Page 18 – Democracy Fund

Report

Learning From Five Years of Public Square Program Work

November 29, 2022

To inform Democracy Fund’s Public Square team strategy planning in 2022, we commissioned an evaluation of our program from 2016-2021. Our evaluation and learning partner, Impact Architects, developed an in-depth report that has deeply informed our new strategies.

We are sharing here an executive summary that will provide an overview of our learnings across three strategies:

Ecosystem News
Equitable Journalism
Press Freedom

This summary also shares what we have learned about grantmaking more generally — in particular, the critical importance of trusted relationships and the ongoing need for more general operating support.

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Report

Learning From Digital Democracy Initiative Grantees

November 21, 2022

Democracy Fund’s Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) and its grantees have been radically reimagining platform accountability and media policy through strategies at the intersection of advocacy, public will building, and litigation.

To support this work, the team’s evaluation and learning partner, ORS Impact, conducted learning conversations with DDI grantees in July and August 2022 to understand:

How advocacy grantees are planning for and adapting their strategies to shifts in Congressional leadership and/or agency nominations e.g., FTC, FCC)
What research grantees are learning about effectively integrating research into advocacy/organizing work

This report summarizes findings across the learning conversations and highlights feedback for Democracy Fund and philanthropy more broadly.

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Blog

Invest in Listening as Leadership

Sabrina Hersi Issa

September 5, 2019

“We need stories of hope and possibility, stories that reflect the reality of our lived experiences.”

— Janet Mock, Redefining Realness

There is a necessity to ground community journalism in community truths. Those truths are not always as cut and dry as facts, but rather are negotiated through deep listening and engagement with the people you are trying to serve. Community truths makes space for, and recognize the diversity of lived experiences that shape how we understand our place and how we respond to the issues that face us.

A critical responsibility of journalism is to bear witness. Yet newsrooms large and small struggle routinely with the simple practice of listening and holding up an accurate mirror to complicated, nuanced truths in their communities. The causes of this are varied; staffing, time constraints, cultural bias, risk aversion, language barriers, just to name a few. But the end results are the same: Important stories go untold, or are told through a narrow lens that doesn’t reflect the lived experiences of the community.

Kassi Underwood, author of the book May Cause Love, spoke to this issue on a recent podcast. “I can hear journalists over the phone stop typing when I say something new. When I say something that is already part of the public conversation on abortion, I can hear them typing. And the minute I say something different — it’s silence,” Underwood said. “I don’t know if that’s because they’re listening or because they think ‘Oh that’s not useable or something like that’. But that has been frustrating because that was part of my loneliness — not being able to say everything.”

Underwood was sharing her story on the podcast The Abortion Diary, a project created by Dr. Melissa Madera in the summer of 2013. The project operates under a simple premise: “What if millions of people broke their silence and told the truth about their lives and their choices?” Madera’s podcast has created a container for listening to individual truths about a subject matter where listening and open dialogue are often replaced by talking points and heated debate. As such it is an interesting example to explore how difficult issues can be better covered in journalism and discussed in community.

Through her podcast, Madera has traveled around the country physically bearing witness and recording the personal stories of more than 240 people. The podcast stands out for the way it presents personal stories in their full complexity without judgement. “Every experience is different,” Madera told me. “We’re not one person or one group. We’re a community of people just like any community of people with different people inside of it. […] It’s not one kind of story. It’s all kinds of stories.” Each episode follows a similar format: the person with the lived experience narrates their story, speaking for however long they wish and at their own pace. There is no framing, no leading questions, no judgement, just listening. On each episode Madera is not credited as the show’s ‘Host’ but rather the ‘Listener.

This kind of verbatim story sharing is more closely aligned with documentary film than traditional journalism, but there are important lessons here that journalists and media funders should take seriously. Listening builds trust. When journalists and newsrooms deepen their capacity for listening they are investing in trust. As journalists work more intentionally and thoughtfully with communities to bear witness, the deepened trust in communities will lead to more trusted journalism. This is an arc that cannot be driven by generating clicks or shares, but rather, it is anchored in service to community. That trust can help reposition newsrooms as partners and leaders in communities. Investing in listening is investing in leadership — a form of leadership forged from journalists and communities working together.

Community is often described around a sense of place, not a shared experience. However, Madera’s Abortion Diary is an example of how community can form around shared experience and through bearing witness. Madera describes seeking community as a catalyst for the project:

“This project really came from a need to listen. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to listen to other people’s stories. I wanted a physical community. I was actually looking for a physical space where I can be in community with other people who’ve had abortions and I couldn’t find that. So then I looked for an online space where I could listen. […] I wanted to hear people’s voices, and that’s where the podcast came to be. And I didn’t know anything about podcasting, so I had to learn that part, but I knew I wanted to be in a situation where — or in a place where I would be listening to people share their stories.”

As part of my research for the Engaged Journalism Lab exploring how philanthropy can support diverse, inclusive newsrooms, I visited local newsrooms, interviewed experts and community groups, sat with journalists and listened. This included sitting with professional listeners like Madera to understand how philanthropy can better support deep listening and diverse stories across different issues and mediums. There is an opportunity for media funders to support mechanisms and models for deep listening.

Podcasts are obviously associated with listening, but in fact, there is a growing collection of community listening projects across the country such as The Listening Post in New Orleans and tools like GroundSource. In many cases, the journalists are the ones in search of community, not vice versa. Madera highlights the power of also building community among those seeking community. When she failed to find media that featured complicated, nuanced truths about abortion experiences, Madera slowly and story by story, created one of the most robust, deep and diverse media platforms on one of the most contentious issues of our time. The project is entirely funded by listeners.

For media funders, it is worth examining how forums for listening can fill a void in communities and how journalists in diverse communities can become better listening stewards. Madera says funders seeking to support this work should understand that they are investing in facilitating a process, not a product. Process is not quick, building trust requires time.

“I can see the difference in people through telling their stories, but it’s not a quick fix. It’s like people share their stories and then they start feeling comfortable sharing their stories with other people,” Medera told me. “I keep on telling people that my project is not about changing people’s minds. That is never why I started this project… it’s about people being able to tell a story they normally would not have shared, and about feeling like it’s part of their life that they can talk about in the world. That only happens in their own community, so this is a community project.”

Building community through listening is leadership. Finding people who want to share their story, and treating it with respect is leadership. Media funders should invest in models of listening leadership that are anchored in service, building trust over time and reflective of diverse experiences.

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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Blog

The State of Diversity in the Media: A Field Analysis

Taylor T. Harris

February 22, 2017

Diversity in the media is critical to a functioning democracy. In 1827, editors at the Freedom’s Journal, the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the U.S., declared in the paper’s founding mission statement,“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.” In short, one voice cannot speak for all.

However, annual surveys conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Radio Television Digital News Foundation (RTDNF) show that news media professionals simply do not reflect the overall diversity of our country. The vast majority of our journalists are white men. Moreover, they increasingly reside in urban centers on the coasts of the country.

Diversity comes in many forms: racial, ethnic, gender, ideological, ability, geographic, and economic and the inclusion of other underrepresented communities to name a few. Fair coverage of all diverse communities ceases to exist if there is only one dominant voice telling the American story. Even well intentioned coverage can suffer from bias when we only tell a story through one lens.

Through the Local News & Participation systems map, Democracy Fund has described how “the decreasing diversity of sources, stories, and staff reduces the quantity, quality, and relevance of local journalism. This diminishes the engagement of the public in civic affairs and newsrooms. As the public becomes less engaged with the newsroom, it becomes more isolated, and diversity of sources, stories, and staff continues to dwindle.” For this reason, Democracy Fund is committed to working to support more diverse and inclusive journalism.

The Democracy Fund recently completed a field analysis of organizations working to support and expand diversity and inclusivity in media. The goal of this effort was to better map and understand the broader field and identify new ways to change the systems that shape our media. We’ve shared highlights from analysis and our process below.

What Do We Know?

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) both keep track of diversity in the media through annual surveys. In their 2016 survey, ASNE received responses from 737 news publications (online and print) in the U.S. The results showed that minorities (defined by ASNE as black, Asian American, Hispanic, and Native American employees) consisted of 17 percent of the newsroom workforce.

The most recent RTDNA/Hofstra University survey on diversity in radio and television was published in July of 2016. The survey included responses from 1,286 television stations and 484 radio stations in the U.S., and found that minorities represent 23 percent of the workforce at TV stations. At radio stations, minorities comprise a mere nine percent of the radio workforce.

Women represent 44.2 percent of the TV news station workforce, according to the RTDNA study. While specific numbers were not given for radio overall, the survey noted that there were twice as many men as women in radio. Representation in newsroom leadership is a particular issue. Minorities make up only 5.6 percent of general managers at non-Hispanic TV stations, while women make up only of 18.9 percent of TV general managers.

Who is Working for Media Diversity?

So far, we have identified more than 50 organizations that have a strong commitment, mission, or purpose to expand diversity in the media and build newsrooms that reflect their communities. Many of these organizations are over 20 years old, and some date back further than that. While the circumstances of the industry have slowly improved, more work must be done.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission reported that the number of black journalists employed by the news media was “less than five percent.” Today, black journalists only constitute 4.68 percent of newsrooms, according to ASNE’s 2016 survey. To better serve communities, every news organization or publication providing information must make a commitment to diversity not only to reflect their audiences but to retain them.

To provide organization and structure to our analysis, we categorized the organizations working to improve diversity under the headers membership, research, advocacy, or training organizations – though many organizations provide several of these functions.

Membership organizations include those organizations that serve a specific and diverse group of journalists. Those organizations include groups such as: National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), and Association of Women in Sports Media (AWSM). These organizations host annual conferences and regional convenings throughout the year that offer workshops, careers fairs, and seminars for their members.

Research organizations conduct both qualitative and quantitative research on diversity in the media. Organizations such as the Media Diversity Forum at Louisiana State University and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues are dedicated to researching issues about the practice of diversity in the media. As noted above, RTDNA and ASNE have annual diversity surveys that are used as a reference point for media.

Advocacy organizations advocate for various causes related to diversity in the media. Women’s Media Center and Women, Action, & the Media, known as WAM!, both advocate for the image of and prosperity of women in the news media. All Digitocracy and Journal-isms both produce content that discusses the journalism industry’s practices. The latest diverse hirings, firings, and news pertaining to ethnic media are available on these organizations’ sites.

Training organizations educate and further develop the skills of minority journalists, aiding in the creation of a pipeline for minority professionals into the news industry. Examples of these organizations include the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (MIJE), T. Howard Foundation, and Emma Bowen Foundation.

Collaboration is key amongst these field-building organizations and with news outlets. Working together helps these organizations accomplish their mission and strategic goals.

Moving Forward

These 50 organizations can provide many services to legacy and non-legacy news media. Utilizing these organizations to reevaluate outlets’ approaches to diversity, including their hiring processes, can protect integrity in journalism and our country’s democracy.

Because of organizations such as Writers of Color and Journalism Diversity Project, which maintain a database of diverse groups of journalists and their skill sets, media outlets can no longer claim they are unable to find “qualified minorities” as a valid excuse for their lack of diversity. Journalism can better engage and reflect the public if journalists, field building organizations, and news outlets continue to work in tandem.

By doing so, we are another step closer to ensuring diverse voices are not only being heard, seen, and read in the media, but are also creating the media content which contributes to our marketplace of ideas. The events of the 2016 election year has only reinforced this. It has become clear since the election that many across the country have felt ill-represented, spoken down to and misunderstood by fly-in journalists. In many ways middle america’s experience in 2016 and response has deep parallels with the experience of minority communities over decades.

Surmounting the barriers of accessibility for the widest range of diverse and minority talent in order to better reflect the composition of the American population will be an arduous, continuous effort that should evolve in tandem with the nation’s changing demographics. Yet, such an effort is paramount if the media is to adequately serve and inform the public square.

***

Taylor T. Harris is an intern with the Public Square Program at Democracy Fund. Taylor joined the Democracy Fund in September 2016 following her completion of her undergraduate degree. She graduated magna cum laude receiving her B.A. in Print/Online Journalism from Howard University. While completing her undergraduate degree Taylor was active in various media and community service organizations on campus including acting as Editor-in-Chief of her college’s newspaper, The Hilltop. Taylor has worked at organizations such as The Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post, and freelanced for organizations such as American Press Institute and USA Today. She also received fellowships from ProPublica, Online News Association, National Association of Black Journalists, and Investigative Editors and Reporters.

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Blog

Introducing the Engaged Journalism Lab

Josh Stearns

June 18, 2018

The ability of journalism to serve as our Fourth Estate—to be a check and balance on government and powerful interests—is under increasing threat. Journalism today faces multiple challenges: a faltering business model with shrinking resources; a political environment in which they find themselves under attack; and a climate of deep distrust by the American people.

In a 2017 survey, the Poynter Institute, a Democracy Fund grantee, found that only 49% of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. We believe this distrust is connected to another problem: journalism’s lack of deep engagement with its audience, exacerbated by news organizations whose staff and coverage do not represent the communities they serve.

At Democracy Fund, one of our goals is to ensure that every American citizen has access to audience-centered, trusted, resilient journalism. To meet this goal, we are working to build a media landscape that truly serves the public interest. Through our Public Square Program, we support projects and organizations that enable newsrooms to build meaningful, trusted relationships with their communities through audience-driven storytelling, inclusion, and transparency. We call this work “Engaged Journalism” and have seen firsthand how practical investments in these organizations and ideas can have a transformative effect on newsrooms.

As a part of this effort, we’re re-launching the Democracy Fund Engaged Journalism Lab on Medium. The Engaged Journalism Lab will focus, not on how to get a grant from Democracy Fund, but rather on what our grantees and partners are doing and learning. We’ll also discuss the big ideas shaping the field and shine a spotlight on the people helping to make journalism more collaborative and engaged with its community. We hope it will serve as a resource for those working at the intersection of media and democracy.

Managed by Paul Waters and Lea Trusty, the Engaged Journalism Lab will feature content on a variety of subjects, including how newsrooms can better:

Engage their communities in content generation, production, dissemination, and discussion;
Address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within journalism through inclusive newsroom policies and practices, including recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff and supporting minority ownership of independent media properties;
Experiment with new tools and technology that aim to help the public and news distribution platforms identify quality, trusted news; and
Rebuild and fortify trust between the media and Americans.

We recognize that these are not small goals—and we know we can’t do it alone. We believe that collaboration is the only way we can begin to solve journalism’s most pressing challenges, and as a systems change organization, we are committed to learning, iterating, and partnering in ways that strengthen both our work and the field at large.

It is our hope the Engaged Journalism Lab becomes a place to highlight new ideas and uncover new solutions that we haven’t thought of yet. If you have a question or a thought, please share it. If there’s an idea or project that we should know about, please let us know. We don’t pretend to have all answers to journalism’s problems, but we hope this will be a place where we can work through them together.

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Blog

Now is the moment to fund innovation for news equity

Farai Chideya

August 12, 2020

In 2020, journalism went from rapid economic disruption to a full-blown existential meltdown.

Already wracked by #MeToo scandals, major outlets found themselves failing to meet the political moment sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

These failures of perspective and inclusion don’t just affect communities that have historically been left out of the national debate, but they also have ripple effects for democracy. As I have said before, we cannot have a functioning civil society without racial justice. And we cannot have racial justice without real reform in newsrooms. The old ways of doing journalism simply aren’t working: we need true innovation if we want equity in journalism. Equitable news coverage — fueled by innovative new processes and the culturally-competent and empowered staff needed to produce it — is a powerful lever which can move civil society toward justice.

The Ford Foundation, where I work, has been in alignment with the overall mission of the Engaged Journalism Lab. We have worked on the launch of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, along with Democracy Fund, the American Journalism Project, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Google News Initiative, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the News Integrity Initiative. The REJ Fund is helping to bridge the gap in funding and institutional support by supporting organizations such as Buffalo’s Fire, which is fighting for independent media and freedom of information while serving Indigenous communities that have been especially hard hit by the pandemic; La Noticia, a Spanish-language newspaper serving the information needs of over 300,000 community members in North Carolina; and MLK50, an award-winning Black-led newsroom whose investigation of flawed hospital debt collection policies in partnership with ProPublica led to the forgiveness of more than $11 million of debt.

We’d like to issue a challenge to other funders — not just to fund equity in news, but specifically to fund innovation to achieve these ends.

Now, we’d like to issue a challenge to other funders — not just to fund equity in news, but specifically to fund innovation to achieve these ends. Innovation can take many forms, including taking more risks in funding; expanding the pool of who gets funded; rethinking how we assess impact and return on investment; and more. We invite funders to consider what equity looks like within our current funding systems — and what it might look like if we built something new altogether.

To support this exploration, the Ford Foundation has recently released three research papers:

Reconstructing American news: Investing in the transformation of journalistic processes and power relations to strengthen civil society, written by Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark of Dot Connector Studio, takes on the question of how the journalism industry and the funders who support it can innovate in service of media equity. Until recently, much of the focus for funders in the journalism funding space has been on supporting innovation in terms of products and platforms. It’s now time to resource new people, processes, and power relationships instead. This paper explores the challenges we’re facing with regard to how equity-centered news is currently funded — and how possible interventions might work in practice, with insights from 10 individuals in the field on how they are adapting given the upheavals in the space caused by the pandemic. This analysis doesn’t focus on journalism philanthropy exclusively, but rather approaches the entire ecosystem with a particular focus on investment, philanthropy, and sustainability.

Gender equity in the news media: Analysis and recommendations for newsroom leaders is a companion report that found two major challenges that prevent gender equity from becoming a reality in newsrooms: gender gaps among content creators and those who make decisions about coverage, and slow progress in women’s representation in leadership roles. The report offers key solutions for organizational and newsroom leaders, including taking a public stance, appointing organizational catalysts, and creating incentives. Ford commissioned the report from two researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government — Ariel Skeath, a Master of Public Policy candidate, and Lisa Macpherson, fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative.

Investing in equitable news and media projects, a report from Andrea Armeni and Wilneida Negrón of Transform Finance, takes a deep dive into the investment space for equity-centered news and media projects, exploring three pivotal questions: Who is currently investing in equitable media (and why)? What are adjacent investing/investor spaces that could yield additional capital, and what would be needed to attract them? And what are the major pain points for current investors (and potential adjacent investors) and news and media entrepreneurs? There has been a dearth of research into the investment space outside of philanthropy for equity-centered news projects, and this paper fills in some very important gaps in understanding. Among other key recommendations, the report encourages foundations and private investors to “jointly explore the entire ecosystem of equitable media from a holistic perspective, rather than separating investment and grant funding.”

Taken together, these three reports point the path forward: current funders and investors must approach news equity in new ways, individually and together. They also highlight the need to educate and recruit a much broader array of funders and investors into this space. We hope you will use them to explore this work from multiple angles, and to continue to bring new funders and investors into the conversation. We’re excited to work with you to build a new, innovative and equitable journalism that strengthens civil society and finally truly serves communities in the U.S. and around the world.

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Statement

Statement on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court Decision

June 24, 2022

Today’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization lays bare the fragile state of our democracy — one that fails to represent the majority and respect the rights of its citizens, especially of women of color. Once again, we see how vulnerable our political system is to perversion by leaders who are not committed to protecting and strengthening our democracy.

While our democracy has long been profoundly and intentionally broken, it is still incredibly difficult to see the arc toward justice stymied on so many fronts. In order to systemically shift the tide, we must strengthen the pro-democracy movement and create changes that support majority rule and preserve basic rights.

We remain committed to doing all we can to create a more inclusive, multiracial democracy for all.

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Blog

Democracy in Crisis: Preparing for the Road Ahead

Joe Goldman

July 29, 2021

In the past year, during a pandemic and national uprising for racial justice, our grantees rose to the challenge of authoritarianism, attacks on journalism, rampant misinformation, a crisis election, and increased political violence. We are truly grateful for and proud to support these efforts. As we look to the future, we will build upon the strengths of our grantee community and what we have learned together.

While we have made great strides towards an open and just multi-racial democracy, that progress has triggered a profound and dangerous backlash that threatens the very core of our republic. It is imperative that across the sector, we reflect on how this reality challenges the foundational assumptions of our work and craft strategies commensurate to this moment.

Last year, ongoing political crises culminated in our choice to anchor Democracy Fund’s identity in our democratic principles instead of bipartisanship. But we have planned to review our strategy since our launch, when we committed to formally revisiting our strategy every five years. Currently our organization is engaging in some deep thinking — while continuing our current grantmaking — and plan to wrap up in 2022 as we know the need to take up this work now could not be more urgent.

We are still early in the process of developing a new organizational strategy, but a few central ideas have emerged as anchors in our exploration:

We cannot achieve a healthier democracy unless we deal with the longstanding structural barriers designed to prevent majority-rule. To address these barriers effectively, a focus on racial justice and equity must be embedded across our work.
The racist, illiberal, authoritarian faction that is ascendant in our political system represents an existential threat to our democracy. Failure to withstand the threat posed by this faction could lead to irreparable damage. Over the coming years, we must weaken this coalition and defend against its attacks on our democracy, while strengthening the pro-democracy movement.
An incremental approach to reform without a vision for transformational change will not succeed. We must disrupt the culture, institutions, and rules of the game to unrig our political system and transform the fight for a more open and just democracy.

We don’t expect to have clarity on all program areas until at least mid-2022, as the expertise of our grantees and other field leaders are crucial to our approach. We have already engaged some partners in our work thus far, and we anticipate many more opportunities to do so in the months to come.

We feel energized by these powerful ideas. They align with our values and the communities we support. Integrating these concepts into our strategies and grantee portfolios will take time and our team is ready to dive in. It is clear that there are no silver bullets or easy answers for our democracy. But we are ready to join with our many partners to do what’s needed — listening to and building on the work of the leaders and organizations who came before us. We are grateful, as always, for those who have already engaged in our process and continue to be champions for our democracy.

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Report

Toward Ethical Technology

Sabrina Hersi Issa & Arpitha Peteru

March 28, 2022

The health of our American democracy depends upon equitable and safe digital spaces.

Toward Ethical Technology: Framing Human Rights in the Future of Digital Innovation was written by Sabrina Hersi Issa, human rights technologist and Rights x Tech founder with Arpitha Peteru, co-lead of Foundation of Inclusion. The report examines and synthesizes intersectional movements to build better, more inclusive, and humane technologies. It also introduces a set of principles and inclusive frameworks to help platform, product, and policy leaders conceptualize intentional ethical technology that is responsive to the needs of impacted communities and shape meaningful interventions for systems-level shifts at the intersections of technology and human rights.

Rights x Tech is a forum and community that explicitly explores the intersections of technology and power. It brings together technologists, policymakers, and movement leaders for dialogue and solution-building on emerging issues around human rights, products, and power.

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Report

Learning from Digital Democracy Initiative Grantees

January 20, 2022

Democracy Fund’s Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) and its grantees are radically reimagining what it looks like to make platforms accountable to the American public and renew public interest media.

To support this work, the team’s evaluation and learning partner, ORS Impact, conducted learning conversations with DDI grantees in September and October 2021 to understand:

How grantees have responded to the past year
What it would take to better center racial equity in DDI’s strategy and in grantees’ work
Where grantees see opportunities in the current moment

The report summarizes findings about these three topics within and across learning conversations and raises considerations for funders about how to better center racial equity in their grant making, how to better support their grantees, and opportunities ripe for investment. The report encourages funders to reflect on these considerations and how they might be applicable to their strategy.