with $700,000 for the first 18 months. The work we’ve done in New Jersey to strengthen their news ecosystem will inform our work, but we recognize that this new fund must be built to respond to the unique local context of North Carolina. To that end, we commissioned local journalist and community organizer Fiona Morgan to undertake a year-long research project on the strengths and challenges of local news and information in North Carolina.

The two funds, housed at the Community Foundation of New Jersey and North Carolina Community Foundation, will be managed by advisory groups made up of local stakeholders and Democracy Fund. As a national funder we recognize that we are guests in these communities and have set these funds up to ensure funding decisions are rooted in local knowledge and experience. We take seriously the advice from longtime philanthropy leader Pru Brown who wrote in a paper prepared for Democracy Fund, “ultimately, perhaps the most useful lens for place-based philanthropy is asking at every stage whether the decisions the national foundation is making and the way it is operating promote or undermine local ownership.”

A key goal of these funds is to catalyze new momentum locally around supporting local public-interest news that serves all communities. As such, both funds are built as open platforms for partnership with other funders and donors. We are working closely with local and regional foundations in each state to expand the size of the funds, leveraging even more dollars to support local news and information efforts. That work is ongoing, and we look forward to sharing more about the amazing partners we are working with in the coming weeks and months.

This work is just a piece of Democracy Fund’s broader work on local news, which includes the national NewsMatch campaign, revenue research, and shared services like Membership Puzzle Project and News Revenue Hub. Additionally, Democracy Fund supports bridge builders and network connectors in local regions who are on the frontlines of weaving together stronger news ecosystems through collaboration and capacity building.

We are thrilled and humbled by this work and by the people who are working with us. Democracy Fund is committed to working in deep partnership with local communities, to learning, and to operating transparently and openly. If you are interested in working with us reach out at LocalNewsLab@democracyfund.org and sign up for our weekly newsletter The Local Fix.

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Blog

A New Fund Aims to Put the Public Back into the Public Square

Paul Waters

January 23, 2018

Today four foundations are announcing a new joint fund designed to fuel a new era of journalism rooted in listening to communities. The Community Listening and Engagement Fund (CLEF) is dedicated to helping news organizations better listen, engage, and produce more relevant content for the communities they serve. Democracy Fund is honored to join the News Integrity Initiative, Lenfest Institute for Journalism Education, and the Knight Foundation in creating this new resource to bring proven models of public-powered journalism to more newsrooms around the country.

The new fund, which launches with $650,000 from the four founding partners, will subsidize the costs for newsrooms to adopt Hearken and GroundSource, two incredible platforms designed by journalists to bring the public more deeply into the reporting process.

Hearken provides newsrooms with unique tools to foster genuine audience engagement. Their model, called “public-powered journalism,” puts everyday people at the center of journalism, so they are able to communicate their information needs to reporters directly. Audiences are not only consumers, but partners in the production of meaningful stories. GroundSource is a unique platform that connects newsrooms to their communities. Outlets are assigned phone numbers that establishes an open line of communication between reporters and their audiences. Journalists can seek perspective on certain stories in the works, or encourage people to share thoughts on local issues most important to them.

We understand that at the root of so many challenges newsrooms face is the need to make journalism more relevant and responsive to the public. Developing a culture, practice, and workflows around listening is the key to unlocking this potential. Supporting tools like Hearken and GroundSource will help rebuild trust, rethink business models, and rebuild public interest journalism in news outlets throughout the country.

Read more about the Community Listening and Engagement Fund, why we love the CLEF name, and learn how to apply here. We see this new fund as core to our strategy for strengthening trustworthy journalism.

At Democracy Fund, our approach to journalism is focused on building trust and engagement. We are working on many fronts to foster practices that make news outlets more responsive and representative of their communities. To that end, we support efforts to help newsrooms authentically connect with and involve community members, transform reporting practices, represent the perspectives of diverse communities, and produce more relevant and thus more highly valued news.

We break this work up into two key tracks focused on Audience Engagement and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Through our Audience Engagement work we invest in innovations and support projects that help journalists better engage and involve their audiences in news generation, production, dissemination, and discussion. For example, we support the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas whose rigorous research is helping test what works and what doesn’t, the Gather Platform which is building a community of practice around engaged journalism, the Coral Project which is helping newsrooms build online communities and the American Press Institute’s Metrics for News program which helps newsrooms understand what communities want and how best to deliver it.

We recognize that no single product, practice, or platform can improve trust and authentic audience engagement if America’s newsrooms and the organizations supporting them remain disproportionately white in their staff and male in their leadership. We see steady progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion as a necessary condition of success in our work to mend the deteriorating connections between news outlets and the communities they serve.

Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work focuses on improving the diversity of sources, stories, and staff in news outlets. This work occurs across three dimensions. The first pertains to creating an inclusive environment at news outlets. The second constitutes recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff, including leadership. The third involves working to develop and sustain minority ownership of media properties like Blavity, Q City Metro and the Richmond Times. We are excited for the work of our grantees like the Ida B. Wells Society which is expanding the ranks of investigative reporters and editors of color, the Maynard Institute which is training newsroom leaders, the Emma Bowen Foundation which provides internships for diverse journalism students, and many others. We have begun an exercise to map this space on an institutional level, and we are excited to connect with new organizations.

We believe that the Community Listening and Engagement Fund can help us work across these strategies, accelerating the adoption of new practices that put people back at the center of journalism. We are grateful to the Lenfest Institute who is hosting and managing the fund and to the vision of the News Integrity and Knight Foundation who are joining us in the launch today. At Democracy Fund, we are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships and collaboration to strengthen the Fourth Estate and the democratic principles that our nation is founded on. We will continue to seek out opportunities to collaborate with news outlets, journalism support organizations, and partner funders to achieve this goal.

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Brief

Learning From North Carolina

Fiona Morgan, In Consultation With Melanie Sill

December 5, 2017

Democracy Fund’s Public Square Program defines a local news ecosystem as the network of institutions, collaborations, and people that local communities rely on for news, information, and engagement. Healthy news ecosystems are diverse, interconnected, sustainable, and deeply engaged with their communities. When an ecosystem is healthy, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Looking at local news and information through this ecosystem lens raises new, compelling questions. For example, instead of asking how do we save traditional models of local news, we ask about ways of strengthening people’s access to information that is central to a healthy democracy. Instead of asking about the health of any one organization, we examine the robustness of the relationships between them. Instead of asking how we can get people to pay for news, we ask what might be a range of models to support news as a service to communities.

To that end, we commissioned a series of reports from regions around the country to better understand the complex forces shaping local news ecosystems from North Carolina to New Mexico. In this report, the authors have sought to ask these questions, and map out the strengths and challenges facing North Carolina as the landscape of local news continues to shift due to economic and technological change. This report, researched and written by Fiona Morgan, with Melanie Sill contributing significant insights and feedback, seeks to map out key contours of the news ecosystem in North Carolina. Although the report’s initial purpose was to inform our investments in local news, we are making its findings available to the public. We do so to help serve the field and welcome further feedback that will inevitably add new layers and richness to our understanding of the field.

The report is based on interviews with more than two dozen people from different sectors and geographic areas in North Carolina that took place in the spring of 2017. It also pulls from previous research by Morgan and by Democracy Fund Senior Fellow Geneva Overholser. Morgan discusses journalistic and financial challenges facing local news in North Carolina and identifies bright spots in the ecosystem — for example, audience engagement initiatives, promising business models, and emerging collaborations. Her report concludes with 10 suggestions for developing a more robust ecosystem in North Carolina, ranging from convening conversations to forming partnerships to tackling concrete problems by building practical solutions.

Democracy Fund is grateful for the thoughtful reporting and analysis by Morgan and Sill, who are well-connected journalists and students of media in the state. (see “About the Author”). The report has also profited from the insights of many people in and out of North Carolina, including Overholser, whose earlier interviews with North Carolina journalists and publishers provided a foundation, and Dr. Phil Napoli of Duke University, a grantee of Democracy Fund who is mapping the health of media ecosystems across the country. We are also grateful for the work of Penelope (Penny) Muse Abernathy who has been a stalwart advocate for local news and a chronicler of its challenges in North Carolina and across the United States.

This report presents an overview of North Carolina’s local news and information ecosystem but does not attempt to catalogue or cover every part of it. We welcome feedback, further information, and questions about North Carolina’s local news and information ecosystem, our ecosystem approach to supporting local news, and Democracy Fund’s Public Square program to localnewslab@democracyfund.org.

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Blog

News Match Grows as New Funders Step Up to Support Nonprofit News

Josh Stearns

November 20, 2017

News Match is already the largest grassroots fundraising campaign for nonprofit journalism ever. More than 100 newsrooms across the United States are working together to raise $6 million dollars—or more —by the end of 2017. NewsMatch.org, the home of the campaign, is an innovative new hub where people can search for trustworthy journalism outlets by geography or topic and then give to multiple newsrooms with one donation. The effort is designed to mobilize thousands of new people to donate to local news and investigative reporting.

But News Match is more than a fundraising campaign. It’s a call to action for all who are concerned about the news and information needs of our communities and the role of a strong fourth estate in our democracy—and it’s growing.

For those in philanthropy, News Match offers an opportunity to not just provide financial support to outstanding newsrooms, but to invest in the long-term sustainability of these organizations by equipping them with the in-depth training, technology, and capacity building they need to reach new readers and foster a community of donors.

News Match began with a small team at the Knight Foundation who had a big idea to ramp up donations to nonprofit newsrooms at the end of 2016. That year Knight matched $1.2 million in donations to 57 newsrooms. This year News Match has doubled the number of eligible newsrooms and nearly tripled the total dollars in the News Match fund.

News Match has become a unique platform for local and national funders to collaborate in the interest of fostering more sustainable and vibrant public interest media.

Today we are announcing four new foundation partners have joined News Match:

The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is contributing $100,000 to the national News Match fund, while also matching donations to five local newsrooms as part of its ongoing grant making.
The Wyncote Foundation is providing an additional match of up to $10,000 each for Next City, Philadelphia Public School Notebook, and NJ Spotlight in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The News Integrity Initiative is contributing $50,000 to match donations to a group of newsrooms that cultivate diversity and inclusion within their organizations and serve underrepresented communities.
The Gates Family Foundation is matching donations to Chalkbeat in support of their education reporting in Colorado devoting up to $10,000 during the Colorado Gives campaign that kicks off December 5.

Each of these new commitments is above and beyond the original $3 million donated by the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who together launched News Match at the beginning of October.

In ten other states, individual donors and local foundations have stepped up with challenge grants to encourage people to give to nonprofit news, adding at least another $500,000 to support quality journalism this year. In total, more than 20 foundations, corporations, and individual donors are offering matching challenges, most of which were developed independently by local leadership at nonprofit news organizations.

In Texas the John & Florence Newman Foundation is offering a $100,000 matching grant for San Antonio’s Rivard Report and The Kirk Mitchell Public Interest Investigative Journalism Fund is matching gifts to the Austin Bulldog.
In Michigan, Bridge Magazine has built strong relationships with local funders and three of them, the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, and Glassen Memorial, have matches to support the newsroom.
In Vermont, corporate donors and local funders such as Vermont Coffee Company, Sustainable Future Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, and the Fountain Fund are providing matching funds for VTDigger.
In Louisiana, The Reva and David Logan Foundation is matching donations to The Lens in New Orleans as part of their ongoing grant making.
In California, The Community Foundation for San Benito County is matching donations to BenitoLink and The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation is matching donations to FairWarning as a part of their ongoing grant making.
The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is matching donations to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Pine Tree Watch, Connecticut Health I-Team, New Mexico In-Depth, and Rocky Mountain PBS.
Individual donors have also risen to the occasion, creating challenge funds at Wisconsin Watch, The War Horse, EcoRI, and InvestigateWest.

In the face of profound challenges facing journalists today there is enormous momentum gathering to support nonprofit news. However, because all of these are matching programs, newsrooms won’t be able to unlock those dollars unless people donate.

Quality journalism makes a difference every day. Without you, stories don’t just go unread — they go untold. As we head into the giving season, it is critical that we support the news we rely on.

Find a newsroom and donate today at www.newsmatch.org.

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Report

Effective Place-Based Philanthropy

Prudence Brown

October 17, 2017

Democracy Fund believes that strong local news and a vibrant public square are critical to a healthy democracy. Today, local news is struggling in communities across America. Newsrooms, facing dwindling advertising revenue and diminishing trust, have been forced to shrink, or in many places, disappear altogether. While there are bold experiments to rebuild newsroom capacity in some regions, these experiments are unevenly distributed and precarious. The Democracy Fund local news strategy is focused on creating a more connected, collaborative, and sustainable future for public-interest journalism.

Because local news must be responsive to and reflective of the local communities it serves, we have designed our local news strategy around deep partnerships with local funders, journalists, and communities. We want Democracy Fund to be a catalyst for expanding local efforts to create robust news ecosystems. We recognize that in pursuing place-based philanthropy to strengthen local news, we are guests in other’s communities. We can’t do this work alone.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles and practices of national foundations undertaking place-based work. Democracy Fund commissioned Prudence Brown, a respected leader in place-based philanthropy, to provide her insights as we design a new program to support and strengthen local journalism and civic engagement.

Many of the themes and considerations in this paper are applicable to funders in other sectors. As such, we are sharing this work with the broader field. We think this is important both for the sake of transparency and accountability, and because we hope others can learn alongside us. This paper is just the start of our learning journey. We welcome any comments about lessons learned from other national-local partnerships.

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How Local-National Funding Partnerships Can Strengthen Local News

Josh Stearns

October 17, 2017

Democracy Fund believes that strong local news and a vibrant public square are critical to a healthy democracy. That is why our local news strategy is focused on creating a more connected, collaborative, and sustainable future for public-interest journalism. But we recognize that we can’t do it alone, and that partnerships with other foundations are critical to rebuilding a vibrant public square.

Today we are releasing a new paper that we commissioned to help us learn about how to build effective and equitable partnerships that put local stakeholders at the center of our work to support local news. The paper, “Effective Place-Based Philanthropy: The Role and Practices of a National Funder,” is relevant to funders and nonprofits working on a range of community development and engagement efforts.

We believe that the future of local news is local. That may sound like a bland truism, but it raises important questions for a national foundation who wants to genuinely and authentically support diverse local communities to strengthen their local news ecosystem. Solutions to the crisis in local news need to respond to local context and needs. We can and should learn from what is working elsewhere, but we should also recognize there is no silver bullet and that only through deep listening and partnership can we create meaningful and lasting change.

For this reason, we have designed our local news strategy around deep partnerships with local funders, journalists, and communities. We want Democracy Fund to be a catalyst for expanding locally driven and locally supported efforts to create robust news ecosystems. We recognize that in pursuing place-based philanthropy to strengthen local news, we are guests in other’s communities. We take that role seriously and humbly.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles and practices of national foundations undertaking place-based work and learn from past projects. Democracy Fund commissioned Prudence Brown, a respected leader in place-based philanthropy, to provide her insights as we developed our strategy.

Drawing significantly from recent literature and Brown’s own experience and observations, this paper is organized around key questions that national funders can consider as they develop new place-based partnerships. After each question, Brown provides a brief discussion and concrete suggestions for decision-making and action. While the audience for this paper is largely other foundations, we believe that the lessons here are also useful in empowering nonprofits and grantees.

Many of the themes and considerations in this paper are applicable to other sectors well beyond journalism and media. As such, we are sharing this work with the broader field. We think this is important both for transparency and accountability, and because we hope others can learn alongside us. This paper is just the start of our learning journey. We welcome any comments about lessons learned from other national-local partnerships to LocalNewsLab@democracyfund.org.

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Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?

Tom Glaisyer

October 4, 2017

Today The Omidyar Group released a paper co-authored by me and two colleagues at Omidyar Network on the role of social media platforms on democracy and the public square. This paper – called “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” – comes at a moment when there is new scrutiny on the role Facebook, Google, and Twitter played in spreading misinformation and divisive propaganda during the 2016 election. Those debates loom large, however, our analysis goes well beyond any one election to try and understand how social platforms are disrupting core elements of a democratic society.

In June 2017 Facebook raised the question “Is social media good for democracy?” Like them, we have been wrestling with these questions for some time, and while we do not take for granted how these networks provide value to civic life, we are also deeply troubled by the dangers they pose. Their algorithms and their vast storehouses of data gives them fundamentally new capacities abilities to shape discourse, media, and civic and democratic life in American.

As my co-authors – Stacy Donohue and Anamitra Deb – and I reviewed the research of leading voices on this set of issues, we identified six key ways social media is threatening democracy:

Exacerbating the polarization of civil society via echo chambers and filter bubbles
Rapidly spreading mis- and dis-information and amplifying the populist and illiberal wave across the globe
Creating competing realities driven by their algorithms’ intertwining of popularity and legitimacy
Being vulnerable to political capture and voter manipulation through enabling malevolent actors to spread dis-information and covertly influence public opinion
Capturing unprecedented amounts of data that can be used to manipulate user behavior
Facilitating hate speech, public humiliation, and the targeted marginalization of disadvantaged or minority voices

There are no easy answers to the challenges represented above, and any group of potential solutions must account for the diverse interests of multiple stakeholders if we are going to have the public square we deserve. As our founder, ebay creator Pierre Omidyar, wrote today in The Washington Post, “Just as new regulations and policies had to be established for the evolving online commerce sector, social media companies must now help navigate the serious threats posed by their platforms and help lead the development and enforcement of clear industry safeguards. Change won’t happen overnight, and these issues will require ongoing examination, collaboration and vigilance to effectively turn the tide.”

For our part, at Democracy Fund, the potential effects of social media on democracy are closely tied to many lines of our work. This includes longstanding investments on issues ranging from combating hyperpartisanship with constructive dialogue to developing digital election administration tools, and from understanding the impact of fact checking to supporting communities often targeted online. A few examples of this work include:

Politifact, one of the nation’s leading fact checking organizations, has partnered with Facebook to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform.
The Center for Media Engagement, formerly the Engaging News Project, works with newsrooms, social platforms and the public to develop and test ways to make trusted online information more engaging and impactful.
The Coral Project builds open-source tools focused on helping newsrooms build safe, secure and vibrant online communities.

In addition, we supported the Knight Prototype Fund on misinformation earlier this year, which focused on many of these issues. The full list of 20 projects can be found here, but the four projects we funded are:

Viz Lab — Developing a dashboard to track how misinformation spreads through images and memes to aid journalists and researchers in understanding the origins of the image, its promoters, and where it might have been altered and then redistributed across social media.
Hoaxy Bot-o-Meter is a tool created by computer scientists at the Center for Complex Networks to uncover attempts to use Internet bots to boost the spread of misinformation and shape public opinion. The tool aims to reveal how this information is generated and broadcasted, how it becomes viral, its overall reach, and how it competes with accurate information for placement on user feeds.
The Documenters Project by City Bureau creates a network of citizen “documenters” who receive training in the use of journalistic ethics and tools, attend public civic events, and produce trustworthy reports on social media platforms.
The American Library Association is collaborating with the Center for News Literacy to develop an adult media literacy program in five public libraries, focused on how to be a savvy digital citizen in a platform world.

We are going to continue to ask hard questions and support people and organizations who are working to create a robust public square that serves our democracy. We look forward to continuing this work alongside these and other partners. Please email the authors at inquiries@omidyargroup.com if you’d like to discuss how we might work together.

​1. Creating New Platforms for Journalism Philanthropy

​2. Building the Capacity of the Nonprofit News Sector

​3. Raising Awareness About the Need to Support Nonprofit News

1. Creating New Platforms for Journalism Philanthropy

2. Building the Capacity of the Nonprofit News Sector

3. Raising Awareness About the Need to Support Nonprofit News