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Three reports spotlight the role of media by and for diverse communities in America

Lea Trusty

July 10, 2019

As Jodi Rave, author of American Indian Media Today writes:

“Media in Indian Country are grappling with many of the same challenges around sustainability that face the rest of the journalism industry, but it is exacerbated by low levels of philanthropic support.”

This double-edged challenge is what led us to commission leading researchers and practitioners from around the country to write a series of reports featuring American Indian, African American, and Hispanic media in the United States.

We wanted to shine a light on the important role of media by and for diverse communities in the United States and learn more about the unique issues these various sectors of media are facing. And as funders who are invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in media—both internally in newsroom staff and leadership, but also in the communities these outlets serve—we wanted to listen to media makers of color and identify opportunities to sustain ethnic media into the future.

We believe that every community member must have access to accurate, diverse, and representative sources of news to inform their everyday lives and enable them to fully participate in our democracy. Our hope is that other funders and advocates will join us in recognizing and supporting the important role ethnic media plays in fulfilling these needs.

Here is the full series:

American Indian Media Today. Through a series of interviews with Native media practitioners and experts, Jodi Rave of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance reports on the major trends and challenges for American Indian media today. The report also offers recommendations for funders and advocates who want to support the growth of independent news media in Indian Country.
African American Media Today. Angela Ford, Kevin McFall, and Bob Dabney of The Obsidian Collection provide a brief history of African-American and black legacy media, an overview of current trends and challenges, and offer recommendations for funders and advocates who want to support the growth and strength of Black publishers across the country.
Hispanic Media Today. Jessica Retis, Associate Professor of Journalism at California State University Northridge, provides a brief history of Hispanic media in the United States, an overview of current trends and challenges, and offers recommendations for funders and advocates who want to help support and sustain Hispanic media.

Democracy Fund has been working to build a robust infrastructure of support for these newsrooms through investments in organizations like the Center for Community and Ethnic Media, the Obsidian Collection, and our ongoing support of journalism associations serving journalists and media makers of color. In addition, our Ecosystem News strategy works with local communities around the US to support ethnic and community media locally, and our NewsMatch campaign helps build the long term capacity of newsrooms to build support from their communities. However, as these reports show, there is still a long way to go and much more work to do. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about how we are building on the lessons from these reports and deepening our support for media makers of color across the country.

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Stewards of Democracy: The Views of American Local Election Officials

Natalie Adona, Paul Gronke, Paul Manson, and Sarah Cole

June 26, 2019

Local elections officials (LEOs) are the stewards of our democracy, but oftentimes they are left out of important conversations about the future of our elections nationwide. The LEOs from our survey are the chief elections officers in their local jurisdictions. Not to be confused with poll workers, the LEOs surveyed in our new report oversee local election processes and are responsible for ensuring the voting process is fair, free, and secure. Among their many responsibilities, LEOs execute the election laws in their state, make decisions that define the voter experience, and train the permanent and temporary employees that interact with the electorate.

It might be hard to imagine but (depending on how you count) between 7,000-10,000 local election officials manage the front line of elections in the United States. Despite their recognition as the people who run elections, LEOs are often left out of national conversations about reform and may not have a seat at the table when important policy decisions are made at the local, state, or federal levels—decisions that they alone will ultimately implement.

Stewards of Democracy: The Views of American Local Election Officials details the findings of the Democracy Fund-Reed College 2018 Survey of Local Election Officials (2018 LEO Survey), and is part of our effort to create a space for these stewards of democracy to be heard. The survey is designed to capture the collective experience of officials across the country, and to help us learn more about their perspectives on election administration, access, integrity, and reform. The results should be interpreted as a snapshot of opinion taken in the midst of a competitive midterm election.

More than 1,000 LEOs from across the country responded to our survey. Our survey respondents serve over 81 million registered voters. They manage offices with staffs of one or two in the smallest jurisdictions to over 1,000 employees in the largest (not including poll workers). Our hope is that this report will be the start of an ongoing attempt to elevate LEO’s voices in efforts to modernize and secure American elections.

The report breaks down the findings of the survey into four sections:

Meet Your Local Election Official – This section provides data on the professional and demographic profile of the typical LEO including LEO workload, years in service, pay, professional training and other demographic information.
Running the 2018 Election – This section covers findings on 2018 election preparedness including information on resources, staff, meeting the challenges of cybersecurity, and confidence in voter registration list security.
Voter-Centric Elections: Education and Outreach – This section discusses LEO attitudes regarding accessibility, including voter education and outreach.
Improving Elections Using New and Old Tools – This section focuses on the adoption of modernization and of technology, such as online voter registration and automatic voter registration systems to improve elections. It also covers our analysis of LEO opinions, in their own words, on how they think elections can be improved, including legislative and policy changes involving voting.

The bottom line is that all the LEOs we surveyed care deeply about their ability to administer elections in an accessible, efficient, and secure fashion. We were particularly moved by how our survey demonstrated LEOs’ dedication to a positive voter experience and to nonpartisan election administration. Respondents in our survey made it clear that they have and will continue to be good stewards of democracy—but resources, staffing, and coordination between state and local officials are areas of concern.

We plan to solicit LEO opinions again, at different times, using different lenses. We hope that our efforts encourage conversations and collaboration with LEOs and lead to reforms that best serve the American electorate—providing policymakers with invaluable insight into the makeup of the election administration field and its evolving needs as it hopefully becomes more diverse in the coming years.

Democracy Fund’s Elections Program supports, among other things, nonprofit organizations that improve elections processes and provide assistance to election officials themselves. As we work with grantees and partners, we are reminded time and again of the important role of the LEOs ensuring that our voices are heard.

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Announcing a New Fund for Investing in Faith in Democracy

Chris Crawford

June 3, 2019

Last year, I wrote a blog about Democracy Fund’s work to engage faith leaders and faith-based organizations in helping to strengthen our democracy. Since then, we continue to hunger for a more inclusive America in which our political system respects the dignity of every individual and serves the needs of the American people. To support this mission, we have continued to refine our approach and increase our investments in leaders and organizations across faith traditions that are promoting pluralism and reducing polarization in their communities.

Now, Democracy Fund is announcing an exciting new opportunity for organizations that are interested in exploring the ways that communities of faith can support democratic values and civic institutions, build bridges, and foster cooperation and civic engagement.

Democracy Fund and The Fetzer Institute have invested in a Faith In/And Democracy Pooled Fund that will be hosted and distributed by Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE).

PACE has issued a Request for Proposals for organizations from around the country to apply for grants to support their important work. Organizations selected for grants will be a part of a learning community that explores important questions facing our democracy:

How do communities of faith, religion, and/or spirituality prepare and train leaders to support democratic values and civic institutions?
What would it look like to have an effective multi-ethnic, religiously pluralistic democracy?
How can intra- and interfaith dialogue lead to actions that enhance civic life?
How do leaders reach “beyond the choir” to include participants who are not comfortable with or amenable to talking across difference?
How does faith intersect with other identifiers such as race, class, and gender, and how do those identities taken collectively influence participation in civic life?
What means, methods, and tools have faith, religious, or spiritual communities used successfully to bridge difference and foster cooperation and civic engagement?

This project is an important step in the development of the Faith in Democracy portfolio at Democracy Fund. After an initial round of investments in 2017 and 2018, we are excited to begin partnering with other funders to increase our impact in this important space. We are hoping that this partnership with our friends at The Fetzer Institute can serve as an example of how foundations can pool their resources to experiment, learn, and make change together.

A year ago, I wrote that Democracy Fund is interested in supporting bold leaders who are working to unify Americans and promote our shared values, and that we hope to experiment with and scale models to further strengthen and improve our democracy. The Faith In/And Democracy Initiative at PACE will identify and support those exact leaders around the country. As PACE makes their initial investments, we will be sure to share inspiring stories, lessons learned, and invitations to join this important work.

If you know an organization that PACE should consider, please encourage them to apply by clicking here.

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What We Learned Through NewsMatch Can Help All of Local News

Josh Stearns

May 14, 2019

There are almost-weekly reminders about the struggles facing local news. Last week the entire staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune were laid off when the paper was sold to a competing paper. When 14 staff were laid off at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in April, it fell to one of those laid-off staff to cover the story. Zooming out, these individual stories fit into a troubling trend: America has lost nearly half its newspaper staff between 2008 and 2017, and almost 1,800 newspapers have closed their doors since 2004.

In the face of these struggles, the annual NewsMatch campaign, now entering its fourth year, provides a number of important lessons for how we can strengthen and support local news. NewsMatch is a national campaign that helped newsrooms around the country raise more than $7.6 million from hundreds of thousands of donors at the end of 2018. Today NewsMatch is releasing its annual learning report, which documents how the campaign meets three interlocking goals: Raising awareness about the role of journalism in our society, expanding community support and funding for news, and strengthening newsrooms’ long-term fundraising capacity.

We know raising awareness is a pressing need because the Pew Research Center recently found that 70 percent of U.S. adults think local journalism is doing well financially and only 14 percent have directly paid for local news. For local news in America to thrive newsrooms will have to dramatically shift public perception by engaging more deeply with audiences, documenting the impact of their journalism, and being transparent about the challenges they face. NewsMatch is creating new pathways both to raise awareness about the crisis in local news and enabling people to take action by supporting the quality journalism our nation needs.

Download the report at bit.ly/newsmatchlearning

Building Public Awareness About Nonprofit News

Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2018, the campaign helped 154 nonprofit news organizations across the country raise more than $7.6 million in unrestricted funding, which is being invested in more and better journalism, crucial general operating support, and improved fundraising capabilities. Since 2016, NewsMatch has helped nonprofit newsrooms raise more than $15.8 million for reporting and operations.

Core to the success of NewsMatch is how the program has helped spark a new kind of local and national conversation about the role of nonprofit news in America. The campaign runs a national awareness effort, provides 500+ hours of training to local and investigative newsrooms, creates a campaign-in-a-box toolkit for participants, and coordinates a national day of action called #GivingNewsDay in partnership with Giving Tuesday. These and other resources help newsrooms communicate their value and work to their community and ask for support, reminding people that good journalism shapes every other issue they care about.

The public is noticing. In two months — November and December of 2018 — over 240,000 people gave to news organizations. That is more than digital subscriptions to the Seattle Times, Boston Globe, Star-Tribune, and Dallas Morning News combined, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. Critically, 52,000 of those donors were new and were supporting a nonprofit news organization for the first time. The year before, in 2017, 43,000 new donors gave for the first time during NewsMatch, for a two-year total of 95,000 new donors.

The learning and evaluation report released today outlines how the team behind NewsMatch designed the 2018 campaign, what worked and what didn’t. It covers how NewsMatch operates, what we are learning about building community support for journalism and the impact the campaign is having on newsrooms, donors and philanthropy.

Helping Foundations See Local News as a Priority

In examining the lack of understanding of the local news crisis last month in Bloomberg, Gerry Smith wrote last month that many people “have yet to conceive of journalism as a critical component of a free society, and may not think of a newsroom in the same way they do the Salvation Army or the American Red Cross.” This disconnect persists even though a growing body of research has mapped our how the erosion of local news is tied to lower voter turnout, fewer candidates running for office, less responsive elected representatives, and an increase in corruption and government waste. It is not enough to expand individual donations, we must also create new on-ramps for local and national foundations to support nonprofit news. According to an analysis released last year by Northeastern University and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center local news comprised only 5% of total grants given to media from 2010 to 2015.

That is why NewsMatch is also creating new on-ramps for local and national foundations around the country to easily support and strengthen nonprofit journalism. NewsMatch has been designed as an open and trusted place for funders who want to invest in local news and investigative reporting and learn more about effectively supporting journalism. In 2018, NewsMatch continued to drive new philanthropic dollars to participating newsrooms:

The national matching fund grew to $3.7 million, an increase of 116 percent. Seven funders contributed to the national fund.
Regional and issue-focused funders offered partner matches for cohorts of newsrooms (for examples, newsrooms reporting on sciences and health, investigative newsrooms in the South, Colorado news outlets, etc.). Four funders set up these targeted matches alongside the main fund.
Participating newsrooms independently leveraged their participation in NewsMatch to secure more than $675,000 in additional, direct matches for their year-end campaigns. (This was down a bit from 2017.)

The campaign helps funders make the most out of their dollars by matching them with individual donations and supporting long-term capacity building in newsrooms. That capacity building work is starting to pay off. In a year when nonprofits overall only saw 1.5 percent year-over-year growth in individual donations, the average NewsMatch participant raised 11 percent more during the campaign in 2018 vs 2017. Small and medium newsrooms saw the biggest growth in year-end support, with 30+ percent increases in individual donors, donations, and dollars raised during NewsMatch. While the dollars raised during NewsMatch 2018 are notable, the real success is how the program is building long-term capacity for newsrooms to build meaningful connections with communities as readers and donors.

Growing the Campaign in 2019

Part fundraising program, part capacity building effort, and part public awareness campaign, NewsMatch achieves a complex set of goals while making it as easy as possible for anyone — individual donor, newsroom, funder — to participate. The Nieman Journalism Lab’s Christine Schmidt described how these elements come together, writing: “The campaign caught the budding nonprofit news sector at a critical stage in its growth and is giving it a jetstream by helping coach newsrooms, funders, and individual donors into seeding its future.”

NewsMatch participants at work: Hechinger Report, Texas Tribune, ProPublica, High Country News

NewsMatch was founded in 2016 by the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation and each year the number of NewsMatch participants has grown. That growth puts pressure on the national matching fund and we are currently seeking new and additional partners to support NewsMatch for 2019 and 2020. Support for NewsMatch 2018 was provided by the Colorado Media Project, Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Facebook Journalism Project, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Knight Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, Rita Allen Foundation, and Wyncote Foundation in partnership with The Miami Foundation, Institute for Nonprofit News and News Revenue Hub.

If we can together raise $5 million dollars for the national fund we can turn it into more than $10 million for local and investigative journalism this year. (If you are interested in exploring how to get involved in NewsMatch, or to set up a partner fund for a region or issue you care about, email Josh Stearns, jstearns@democracyfund.org.)

Based on what we learned from the 2018 campaign we are going to be making the materials and training more customized to serve the growing list of newsrooms who are at very different stages of growth and development. The NewsMatch team will also be working to better support organizations serving underrepresented communities and led by people of color. We recognize that it is critical for NewsMatch to do more to engage, listen, and serve these newsrooms, especially in light of longstanding inequities in how philanthropy has funded these organizations and communities. Finally, we will explore collaborations with others across the media landscape, beyond just nonprofit news, that can help drive more attention to the crisis in local news and the profound need to support it right now.

NewsMatch 2019 will kick off in November of 2019, but there is a lot of work to do before then. Find out more at NewsMatch.org and follow the campaign on Twitter and Facebook.

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Hispanic Media Today

Jessica Retis

May 13, 2019

Today we’re releasing Hispanic Media Today: Serving Bilingual and Bicultural Audiences in the Digital Age, a new report that explores the origins of Hispanic* media in the United States, its growth in recent decades, the complex nature of Latino media and its diverse audiences. The report is an exploration into the challenges and opportunities to sustain Hispanic media in the future.

As with other media sectors, Hispanic media is facing significant financial hurdles due to the virtual disappearance of traditional advertising. Following rapid growth in the 1990s and 2000s, Hispanic daily newspapers have seen more than a 10 percent decline in circulation over the past five years, consistent with other media sectors. On top of financial shortfalls, traditional Hispanic media has also grappled with adapting to the digital transformation and meeting the demands of an increasingly digital audience.

A survey by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have found that 42 percent of Latinx journalists reported downsizing or cutbacks in staff hours at work, and more than 75 percent say they have been asked to do more with less resources. And 40 percent are concerned about job security.

In addition to financial challenges, Latino media also must take into account the complex diversity of the Hispanic population, which means that local audiences can differ from the shared history and culture of the Spanish-speaking outlet which serves that region. In spite of these struggles, Hispanic media has weathered the downturn better than many mainstream media because of its deep connection to community. And in the past decade, amidst a digital divide across language, age, and immigrant status, a number of bilingual and English-language digital media for younger Latinx audiences have emerged.

Spanish-language media in the U.S. has varied greatly in its more than 200 years of existence, and has served many roles. Publications have ranged from politically conservative to liberal, with varied readerships composed of exile, immigrant, or native Latinx communities. While disseminating local, regional, national and international news according to audience interests and needs, Hispanic media has also highlighted cultural and patriotic activities and served as a forum for public expression.

Hispanic media has also shaped and promoted social and political activism advocating for civil rights and defending Latinx communities against abuse from authorities. For example, Spanish-language radio programs in the early 1920s provided not only entertainment but also information and political advocacy. Spanish-language T.V. programming has also grown over the last 50 years, and provides information on issues of interest to Latinx communities, such as immigration, politics, health, education, and culture, as well as imported Latin American entertainment.

The story of Hispanic media in America is not a simple linear story and there are enormous opportunities to invest in this space and elevate the work of these journalists.

Philanthropic funders and investors should continue to provide critical operating resources to Spanish-language media and invest in helping them develop and design new revenue models. In addition to solidifying revenue, several recommendations to help grow Latino media became apparent during our research. For example, funders should also engage in initiatives to help the next generation of bilingual and bicultural journalism students when they enter the job market, as they make grants to keep Hispanic media afloat. An infusion of youth and fresh ideas into Hispanic media companies would help organizations become more sustainable.

Diversity of newsroom stories, staff, opinion, revenue and ownership is a crucial part of making sure the news reflects the communities it serves. We must do our part to uplift and better serve Hispanic media, to ensure that Americans have access to accurate, diverse sources of information that foster the full participation of every individual in our democracy.

It is our hope that the recommendations outlined in this report further support Hispanic media today, so that diverse, bicultural, bilingual stories can be told tomorrow.

*Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in this post by request of the author, as both pan-ethnic labels tend to be used throughout the United States.

Jessica Retis is an Associate Professor of Journalism at California State University Northridge, a current Democracy Fund grantee, and co-editor of the recently released book, The Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and Culture. To learn more about Jessica’s work, visit http://csun.academia.edu/JessicaRetis or follow @jretis.

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Announcing the Legal Clinic Fund: Strengthening Legal Support for Local News

Estizer Smith

May 9, 2019

Most of the coverage of struggles in local news has focused on their revenue and changing business model. However, along with those issues, local newsrooms are facing new legal threats and challenges, just at the moment when they have fewer resources to fight First Amendment battles.

Today, we are announcing a new fund designed to support legal clinics at universities around the country that focus on strengthening and defending the first amendment, media access, and transparency. These clinics combine the skills of talented law students with legal scholars and practicing lawyers to take on legal challenges both local and national. Their university affiliations mean that they are geographically diverse, with the potential to cover areas that are comparatively isolated, while educating and uplifting the next generation of first amendment and transparency lawyers.

Democracy Fund has partnered with the Klarman Family Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation to launch the Legal Clinics Fund at the Miami Foundation and applications open today. The fund is looking for proposals from clinics that would benefit from increased capacity and infrastructure support, are pursuing a collaborative project, or are seeking to experiment with their model.

Applications are due June 7, 2019. Click here for more information and to apply.

There is a unique opportunity right now to invest in strengthening these legal clinics and building the networks between them in ways that buttress their ability to be a strong force for First Amendment litigation and a critical legal resource for journalists. We believe the fund can help achieve that goal, and we are committed to providing multi-year funding to grantees so that they have time to iterate, grow, and expand their impact, and so that the fund has the ability to engage in a robust evaluation and learning practice.

The needs of a free press are rapidly changing as the challenges facing it have grown and become more aggressive. We’ve written about the need for a modern conception of press freedom, and the role we believe we have to play in helping to meet the needs of the field. We believe that legal clinics can provide a new backbone for legal support around the country and are excited to expand their capacity to fight First Amendment battles on all our behalf.

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Invest in Listening Infrastructure

Sabrina Hersi Issa

April 24, 2019

“Diversity is essential to the success of the news industry, and journalists must include diverse voices in their coverage in order to reach a broader audience. We have stories to tell, but many in our audience have stopped listening because they can tell that we’re not talking about them.”
— Gwen Ifill

As part of research conducted for the Engaged Journalism Lab exploring how philanthropy can support diverse, inclusive newsrooms, I visited local newsrooms, interviewed experts, technical practitioners and community groups, sat with journalists and listened.

Many opportunities for philanthropy to fund stronger, more resilient and diverse journalism ecosystems involves backtracking and investing in critical infrastructure to support those ecosystems and to formalize heretofore informal mechanisms that serve diverse audiences and communities. To date, this project has unpacked opportunities for media funders to support data infrastructure, adaptive leaders, reimagined newsroom spaces and how national issues are reported in local community narratives.

As Ifill’s quote explains and significant data pointing to the consistent struggle to develop and grow audience share in local communities where populations are steadily increasing, it can be argued that diverse audiences have “stopped listening” to mainstream news. But that does not mean diverse communities have stopped communicating messages, stories and narratives that deserve attention. For many communities that public square now lives online.

There is safety in small numbers and low levels of trust in technology platforms mean many meaningful conversations are unfolding in silo’ed corners of the Internet. It is up to journalists to meet diverse communities where they are and to invest in engagement not as a means for audience growth, but as mechanisms for listening to the voices gathered there and producing quality journalism that serves the public.

For the purposes of this research, listening infrastructure is defined as a collection of explicit processes, systems and tools intended to support a journalist’s capacity to monitor meaningful public conversations in online communities in order to increase human dimensions and depth in reporting.

The intention is essentially the definition and can be reverse-engineered through three questions:

1. How do journalists find meaningful conversations in online communities beyond their own?

2. How do journalists show up/conduct themselves in online communities beyond their own?

3. What do journalists use to continuously listen and learn from online communities beyond their own?

All of this can be boiled down to one question: How do you pay attention?

For local newsrooms the mechanisms to pay for resources that can systemize, improve and boost journalists ability to pay attention are cost-intensive, both in staff time and budget resources. The listening infrastructure that does exist is far from structured, effective or formalized and essentially boils down to social media monitoring subscriptions. As a result, individual reporters have their own individual systems and their own methods for discerning what gets their limited time, attention and energy. Often this boils down to attention being determined by push notifications, Nuzzel and curated Tweetdeck columns. In my research, I occasionally came across groups of journalists who covered similar beats, such as gun violence, and shared pooled resources as a means to both boost one another’s listening infrastructure and better cover a wide, disparate community with increasingly growing online community silos.

This is a challenge that exists in industry spaces beyond newsrooms. A substantial part of this research has involved scanning similar fields and communities also undergoing deep transitions and shifts to surface what lessons, patterns and practices in those spaces can be applied in the newsroom context. In the social change movement space, there is also a critical listening infrastructure gap. Social change movement organizations also tend to serve communities that largely exist online and struggle with continual misalignment between which communities they exist to serve and which communities their campaigns ultimately pay attention to.

In the ocean conservation space, those silos are even more prevalent and with extreme scarcity in funding, the barriers for collaboration among competitive organizations are even higher. In 2011 Rachel Weidinger founded Upwell, an effort to build a backbone for listening and measurement for the ocean conservation space that had previously not existed. The intention was to build listening infrastructure to be shared across organizations in order to better inform online campaigns, information sharing and collaborative community building. Upwell billed itself as the ‘PR agency for the ocean’ and broke ground developing innovative big listening practice: sifting through high volumes of news and online conversations for movements and pairing that big data with analysis and distributed network building.

Image of Upwell's map of online conversations about the ocean. — Image via Upwell.us

What was the outcome for all these buzzwords?

Conversation metrics rather than individual campaign level metrics. In a newsroom context, the outcome of an infrastructure like Upwell would look similar to this MIT Media Lab report analyzing the collective impact in online conversation and attention resulting from press coverage of stories like the shooting death of Trayvon Martin every single week. It also allowed for amplification and networking building on top of the analysis of online conversational metrics.

The existence of Upwell allowed online engagement within the ocean conservation space to shift from a micro to a macro level and for campaigners to strategically and authentically participate in online conversations already in progress. It created, through a set of tools and processes, capacity for paying attention at scale that was not previously possible.

In an interview with me for this research Weidinger, now a Future for Good Fellow at the Institute for the Future, explained Upwell’s approach that was grounded in both offline community engagement (meeting the ocean conservation digital managers where they are) and online community management (sourcing rich conversation metrics in unlikely places through listening to social conversations about the ocean).

Photograph of Rachel Weidinger. To learn more about her work go to www.rachelweidinger.com/about — Image of Rachel Weidinger – https://www.rachelweidinger.com/about

Collectively the practices that powered Upwell was in service to answering the question:

Can we use the momentum of focused attention to raise an issue above the noise?

Creating a Values-Based Listening Infrastructure

Weidinger explains the first step to building listening infrastructure is to recognize there will be many dimensions to a single issue and to embed intentional values into systems design.

“I think because whatever story we’re telling about an issue, if that’s voting rates or ocean acidification, it has a lot of facets. It has a lot of variability across communities. It has usually narrative about issues and are very deeply tied into cultural perspectives. So you will see different cultural perspectives reflecting different understandings of social ramifications of what impacts them in their community.”

There is a critical role for media funders to use their position as a collaborative convener to leverage insights pulled from big listening practices and support collectives of newsrooms or groups of journalists in building listening infrastructure aligned with the intention to support shared resource collaboration across newsrooms covering serve diverse communities.

“It is possible to have very targeted niche conversation, but because it’s a very laborious research method and because they’re going to turn up so much value in that research method, you might as well have a bigger lens. So, I think coalitions of collaboratives that will get an issue for multiple perspectives are able to take full advantage of what comes out of it. I think working with funders before because they can take the confirmation, learn from it, change their funding pattern potentially, and offer share that with their grantee networks and the larger networks they’re a part of. That’s when I think this information is valuable. You can create a weather report and you can have a weather report for an entire country and keep it to yourself if you want to. But that feels like a spectacularly inefficient approach to me because if there are really high value assets and if you’re only using it to reshape your own incoming patterns, you’re not getting anywhere near the value you could get out of that investment.”

Weidinger explained the three building blocks to Upwell’s listening infrastructure:

1. The System, monitoring and analyzing online conversations

“Designing a system that supported the ability to pay attention to the large conversation in a deeper way more than anyone else working in the field. That depended on building trust over time, following conversations, trending keywords and Radian6 type of practices that we developed for understanding the conversation at a large scale over time and being able to look at the historic conversation and also people within over time.”

2. The Network/Community Management, leading data-driven attention campaigns

“For big listening to go deep, you have to build the network for the very beginning. It involved face-to-face meetings with influencers and leaders and senior management and all of the big blue and green organizations with scientists and government officials. We are only able to do that because Upwell was initially fiscally sponsored under the umbrella of Ocean Conservancy before spinning out independently which is one of the two large ocean conservation and organization that at that time was 40 years old and had a great reputation with lots of people so we were able to leverage their network in addition to building a network on our own.”

3. The Tide Report newsletter, sharing knowledge with the sector

“Our goal with the newsletter was to recount. We wanted to have the hottest ocean news of the day so that if nothing else it could standalone with a — ‘This is your professional news roundup for today’ utility. This gave us the eyeopener that we wanted and it made it easier to get people on our list and it meant that people would trust their colleagues and their peers, other organizations and conversations we were amplifying.”

The second piece of the newsletter was to get as close to one click sharing as possible. This probably feels like less revolutionary today, but it felt like a crazy project that we started doing in 2012… because people are super busy and we knew that most of the network of influencers and social media managers we were working with were going to give that email, if we were lucky, 30 seconds. If they saw something cool that they think would benefit their personal brand or their organization’s brand, that felt like were vital and important to them then they are going to share it. All of this was in service to building trust by regularly illustrating our commitment to listening back to our community.”

After Upwell: Open Sourcing Infrastructure

Upwell concluded operations in March 2015. All of the intellectual property, reports, content, learnings were open-sourced and licensed Creative Commons. The project was unable to secure sustainable funding and winded down its programming the same way it began it all: through listening, sharing and amplifying for the movement it was created to serve. Weidinger said she sought to “leave as much of the learning infrastructure methods of the project available to the movement as possible.”

The tools and systems Upwell used is commonplace in digital newsrooms but formalizing the infrastructure: the intentionality, values-based metrics and sharing methodologies has led to Upwell continuing to deliver value long after it has shuttered. Ultimately the lesson in Upwell is a lesson in impermanence, that while we design for the long game, things that go up must come down and yet there is still immense knowledge to be gained in studying the heart that went into the scaffolding.

Sabrina Hersi Issa is an award-winning human rights technologist and leads global research and analysis for philanthropy. She organizes Rights x Tech, a gathering for technologists and activists and runs Survivor Fund, a political fund dedicated to supporting the rights of survivors of sexual violence.

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As We Wait for Attorney General Barr to Release the Mueller Report, What Foundations Should Do

Joe Goldman

April 12, 2019

Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report — and anticipation for the report itself — have captivated the interest of the American people and a divided Congress, with jubilation from the president’s supporters and disappointment from his critics.

But the success of the special counsel’s investigation should not be measured by those whose political interests are best served. Rather, its completion should go down in history as a victory for the rule of law — that is, as long as the full report and supporting documents are released to the public.

Congress and the American people must have the opportunity to understand the truth of what happened to be in a better position both to protect future elections and to restore faith in our democratic norms.

Foundations are in a unique position to pave the way forward by investing in causes that further both of these goals.

Integrity of the Ballot Box

There are two core priorities philanthropy can support to protect the tenets of our democracy.

First, we must protect the integrity of our elections. The health of our democracy requires public trust in our electoral systems. The Mueller investigation — both through its current indictments and what will presumably be laid out in the report — should help us get to the bottom of how a foreign power interfered with the 2016 election.

Thanks to the investigators’ efforts, we will have the product of more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, more than 230 orders for communication records, 13 requests of foreign governments, and approximately 500 interviews with witnesses to learn from.

The American public must demand to see the report so we can identify opportunities to bolster our election system. This would allow foundations to invest in work that promotes election modernization, development of data-driven policies, and advancements in new technologies that help reduce barriers to voting. In addition, we need to work with nonprofits seeking to strategically provide secretaries of state and local election boards with the resources to maintain the system’s integrity. Without the partisan distraction of alleged collusion, leaders from both parties can get serious about protecting our democracy from manipulation.

An Independent Justice System

Second, we must protect the rule of law and the independence of our justice system. It is easy to forget that months ago, it was unclear whether the special counsel would be allowed to complete his investigation. We should all be grateful for efforts made over the past two years to protect the independence of the investigation, despite unrelenting pressure from the president and his allies.

Once the report is provided to Congress, it will have its own constitutional responsibility to exercise oversight, thoroughly investigate the underlying evidence, and consider appropriate policies for the future. The attorney general’s conclusion that there is insufficient evidence to establish that the president committed a crime by obstructing justice is not the end of the matter. Only by digging into the facts can the public be sure justice has been served.

New York State’s Inquiry

Foundation leaders also must defend continuing investigations by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere to ensure they are able to complete their work without interference. These investigations, equally representative of the rule of law at work, are looking into deeply important questions related to the integrity of our government — including potential conflicts of interest. They must be allowed to continue unimpeded.

For philanthropy, investing in nonprofit work that protects this oversight is a crucial way to protect our democracy. Remember that Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation convicted five associates of the president’s and indicted 34 people on nearly 200 criminal charges. The special counsel’s job was not to attack or convict Donald Trump. It was to uncover the truth and ensure justice is done. The special counsel has been able to complete his investigation, and by working together to support and galvanize programs and organizations that uphold our constitutional norms, we can still achieve our goal of a strengthened, vibrant democracy.

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Celebrating Women Who Are Making Democracy Stronger

March 26, 2019

By Anne Gleich, Jessica Harris, and Jessica Mahone

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In the first presidential proclamation celebrating women’s contributions to United States history, President Reagan observed: “American women of every race, creed and ethnic background helped found and build our Nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways … Their diverse service is among America’s most precious gifts.”

As pioneers, teachers, mothers, soldiers, journalists, inventors, lawmakers, laborers and so many other roles, women have and continue to make vital contributions to American economic, political, and social life. Throughout our history, women have not only advocated to secure their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity, but were also early leaders in the abolitionist, temperance, mental health, labor, and social reform movements, as well as the modern civil rights movement. It is not hyperbole to say that the United States has been transformed by these generations of women, and our democracy has been strengthened through their courage, creativity, and persistence.

As we commemorate Women’s History Month at Democracy Fund, we also want to take some time to celebrate our incredible women-led and women-focused grantees who today are continuing this long tradition of public service and leadership.

Women are leading efforts to improve our elections and make sure every vote counts.

At Democracy Fund, we believe that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy. Through our Elections Program, we are proud to support many innovative American women who are leading efforts to ensure our elections are free, fair, accessible, and secure.

Tianna Epps Johnson, founder of the Center for Technology and Civic Life, is building free and low-cost tech tools to help local election officials better engage with their communities and modernize elections. Electionline, run by Editor-in-Chief Mindy Moretti, is providing news and information about election administration and reform across all 50 states and has created a hub for elections officials to network, learn from each other, and collaborate on ways to improve the voting process.

When it comes to accessibility, many Americans still face barriers that prevent them from participating in the election process. Michelle Bishop and the National Disability Rights Network are educating election officials, equipment vendors, advocates, and the public on the need for fully accessible elections. Terry Ao Minnis, Democracy Fund Senior Fellow and Director of the Census and Voting programs at Asian Americans for Advancing Justice, is working to ensure a fair and accurate Census so that all Americans receive the resources and assistance they need to participate in our democracy. And Whitney Quesenbery and Dana Chisnell at the Center for Civic Design are bringing user experience principles to the design of forms and tools that will make voting easier for all voters. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg at CIRCLE at Tufts University and the historic League of Women Voters, under the leadership of Virginia Kase, are innovating new ways to inform and engage women voters across the political spectrum.

Jennifer Morrell, a former Colorado election official, is working with state election officials to develop and implement new testing and auditing procedures to ensure votes are counted correctly, and results are reported accurately. And Mari Dugas and the Cyber Security Project and Defending Digital Democracy has published several playbooks to help campaign and election officials defend themselves against cyberattacks and information operations aimed at undermining trust in the American election system.

Women from both sides of the aisle are working together to create a Congress that looks more like America.

Even though we just saw a historic election cycle where a record-setting number of women ran for elected office and won, we still have a long way to go until women are fully represented in the United States. That is why, through our Governance Program, Democracy Fund is proud to support many leaders and organizations that are working to equip women with the skills they need to participate in politics, run for office, and lead once elected.

ReflectUS, a nonpartisan coalition working to increase the number of women in office and achieve equal representation across the racial, ideological, ethnic, and geographic spectrum, is fostering collaboration among seven of the nation’s leading training organizations to help equip more women to run, win, and serve. The Women’s Public Leadership Network aims to increase the number of women under consideration for political and government-related appointments and is growing a network and support system for conservative women who are interested in running for elected office or participating in our political system. Latinas Lead, a new program from The National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, helps current Latina state legislators scale the leadership ranks in their State Capitols, as well as recruit potential Latina candidates for state-level office.

Once women are elected, the National Foundation of Women Legislators provides resources and opportunities to develop leadership skills and build professional and personal relationships across the aisle through regular conferences, state outreach, educational materials, and more. The Women’s Congressional Policy Institute, lead by Cindy Hall and a bipartisan board of female former legislators, has been bringing women policymakers together across party lines to advance issues of importance to women and their families for over twenty years. With our support, they have also launched several programs to foster women’s leadership on Capitol Hill through the Congressional Women’s Caucus and the Women Chiefs of Staff Program. We are also supporters of the Congressional Women’s Softball Game— a yearly event to foster bipartisan relationships between women Members of Congress and their counterparts in the D.C. Press Corps.

Women journalists are holding our leaders accountable and creating opportunities for the next generation of reporters.

Women play a vital role in holding leaders accountable once they’ve been elected. Although the majority of journalism and communications graduates are women, the majority of newsroom workers, particularly leaders, are men. Holding leaders accountable to all Americans requires a news industry that is inclusive and represents all communities, which is why, through our Public Square Program, we are proud to support organizations and leaders that are working to change America’s newsrooms and create new resources to inform and serve their communities.

By pioneering innovative new methods that newsrooms can use to better listen to and collaborate with the communities they serve, Bettina Chang at CityBureau and Sarah Alvarez and an all-woman staff at Outlier Media are rethinking how journalism is done. The Obsidian Collection, led by Angela Ford, is working to promote the importance of Black media in the United States, preserve the stories of Black communities through archiving, and build a blueprint for future generations in Black media.

Founded by Nikole Hannah Jones, The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting is dedicated to increasing the number of and retaining reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting by providing low-cost regional trainings in the use of advanced technology, open records laws, advanced interviewing techniques and other investigative techniques. The Ida B. Wells Society partners with organizations such as the National Association for Black Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to provide access to journalists and aspiring journalists of color who want to sharpen their investigative reporting skills and broaden their professional networks.

Take the Lead’s 50 Women Can Change the World in Journalism training program harnesses the collective power of women in journalism to build a more just and equal world, advance their careers, and work together to re-envision journalism. According to co-founder Gloria Feldt, Take the Lead’s goal is “nothing less than gender parity by 2025.”

Women are leading efforts to combat hate in America and build bridges across our divides.

Like many who care about the health of our political system, we at Democracy Fund have been alarmed by increasing tribalism and extremism across the United States, including the implementation of policies targeting immigrant and minority communities and the rise in hate-crimes against communities of color, and Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities. We’re partnering with leaders and organizations that are working to ensure the resilience and safety of targeted communities through our Special Project on Fostering a Just and Inclusive Society.

Grantees like Sherrilyn Ifill at the NAACP-LDF, Kristen Clarke at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Marielena Hincapie at the National Immigration Law Center, and Aarti Kohli at the Asian Law Caucus are leading efforts to protect those whose civil rights and safety are endangered in this volatile political moment. Purvi Shah and Movement Law Lab are incubating projects that combine law and community organizing to protect, defend, and strengthen racial justice movements. To inform national conversations, Meira Neggaz and Dahlia Mogahed at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding provide case studies and data on the day-to-day challenges many Muslims face, as well as actionable recommendations for breaking the structural barriers that hinder the American Muslim community from full inclusion and participation. And Samar Ali is leading the Millions of Conversations campaign to engage communities across the country in changing the narrative about Muslims in America.

In this blog, we could only highlight a few of the remarkable women leaders whose whose organizations, programs, and projects Democracy Fund is proud to support. We hope you’ll take some time to explore the complete list below. By working to improve our elections, hold our government accountable, combat hate, and open doors for the next generation, these women are making their mark on American history right now—and our democracy will be stronger because of them.

ELECTIONS

Bonnie Allen, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee

Pam Anderson, Consultant for Voter Centric Election Administration

Michelle Bishop, National Disability Rights Network

Mitchell Brown, Capacity and Governance Institute

Jamie Chesser, National States Geographic Information Council

Dana Chisnell, Center for Civic Design

Kristen Clarke, Lawyers Committee for Civil RIghts

Lisa Danetz, National Voter Registration Act Compliance Consultant

Mari Dugas, Belfer Center Cybersecurity and Defending Digital Democracy

Tiana Epps Johnson, Center for Technology and Civic Life

Rebecca Green, William & Mary Law School eBenchbook

Astrid Garcia Ochoa, Future of California Elections

Kathleen Hale, Capacity and Governance Institute

Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause

Shanna Hughey, ThinkTennessee

Sharon Jarvis, Moody College of Communications, University of Texas

Virginia Kase, League of Women Voters

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, CIRCLE at Tufts University

Kate Krontiris, Voter Turnout consultant

Nsombi Lambright, One Voice

Susan Lerner, Common Cause New York

Amber McReynolds, Vote at Home

Gretchen Macht, RI VOTES at University of Rhode Island

Mimi Marziani, Texas Civil Rights Project

Terry Ao Minnis, Asian Americans for Advancing Justice

Mindy Moretti, Electionline

Jennifer Morrell, Risk-Limiting Audits consultant

Katy Owens Hubler, Common Data and Elections Process Model consultant

Katy Peters, Democracy Works

Wendy Quesenbery, Center for Civic Design

Ashley Spillane, Impactual

Wendy Underhill, National Conference of State Legislatures

GOVERNANCE

Erica Bernal, NALEO Educational Fund

Danielle Brian, Project On Government Oversight

Louise Dube, iCivics

Mindy Finn, Empowered Women

Sylvia Golbin Goodman, Andrew Goodman Foundation

Rosalind Gold, NALEO Educational Fund

Dr. Mary Grant, Edward M. Kennedy Institute

Cindy Hall, Women’s Congressional Policy Institute

Cherie Harder, Trinity Forum

Marci Harris, PopVox

Dr. Carla Hayden, Library of Congress

Audrey Henson, College to Congress

Lorelei Kelly, Beeck Center

Sheila Krumholz, Center for Responsive Politics

Frances Lee, UMD Interdisciplinary Polarization Research

Dr. Carolyn Lukensmeyer, National Institute for Civil Discourse

Tamera Luzzatto, Pew Safe Spaces Project

Maya MacGuineas, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Angela Manso, Staff Up Congress, NALEO Educational Fund

Meredith McGehee, Issue One

Darla Minnich, National Issues Forum Institute

Joan Mooney, Faith and Politics Institute

Jennifer Nassour, ReflectUS

Beth Simone Noveck, NYU GovLab

Michelle Payne, Congressional Sports for Charity

Rachel Peric, Welcoming America

Lisa Rosenberg, Open the Government

Laura Rosenberger, Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund

Sonal Shah, Beeck Center

Suzanne Spaulding, Defending Democracy Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Michele Stockwell, Bipartisan Policy Center Action

Jody Thomas, National Foundation for Women Legislators

Sarah Turberville, The Constitution Project at POGO

PUBLIC SQUARE

Sarah Alvarez, Outlier Media

Bettina Chang, City Bureau

Heather Chaplin, The New School for Journalism + Design

Meredith Clark, University of Virginia/ASNE Diversity Survey

Sue Cross, Institute for Nonprofit News

Gloria Feldt, Take the Lead

Leslie Fields-Cruz, Black Public Media

Angela Ford, The Obsidian Collection

Martha Foye, Working Narratives

Lackisha Freeman, WNCU

Sarah Gustavus, New Mexico Local News Fund

Elizabeth Green, Chalkbeat, American Journalism Project

Andrea Hart, City Bureau

Hadar Harris, Student Press Law Center

Rose Hoban, NC Health News

Deborah Holt Noel, UNC-TV Black Issues Forum

Janey Hurley, Asheville Writers in the Schools

Paola Jaramillo, Enlace Latino North Carolina

Nikole Hannah Jones, The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting

Mollie Kabler, Coast Alaska

Regina Lawrence, Agora Journalism Center

Sally Lehrman, Trust Project

Joy Mayer, Trusting News Project

Stefanie Murray, Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University

Tamiko Ambrose Murray, Asheville Writers in the Schools

Amy Niles, WBGO

Angie Newsome, Carolina Public Press

Suzanne Nossel, Pen America

Erika Owens, OpenNews

Tracie Powell, Democracy Fund Senior Fellow

Angelique Powers, Field Foundation

Kristy Roschke, News Co/Lab at Arizona State University

Melanie Sill, Senior Consultant for North Carolina Local News Lab

Sheila Solomon, Senior Consultant for Chicago

Michelle Srbinovich, WDET

Talia Stroud, Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin

Katie Townsend, Reporters Committee for Press Freedom Litigation Program

Naomi Tacuyan Underwood, Asian American Journalists Association

Mary Walter Brown, News Revenue Hub

Nancy Watzman, Colorado Media Project

Journalism and Women Symposium

JUST & INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

Samar Ali, Millions of Conversations

Rachel Brown, Over Zero

Kristen Clarke, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights

Marielena Hincapie, National Immigration Law Center

Sherrilyn Ifill, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Aarti Kohli, Asian Law Caucus

Dalia Mogahed, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding

Meira Neggaz, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding

Catherine Orsborn, Shoulder to Shoulder

Purvi Shah, Movement Law Lab

Shireen Zaman, Rise Together Fund (formerly Security and Rights Collaborative)

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

Shari Davis, Participatory Budgeting Project

Rachel Kleinfeld, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Melissa Rodgers, Immigrant Legal Resource Center

Prof. Susan Stokes – Bright Lines Watch, University of Chicago

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Supporting Independent Journalists and Nonprofit Newsrooms in a Time of Unprecedented Threats

Estizer Smith

March 25, 2019

Journalists are being buffeted by growing political attacks and legal threats from powerful companies, political leaders and individuals at a moment when their capacity to fight those battles is greatly diminished. In a 2016 survey, the Knight Foundation found that a majority of editors believe financial pressures on newsrooms have left publishers less prepared and less able to go to court to preserve First Amendment freedoms. Nowhere is this more true than amongst struggling local legacy press, emerging nonprofit newsrooms and independent media makers.

The challenges that small newsrooms face were recently thrown into stark relief by Jon Ralston, the founder of The Nevada Independent, when he described why he chose not to publish an article which included credible allegations of misconduct at the Las Vegas Review-Journal (the article was subsequently published by the Columbia Journalism Review). Facing threats of legal action and the prohibitive cost of prolonged litigation, Ralston had to choose between risking the existence of his fledgling organization and the livelihoods of his staff, or not publishing a well-researched and well-sourced piece that was credible. He had no doubts about the validity of the reporting, but the cost of defending the reporting could have bankrupted his organization.

These sorts of challenges and choices are a critical part of how we must understand press freedom today. No journalist was bloodied or arrested. There was never a court battle. But as the landscape of our press changes, these sorts of strategic legal threats are an increasingly powerful tool for those who want to silence the press. We must embrace a modern conception of freedom of the press that recognizes a more encompassing set of challenges and imagines a new range of solutions. Though they are hard to measure, things like self-censorship as a result of economic concerns and the harassment of journalists—both in person and online—are growing threats to the public’s right to know.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker accounts for arrests, physical attacks, border stops, and subpoenas, but it is often hard to quantify instances of online harassment and threats to journalists that are frequently as insidious. In an attempt at remedying a part of this, the International Women’s Media Foundation partnered with Troll Busters to publish a report on the impact of attacks and harassment on female journalists. In that report, 63 percent of respondents indicated they had been threatened or harassed online, 58 percent indicated they’d been threatened or harassed in person, and nearly 30 percent have considered leaving the profession as a result.

As the threats to journalists change, so too does the public’s understanding of what is at stake. While we know the threats to journalists and attacks on freedom of the press are real and deeply concerning, polling we funded in 2017 showed that although 95 percent of registered voters believe that freedom of the press is important, 52 percent do not perceive it as being under threat.

Democracy Fund is committed to supporting independent journalists and nonprofit newsrooms through a variety of efforts, from expanding community engagement to rebuilding sustainable business models. We know the challenges are nuanced, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Our hope is to help provide newsrooms with the resources needed to both report the truth confidently, without fear of being sued into financial ruin, and to help ensure that all journalists facing harassment have access to the resources necessary to recover and take care of themselves and their families.

Over the past two years, we have invested in organizations that defend and advocate for the rights of journalists and newsrooms at every level. For example:

Legal Defense

Knight Institute for the First Amendment: The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University works to defend and strengthen the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Its aim is to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government
Media Freedom and Information Access Legal Clinic at Yale Law School: The Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale University Law School is dedicated to increasing government transparency, defending the essential work of news gatherers, and protecting freedom of expression by providing pro bono legal services and developing policy initiatives.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press works to protect the right to gather and distribute news, keep government accountable by ensuring access to public records, and to preserve the principles of free speech and unfettered press, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Student Press Law Center: The Student Press Law Center works at the intersection of law, journalism and education to promote, support and defend the First Amendment rights of student journalists and their advisers at the high school and college level. The SPLC provides information, training and legal assistance at no charge to student journalists and the educators who work with them.

Advocacy

Reporters Without Borders North America: Reporters Without Borders North America seeks to raise awareness and involve Americans in preserving freedom of information, as well as monitor and take action to prevent press freedom violations in the United States, Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean. They raise awareness on the current climate for press freedom and mobilize other partners, the US government, the UN, and American citizens who want to support freedom of the press and defend journalism.

Engagement

PEN America: PEN America’s Press Freedom Incentive Fund supports PEN America members and their allies to mobilize their communities around press freedom. During its pilot 2017-2018 year, this Fund supported initiatives in more than 20 cities and regions—in places like Detroit, Birmingham, and Denver—to build new local constituencies ready to defend press freedom.

These grants and others have and will continue to provide the traditional legal foundation for our press freedom work. However, we know they alone will not fix the broader systemic issues affecting newsrooms. They do not address the field’s need to protect itself from litigation, and they do not address the personal harassment and threats that individual journalists—particularly women and people of color—endure every day. Given that knowledge, we have been working to think bigger, and leading efforts to broaden the safety and insurance infrastructures that support newsrooms and journalists in 2019.

Three areas Democracy Fund is focusing on this year are:

Legal Clinics

We are working with partners across philanthropy to find a new way to empower a network of university-affiliated legal clinics that focus on the first amendment and media access to more directly serve newsrooms and journalists in their communities. We believe a robust network of legal clinics with increased capacity to provide direct services to journalists can create a strong new force for First Amendment litigation and legal advice.

Insurance Infrastructure

We are exploring the development of a new option for libel and defamation insurance that is affordable and serves nonprofit newsrooms specifically. We believe that the accessibility of insurance is key to a newsroom’s ability to publish rigorously sourced stories that hold those in power accountable, and we believe philanthropy can play a role in helping the field bridge the gap between need and access.

Harassment and Safety

Finally, we are starting new work around supporting journalists who face online harassment and threats to their physical safety, with an emphasis on women and people of color. A press that regularly sees its journalists self-censoring out of fear, or, in the worst cases, being harassed out of the field altogether is not free.

A modern conception of a free and independent press in the United States must be for all journalists, not only those with resources to afford legal fees and in-house counsel. It must acknowledge the economic challenges of the changing media landscape. It must be responsive to the challenges of the networked society, and engage meaningfully with the public to gain their trust and their support. Lastly, it must support journalists who suffer or face harassment as a result of their public facing work. Fundamentally, this modern conception must recognize that threats to a free press are nuanced and often not as public as one might believe.

In partnership with many others in the field, we are taking a multi-layered approach to addressing the myriad, complex challenges facing the free and independent press.We believe that this work can help us move in the right direction, and we will continue to learn and iterate throughout the year.