Today Press Forward, the national movement investing more than $500 million to strengthen communities and local news, announced a new cohort of 11 Press Forward Locals. The new chapters are in Colorado, Lancaster, Pa., Lexington, Ky., Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, South Florida, and Wyoming. Combined with existing chapters in Alaska, Chicago, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Springfield, Ill. and Wichita, the total number of Press Forward Locals is now 17.
These local chapters are helping build a vital new infrastructure for independent media across America. They’re uniquely positioned to listen to the field, identify approaches that meet the needs of their communities, and rally support for a shared local vision.
Democracy Fund is proud to partner with dozens of Press Forward funders to support this growing local leadership, which builds upon years of learnings from Democracy Fund’s Equitable Journalism strategy. Six of the Press Forward Locals are existing Democracy Fund local news ecosystem grantees and partners, and we’re thrilled to see them joining the Press Forward movement.
Democracy Fund has long believed that transforming local news must begin with local communities. Since 2016, Democracy Fund has invested more than $15 million in 10 geographic areas across the U.S. to support vibrant ecosystems that reimagine news and information as civic infrastructure. Now through Press Forward more funders are able to join the effort to acknowledge, celebrate, and resource incredible leaders and innovators on the ground who are building a brighter future for local news.
The local funders who lead Press Forward Local chapters are committed to deep listening, bringing more funders to the table, and sharing what they learn. Local news ecosystems are not one-size-fits-all — what works in New Mexico is different from what works in Wyoming. But all ecosystems are rooted in coalitions of diverse stakeholders across a region, working together to support authentically local solutions.
Why Democracy Fund is committed to an ecosystem funding approach
An ecosystem approach to local news funding aims to create equitable local journalism for all, rather than replicate old systems of journalism that did not serve all communities. An evaluation of Democracy Funds’s ecosystem investments has shown that this local news ecosystem approach can drive significant impact by:
Increasing access to local news and civic information for local people,
Addressing shared challenges across local media,
Sparking reporting collaborations that serve community needs,
Bringing millions of new dollars from local funders to support local news, and
Resulting in more equitable grantmaking to publishers of color.
We have seen notable success in the funding efforts we have undertaken with our partners. In North Carolina, funders have moved nearly $8 million in direct and aligned funding to over 50 organizations across the state, with 75 percent of direct grantees being led by Black, Indigenous, Latino or other people of color. In New Jersey a public/private partnership is leveraging state funding alongside philanthropic funding to award more than $5 million in grants to 52 organizations, half of which are led by people of color. In Colorado, funders have utilized national resources and models for local use, like creating a statewide NewsMatch campaign called #newsCONeeds that has raised over $2.3M for Coloradan nonprofit and for profit newsrooms.
Through this work, we have learned the importance of patience, humility, and a deep commitment to building lasting relationships in places. We know that the change we want to see in the world will take time. We remain committed to our vision of a future where local news ecosystems move resources to news organizations led by and serving people of color, equip residents for civic action, and build communities of belonging that strengthen an inclusive, multi-racial democracy.
Today’s announcement of new Press Forward local chapters, and the chance for those chapters to apply for funding, is a significant step in Press Forward’s work to be a good partner to local communities. Democracy Fund will continue to support and expand our work in local news ecosystems both through our own investments and through Press Forward, and look forward to learning in partnership with those leading this work.
For more information about Local News Ecosystem Funding, check out these resources:
Reliable information fuels our lives. We need to know who is on the ballot, what’s happening in our schools, where to find rental assistance, and how to make change in our neighborhoods. From daily reporting that equips people to act, to huge investigations that reveal corruption, the health of local news is bound up with the health of our democracy.
Over five years, Democracy Fund has invested $11 million in six geographic areas across the U.S., where residents and institutions are collaborating to better meet their communities’ real information needs.
This report tells the story of how Democracy Fund grantees created positive impact in their communities through innovative, locally-driven solutions. It also shares lessons for funders and local leaders interested in advancing a more equitable future for local journalism. As more funders consider local collaborative funding, we hope that this report will serve as a valuable resource.
We believe that funding local news ecosystems is an equitable way to support local news because it is rooted in community listening and redistributing resources to areas of greatest need. In 2023, we have committed $4.75 million over the next three years to the geographic areas highlighted in the report, as part of our new Equitable Journalism strategy.
As we move forward in this work, we will continue to share what we learn, including a deeper analysis of the health of various local news ecosystems later in 2024. Sign up for our email newsletter to stay in touch.
The nonprofit organizations working tirelessly to ensure our elections remain free, fair, and representative are the unsung heroes of our democracy. Whether they are fighting to reduce barriers to voting, combating misinformation, recruiting poll workers, or organizing registration drives, these nonpartisan groups help connect voters to the ballot and protect the integrity of our elections.
Unfortunately, too many of these organizations must head into a challenging environment without the resources they need. Year after year, we hear from the field that donors are moving too slow and that money has arrived too late to be used effectively and efficiently.
Early and consistent resources are key to grantee operations. Supporters need to give them the runway they need — the confidence to plan, the ability to hire and train staff, and the time to lock in lower cost rates. In an era where early and mail-in voting are becoming more prevalent, the need for early resources that support our elections infrastructure is more critical than ever.
No doubt, many of the challenges that nonprofits face are a result of grantmaking timelines and practices. That’s why Democracy Fund, along with dozens of other pro-democracy funders, is making the All by April pledge. We’re committing our dollars earlier and moving funds sooner than we might have otherwise. Already, more than 70 foundations, individual donors, philanthropic advisors, and pooled funds have signed the nonpartisan, 501(c)3 All by April pledge.
Our commitment is straightforward. We are working to be good partners to our grantees and doing all that we can to have their backs as we head into another election cycle.
As part of Democracy Fund’s pledge, our teams are expediting the disbursement of funds to our election-related grantees by the end of April. This means making grant commitments, payments, and disbursements of multiyear grants earlier in the year than we sometimes have in the past. We’ve also been doing what we can to streamline processes, especially for renewal grants, and providing general support grants as much as possible. These actions, we hope, will equip nonprofits with the financial support they need well ahead of the election that they are seeking to protect.
Many donors are joining us in committing to make all or most of their grants by the end of April. Others are focusing on streamlining renewal processes or finding alternative ways to support their grantees. I hope that even more of my peers will join us in adopting these practices and fostering a collaborative approach to strengthen our democracy. This campaign won’t solve all the funding challenges our civic groups are facing, but I hope it’s a good start.
At a time when our republic is in such a precarious position, philanthropy can no longer conduct business as usual. Creating a culture of early and expedited funding for organizations seeking to ensure free, fair, and representative elections is a tool in our arsenal that directly addresses systemic challenges to our democracy. I invite you to join me in this commitment, ensuring that pro-democracy organizations have the resources they need to fortify the foundation of our democratic system.
Across the nation, state and local leaders are building movements for digital equity. The goal? For everyone to have access to safe online spaces, and technology that represents their needs, concerns, and dreams. This will allow people to fully participate in their communities — and in the discussions and decisions that affect our democracy. The need is especially urgent for communities of color who experience low levels of opportunities to control the narrative about their lives, and high levels of harm on digital platforms.
Democracy Fund has spent years learning where we can have the greatest impact in transforming digital media and technology to be safer and more inclusive, particularly in and for communities of color. To us, inclusion in the digital public square does not simply mean access for all. It means nurturing the conditions needed for equitable opportunities, increased leadership and representation for communities of color, and positive outcomes for all people — regardless of socioeconomic status, background, or location.
We believe that on-the-ground, place-based organizing helps communities, especially communities of color, achieve tangible progress at an impressive rate. This is why our Digital Democracy strategy focuses on increasing our investment in state and local efforts. We are focusing our support across Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania — where leaders, many of whom are people of color and come from and represent the communities closest to these issues, are building momentum by:
Advocating for regional digital policies to support communities of color;
Campaigning to roll back restrictions on community broadband;
Organizing their communities to respond to harmful tech company practices, and more.
In 2023, Democracy Fund invested $3 million in grants to support state and local leaders advancing digital equity. We believe this work is vital for an inclusive, multiracial democracy.
“It’s critical to support community-led movements for digital justice seeking to repair harms wrought by decades of policies that left behind rural communities, people living on low incomes, and communities of color,” says Erin Shields, Senior Associate, at Democracy Fund.
“State and local efforts are the backbone of national civil and human rights fights — whether it’s community broadband, digital rights, algorithmic discrimination, or state-based litigation. We are at an opportune time for US civil society to fight for a shared rights-based vision for the future of tech and broadband,” says Haneen Abu Al Neel, Program Associate, at Democracy Fund.
The 2023 State and Local Organizing Grantees
Democracy Fund is proud to announce the 2023 Digital Democracy grantees who all share a commitment to action toward community-focused media policy and tech accountability. Grantees will receive general operating support grants to support flexibility, capacity building, and sustainability for day-to-day operational needs within their organizations.
#BlackTechFutures Research Institute, $200,000 over two years for their work in building a national network of city-based researchers and practitioners conducting research on sustainable local black tech ecosystems. The outcomes of this work are actionable policy recommendations and a national public data archive.
Detroit Community Tech Project, $750,000 over three years to use and create technology rooted in community needs that strengthens neighbors’ connection to each other and the planet.
Digital Equity and Opportunity Initiative, $500,000 over two years for their work to jumpstart building a lasting civic infrastructure. DEOI will provide core funding support to state broadband coalitions with broad-based community engagement that have the mobilization capacity to maximize the opportunity and drive equitable outcomes in digital access.
Generation Justice, $200,000 over two years for their work as New Mexico’s premier youth media project to raise underrepresented voices, heal from internalized wounds, and lift narratives of hope and inspiration that build pathways to equity and leadership.
Independence Public Media Foundation, $200,000 over two years for their work transforming the Greater Philadelphia region into a hub for community-owned media by expanding community internet that is collectively owned and managed by local communities, and strengthening community organizing for digital equity.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (Tribal Broadband Bootcamp), $250,000 over two years for their work toward thriving, diverse, equitable communities by building local power to fight corporate control through research, advocacy, and partnerships nationwide.
People’s Tech Project, $600,000 over three years for their work in Pennsylvania to win a future where technology builds dignity, justice, and liberation rather than exacerbating oppression and harm in the hands of big corporations and the state.
Petty Propolis, $200,000 over two years for their work on policy literacy and advocacy, data and digital privacy education, and racial justice and equity.
ProgressNow New Mexico Education Fund, $300,000 over two years for their work to center justice for systemically excluded communities through partnerships, trusted digital communications, and issue-based and civic engagement campaigns.
How Democracy Fund Drives Support for Digital Equity
In addition to these state and local grants, we have made a series of multi-year investments in national leaders working to advance rights and reparations in media and technology.
We are committed to investing in organizations, leaders, and movements that promote changes in digital media and technology. These changes should be sustainable, transformative, and make digital spaces safer and more inclusive.
To guide our grantmaking, we will deepen our conversations with grant recipients and their communities. We will also build funding relationships in new regions, particularly in the South. Lastly, we will continue to invite peer funders to help us create a stronger field that values and protects everyone’s digital experiences and rights.
*Please Note: Democracy Fund does not accept unsolicited business plans, proposals, or personal requests. For more information on our work and grantees, sign up for updates. For general inquiries, contact info@democracyfund.org.
Ten years ago, Pierre Omidyar and I launched Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice after a three-year incubation inside Omidyar Network. The world has changed a lot since then, and so have we.
Over the past decade, Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice have committed $425 million in grants to strengthen American democracy. In that time, we have evolved and grown in our understanding of the perils facing our country and the importance of racial justice as fundamental to our work. We believe that achieving an inclusive multiracial democracy means we must fight for our democratic values now — while pursuing transformative changes that can unrig our political system.
As we enter the 2024 election season, the challenges in front of us are sobering. Despite overwhelming evidence of the dangers posed by authoritarians, new Democracy Fund research shows just how easily Americans will accept undemocratic actions if it benefits their side. For example, even though they say that they reject political violence, about half of Republicans describe the January 6 insurrection as an act of patriotism. While our grantees have worked to ensure consequences for those who tried to undermine our free and fair elections in 2020, the authoritarian threat has not subsided.
Today we face a set of challenges that create profound uncertainty about the future of our republic. The pro-democracy field cannot afford to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the high stakes or range of threats. We’ve risen to the moment before and we can do so again.
Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice are focused on ensuring the field is prepared and resourced for the challenges that may emerge before, during, and after the 2024 election cycle:
We’re strengthening accountability systems for authoritarian abuses that could come in 2025.
We’re also calling on our peers to join us in making their nonpartisan election-related grants by April, so that groups have the resources they need in time.
While we stand up against urgent threats, we continue to pursue transformative change toward a political system that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. This work is complex and challenging, but innovators and advocates continue to make steady progress and real strides toward transformation.
For example, a decade ago, Democracy Fund began responding to warning signs that local journalism was under threat. The sector was seeing layoffs, newsrooms collapsing, racism and sensationalism were all too common, and communities were being left with little or no trustworthy reporting. Together with our grantee partners, however, we saw in this crisis an opportunity for reinvention. We saw the promise of promoting new business models and centering the voices of communities who were never well-served by traditional journalism. Today there is a growing and thriving landscape of non-profit journalism. A tremendous community of news innovators, including our grantees, have created a new way forward for civic journalism. It’s taken years of patient investment to build from a ripple to a wave — but today we see the wave.
This past fall, funders made a new commitment to scale these approaches. Democracy Fund and a coalition of 20 funders announced plans to invest more than $500 million into local news and information over the next five years. We see this as a down payment toward an even more ambitious vision to reimagine the place of local news in the life of communities and our democracy. Local news will never be what it once was, but Democracy Fund grantees have had the vision to rebuild it as something better. The work ahead of us, in journalism and across our democracy, will take more collective action like this.
Exactly what lies at the end of 2024 is uncertain, but with a clear focus on resourcing, mobilizing, and expanding the pro-democracy movement, our field can navigate the year. It is also the time to work with resilience and purpose on advancing the promising ideas that may grow to be the next wave of change for our democracy.
Newsrooms that center people of color are at the forefront of reinventing journalism. Support for these newsrooms is a core piece of Democracy Fund’s Equitable Journalism strategy, which seeks to ensure that all communities see their needs, concerns, and dreams reflected in the public square.
We pair support for newsrooms with resources for the coalitions, networks, ecosystems, and organizations that are transforming what journalism looks like and how our nation supports it. We believe this networked and multi-layered approach will lead to a reimagined local news and information landscape and a more just public square.
Trailblazing leaders — within and outside newsrooms — who are deeply involved with the communities they serve are inventing new visionary models to realize these goals. They need long-term general operating funding to make their work possible.
The Newsroom Grantees
In support of these leaders, Democracy Fund is investing $4 million in multi-year grants to support flexibility, capacity building, and general operating sustainability for eleven newsrooms that center communities of color.
The newsrooms were chosen for their community-first and community-centered reporting, collaborative spirit within the field, and leadership in the journalism transformation space.
“While the journalism industry has evolved, there is still much we need to accomplish. We’re honored to continue building upon our efforts and putting our learnings into action,” says Lea Trusty, Senior Program Associate at Democracy Fund.
“These newsrooms inspire us and countless others with community-centered reporting and a focus on well-being for their organization and staff,” says Christine Schmidt, Senior Program Associate at Democracy Fund.
Newsrooms selected for three-year grants of $450,000 total per newsroom include:
Baltimore Beat, for their work as a Black-led and focused newsroom that intentionally, creatively, and innovatively serves a majority Black city.
City Bureau, for their work as a leading Chicago newsroom dedicated to modeling equitable journalism practices both locally and nationally through their Documenters network.
Conecta Arizona, for their work as a trusted information source for the Spanish-speaking, migrant, border community in Arizona and the Sonora border region.
Documented NY, for their work informing New York City’s immigration population on questions of migrant and labor rights, visas, and more.
El Tímpano, for their work as community builders, organizers, and information distributors to Spanish- and Mam-speaking immigrant communities in Oakland and the wider Bay Area of Northern California.
Outlier Media, for their work as a national model and organizer of equitable engagement while breaking down barriers to information sharing in Detroit and beyond.
Prism, for their work as a BIPOC-led newsroom reporting across several issue areas to disrupt harmful narratives and inform movements for justice.
Resolve Philly, for their work reshaping the culture of reporting in Philadelphia with a focus on transforming the way that traditionally marginalized communities are represented and treated in journalism.
Scalawag, for their work as a catalyst for change in solidarity with oppressed communities in the South.
Newsrooms selected from a special director’s fund for one-year grants of $150,000 per newsroom include:
TransLash Media, for their work as a Black, trans-led organization dedicated to telling trans stories to save trans lives while building power and centering the humanity of trans people.
Charlottesville Tomorrow, for their work as they continue developing an anti-racist and anti-authoritarian model of local news with a project to bring more inclusive stories to local media in Charlottesville.
We are honored to be a small part of the transformative work of these newsrooms and organizations. As we support their missions, we will continue seeking opportunities to advance and invest in our vision of an inclusive, multi-racial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy.
How Democracy Fund Drives Additional Support for Newsrooms Through Collaborative Funding
In addition to our direct newsroom investments, we partner with local leaders, journalists, community builders, and philanthropists to support equitable journalism around the country. Through these partnerships, we’ve developed and joined many pooled efforts to expand our impact and support for newsrooms beyond what we could alone. That has included multi-year grants to efforts like the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, NewsMatch, American Journalism Project, The Pivot Fund, and URL Media. Our collaborative funding also continues in local ecosystems around the country, as well as to national organizations that catalyze local news transformation.
We aim to bring this spirit of collaboration and learning into any future Press Forward investments. These newsrooms and collaborative funding opportunities are closely aligned with one of Press Forward’s investment priorities to strengthen local newsrooms that have the trust of local communities. For clarity, all grants in this announcement are from our core budget and not from additional Press Forward funding.
This resulted from a call to action from our grantees and grew from our support of the open letter to the Pulitzer Prize awards regarding demographic data transparency. More importantly, this change supports our belief that measuring diversity in newsrooms is crucial to improving diversity in the journalism industry. This requirement is added to our existing ethical guidelines with newsroom grantees, including ensuring that Democracy Fund will not discuss or review newsroom reporting before publication.
Please Note: Democracy Fund does not accept unsolicited business plans, proposals, or personal requests. For more information on our work and grantees, sign up for updates. For general inquiries, contact info@democracyfund.org. To view a complete list of grantees, visit our grants database.
A: “It is the movement of thoughts and ideas through time and space”
– Matt Locke, Director of Storythings to Tony Ageh, New York Public Library, Chief Digital Officer
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.
A substantial part of this work 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.
They share similar struggles and are asking themselves a similar set of questions media and journalism funders are grappling with: What comes next? How can we have the most impact? How can we support leaders in this space? What does growth look like in this new world? Where do we go from here?
The challenges are shared and I observed more leaders from overlapping fields asking these set of questions in common physical space with community journalists.
That is because for many communities, physical newsrooms and newspaper buildings are relics of the past.
The physical headquarters of newspaper buildings and local broadcast stations once represented prestige and as sources of pride for its owners. The buildings were often grandiose, ornate, symbolic to news organizations stature in civic life. The structures reflected, both visually and physically, lop-sided power dynamics between newsrooms and the communities they covered. As David Uberti wrote in Columbia Journalism Review,
“The buildings often had on-site printing presses, adding the machinery’s low hum to already buzzing newsrooms, and affording residents the opportunity to see a newspaper being made. The properties were a physical link between journalists and the communities they covered, the ultimate branding tool. Their dazzling architecture and mammoth scale sometimes rivaled those of government buildings or other institutions, showcasing newspapers’ prominent place in the community.”
Journalism is intended to serve the public. Yet for more than a generation it was considered standard practice for local news operations to be housed within ornate, sweeping physical structures creating a structural hierarchy and barrier separating journalists from the very same public they were intended to serve. On the surface there was a functional reason for this: printing press operations required substantial space and the technology to decouple printing press operations from newsroom operations did not become was not ubiquitous or affordable for local newsrooms. But there was also a more sentimental, emotional rationale for this practice: the buildings that hosted news headquarters were universally considered by owners, investors and powerful actors as highly prized possessions and regarded as crown jewels to local media empires.
Until the crown jewels became unprofitable.
As the news industry struggled to find ways to increase revenue, many buildings that served as local news headquarters in cities around the country were put on the market. The buildings the news operations occupied were more profitable than the businesses run inside it.
The Oakland Tribune permanently moved out of the historic Tribune Tower building in 2007, the building has turned over ownership several times since the sale. News operations for The Oakland Tribune relocated multiple times over the ensuing decade before the 150-year-old publication ultimately ceased publication in 2016. Around the country, amid rising real estate values and diminishing revenues, legacy local news operations faced similar fates: in 2011, the Inquirer Building which over the years housed both the The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily Newssold to developers for an estimated $20 million dollars. In 2014, the building that once housed the Detroit Free Presssold to developers for more than $8 million dollars. Claiming losses of around $11 million dollars, Publisher E.W. Scripps Co. placed The Rocky Mountain News up for sale. The paper’s final issue was published in 2009, it’s former headquarters sold and later demolished in 2007. The Des Moines Register left the space the newspaper occupied for more than 95 years, the building was later sold and is now luxury lofts.
Market dynamics led local news outlets to shift from real estate owners to tenants or in less fortunate outcomes, to shift from real estate owners to fading memories. While the digital disruption led the remaining outlets left standing to reckon with a laundry list of constraints; smaller staffs, shrinking budgets and ever-shrinking audiences, just to name a few. For others, this flux presented an opportunity to redefine and renew: the fundamentals of the journalism business have altered, the nature of distribution and news consumption has changed, how newsrooms connect with audiences must be reimagined. This all presents an opportunity for reinvention, as former Detroit Free Press editor Paul Anger describes:
“It’s the publishing industry. And when you’re in a building that really doesn’t serve your needs anymore — there could be open space, configurations that don’t work for you, equipment or costs that don’t make sense — moving somewhere new is starting fresh.”
An opportunity also exists here for media funders as well: how can diversity, inclusion and connection to communities be baked into this stage of reinvention?
Remix Revitalization
While the business of media has altered, the fundamentals of journalism has not: journalism exists to serve the public. As these grandiose buildings were sold off over the aughts, strong journalism was still produced as technology transformed the spacial needs required to do run a newsroom and cover communities. Media funders can support newsrooms continued retreat from structural barriers between journalists and communities by remixing how philanthropy invests in communities that bridge overlapping ecosystems also in deep transitions.
Philanthropy has long served as a catalyst for community and industry revitalization efforts. This hybrid role as convener, organizer and catalyst is one that is not unfamiliar to many funders. As James M. Ferris writes in Stanford Social Innovation navigating complexity is, in fact, an inherent strength for many community funders:
“… philanthropy is able to lead, not by dollars alone, but by leveraging all of its assets — expertise, reputation, and networks — to address public problems. These foundations purposefully forged relationships and networks with stakeholders in the community. They also consciously developed intellectual capital about programs and places. That latter behavior brings to light another important reason why they have proven effective leaders. In addition to embracing adaptive and distributed leadership, these philanthropies have risked developing and advancing a point of view. Foundations that aspire to be changemakers must be much more than grantmakers. The conventional view that “it is not about us” must give way to the willingness to set a course and stand by it. Foundations can create and maintain a point of view to great effect, as long as they are credible and transparent.”
The key here is for media funders to see themselves as active participants in community ecosystems rather than passive grantmakers. It requires a conscious and continual shift of power dynamics that allows the imposing, structurally cold and physically removed newspaper labyrinths of the past to continue to dispose. In it’s place, media donors can catalyze and pilot fresh systems, practices and mechanisms that allow for deeper integration into communities journalists serve and for closer listening to audiences local media seeks to reach. Through accepting change as a constant, media funders can proactively lead deliberate, continual investments into more resilient newsrooms through funding models for local news to build capacity to adapt to continuously change and newsroom reinvention.
Avengers Assemble: Bring Newsgathering & Programming into Community Spaces
Ariell Johnson owns Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, the first comic bookstore on the east coast owned by a black woman. Johnson got the idea to create a hybrid community hub when a beloved coffeeshop across the street from a local comic book shop she frequented closed down — she wanted Amalgam to bridge both functional spaces, recreate the inclusive, warm environment she experienced and serve as a gathering space she knew the community needed.
Today, Amalgam describes itself as a “… celebration of geek culture. A place for comic book fans, hardcore gamers, movie addicts, television connoisseurs, and zombie apocalypse survivalists to meet, and with their powers combined, change the world a little bit.”
Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse. Photo by Sabrina Hersi Issa
In my opinion, Johnson succeeded in her intention to create a warm, inclusive environment. On my visit to Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse for this research, it struck me as an ideal community hub: curious, friendly strangers, plenty of nooks to get lost in conversation or explore new worlds, ample convening and learning space and yes, comic books and coffee. For journalists invested in understanding the pulse of a neighborhood and it’s many varied voices, Amalgam stands out.
In an interview with me, Johnson describes the space as something built with flexibility and change in it’s DNA because community was centered in the intentionality behind Amalgam’s design:
“Community has been the center of this, while designing the shop and everything, it was always the goal to make it be conducive to be a community space. Just from how everything was designed and setup, even how the retail shelves in the back of the store are arranged, it was all done with the understanding that we’d like to be able to build community back here. Things need to be able to be moved, rearranged, to push things out of the way so that we can arrange the floor as we need.”
For media funders invested in reimagining newsgathering truly rooted within local communities, it is worth exploring how donors can create opportunities to support local, diverse entrepreneurs also embarking reimagining possibilities in their communities. In an interview with me, Johnson explains the most straightforward way for funders to accomplish this is to support diverse entrepreneurs in local communities:
“Make it a point to try to fund diverse entrepreneurs. I’ve gone into loan meetings when I was applying for loans and I have to meet with the loan committee and I am the only person in that room that looks like me. Not that I didn’t know that that was the case before, but it’s one thing to know it and it’s a very different thing to experience. It is very easy for me to understand why white boys get funded and other people don’t. Because if you walk into a room and you look like everyone in the room then I think there is this kinship that people can feel with you like, ‘I don’t know about what it is about this boy. He just reminds of myself.’ When I’m walking into a meeting I’m not reminding anybody of anybody. All of that works against people who do not fit a mold. So look for diverse products and make sure your decision-maker team is diverse. So you’re not just in a room full of white people when you’re trying to make those financial decisions.”
Amalgam owner Ariell Johnson depicted on Marvel cover. Image from Marvel.
For other media funders seeking to follow suit, Johnson advises: “I think it is not considered sexy to provide support for operations to help businesses stay open but I believe it’s more impactful to support organizations that are already doing the work and just need help to continue doing it.”
Develop a Presence in Collaborative Work Environments
Pipeline Philadelphia: Photo by Sabrina Hersi Issa
Tayyib Smith is a Philadelphia based entrepreneur behind several ventures including Little Giant Creative, 215 Magazine and the Institute for Hip Hop Entrepreneurship. He is one of the partners of Pipeline Philly, a collaborative co-working space that overlooks Philadelphia’s City Hall.
Pipeline Philadelphia: Photo by Sabrina Hersi Issa
The space is home to companies and organizations of a range of missions and sizes, including civic organizations and hyperlocal news startups. In an interview with me for this research, Smith observed that Pipeline’s success in supporting diverse and growing organizations is due, in part, because the team of people stewarding the space were made up of individuals who have built diverse businesses and companies. “The thing that separates Pipeline probably from most co-working spaces not just in Philly, but nationally, is that we have a really keen eye for aesthetics and for a concierge level of service. I think being an entrepreneur, you know what other small businesses and moderate sized businesses may want. It probably gave us a bit of an advantage in the marketplace.”
Pipeline Philadelphia: Photo by Sabrina Hersi Issa
The Knight Foundation became Pipeline Philadelphia’s first marquee tenant. On a tour of Pipeline for this research, I observed with Pipeline’s community manager Lindsay Tillery, how programming reinforces collaborative partnerships among companies and organizations hosted at the space. Proximity enriches context and in this context; journalists, makers, developers, strategists, marketers and educators all working in proximity to one another has added dimensions of depth and in most cases, high-levels of growth to their work. For many, the space is not intended as a fixed solution. In our tour Tillery noted many civic media and local news startups seeded at Pipeline eventually grew out of the space as their teams expanded.
Partner with Overlapping Ecosystems in Reinvention
The technology sector is no stranger to disruption and flux. Amazon Web Services rendered racked server space unnecessary and distributed agile teams have slowly become more commonplace than fixed, co-located engineering bases. It is an evolution that is not dissimilar to how grandiose newspaper buildings slowly hollowed out as printing presses gave away to digital distribution.
Like the media industry, the cost and infrastructure necessary to build and scale a modern technology company has changed the landscape of possibility and the profile of who can afford to become technology entrepreneurs. Like the media industry, the technology sector is at odds with it’s role and responsibility to confront the structural and systemic conditions that have fueled the industry’s homogeneity; specifically a severe lack of racial, ethnic, gender diversity.
Startups can launch from anywhere and a few Silicon Valley leaders have seized this opportunity to steer the tech sector toward reimagining itself, specifically in regards to improving diversity among its very homogenous talent pools and positioning emerging companies to thrive beyond Silicon Valley.
Leslie Miley is a veteran Silicon Valley engineer, an alum of the engineering teams at Twitter, Apple, Google and most recently, Director of Engineering at Slack. In addition to his roles in engineering leadership, Miley is a longtime outspoken champion for improving diversityand inclusion in the technology sector and has regularly challenged Silicon Valley companies to build products and company culture in accordance with integrity, principles and values.
At the beginning of the 2017, Miley announced he was taking a leave from his role at Slack to join Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit that works with recent grads who want to work in startups and create jobs in American cities. Miley will be working to launch VFA’s Executive-in-Residence (EIR) program that will embed senior-level Silicon Valley talent with VFA companies in cities around the country with emerging, diverse startup ecosystems.
Image from Venture for America
The technology industry shares the media industry’s well-documented challenges with diversity, inclusion, fostering leadership opportunities for leaders from underrepresented and nontraditional backgrounds against ever-changing business constraints. The tech sector also holds tremendous, outsized influence to shape of local economies, dominant culture and civic life. For philanthropy, it is worth observing how senior leaders within the technology sector are building solutions designed to integrate diversity and inclusion as an imperative and prerequisite for continued industry growth.
Miley wrote on Medium in a post announcing his role, “I listened to the frustrations of countless founders of all races and genders on how hard it is to raise funds, to find and retain good talent, and grow their companies in their communities due to the scarcity of what we take for granted in Silicon Valley. It is painfully obvious that this very talent is being systematically drained from most of America’s hardest hit cities. A large percentage of this entrepreneurial talent ends up in New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Denying these communities the talent and resources they need to create and grow their start-up communities. By encouraging and enabling a population of non-diverse entrepreneurs to relocate to Silicon Valley, and disrupt and innovate in the technology space with little thought to the scope or impact of their platforms, we have successfully created the means to disrupt not only industries but also communities, and countries. And we do this with little, if any, empathy when it comes to the impact on the well being of people, particularly women and people of color.”
In an interview with me for this research, Miley describes how community shifts the nature of the innovation VFA startups and other tech companies based beyond Silicon Valley drives, “The problems that are going to be solved in Cleveland, Philly, Detroit are going to be different than the problems that we will solve here [in Silicon Valley]. Where the pain point in the community is going to be different so the problem space is going to be different. Innovation isn’t about getting two guys together and giving them a bunch of money and hoping they change the world. It is sometimes just solving a problem that impacts a large group of people and that problem space is different from community to community. Community is based upon a lot of different things.”
The community dynamic Miley speaks to points to an opportunity for media funders seeking to support stronger local journalism.
Community drives context. It changes the nature of place and for journalists, the stories we tell about innovation.
The resilience and future relevance of the technology sector relies upon the industry growing, evolving and meaningfully supporting diversity and inclusion. What are the narratives media funders can support from local community industries actively attempting to revitalize itself?
Miley explains in an interview with me,
“I intimately understand, based on where my parents lived and where a lot of my friends lived in other parts of the United States, what happens when you don’t have economic opportunities. What happens to communities that don’t have economic opportunities? One of the things that happens to communities that don’t have economic opportunities for a prolong periods of time is that they become extremely desperate. They are desperate for jobs. They are desperate for anything that’s going to change the decline of their communities, of their friends of the family and their loved ones…We have such an amazing economic engine in Silicon Valley. How can we export that to parts of the United States that aren’t partaking in the economic resurgence that we are experiencing so vividly here.”
Accelerating the nature of this change through seeding experienced senior-level Silicon Valley talent in an EIR program will ramp up the speed and maturation of startup ecosystems around the country. It will present different and diverse innovation narratives and it will develop, as Miley explains, companies trying to solve different problems, serve diverse communities and surface more expansive stories.
“You are seeding an ecosystem to grow. The story I’d like to see is the ability to be a part of an ecosystem that is not just changing the economic activities in an area but is actually changing people’s lives,” Miley explains.
Change is constant and for media funders, so are the opportunities to invest new stories, storytellers and communities living through flux. In order to meet this moment, the stories we tell about change within our industry and communities we cover must also shift.
These shifts present opportunities to reimagine media within communities as vehicle for co-investment in community.
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 championing the rights of survivors of sexual violence.
In 1994, as the number of migrants coming to the United States started to hit a peak, Abu Taher arrived in New York City. A daily newspaper in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that he worked for at the time had sent him to the U.S. on assignment. Taher lived in a small apartment that he shared with more than 10 other Bangladeshi immigrants in the Bronx.
It was his first experience to get his bearings in a newfound American life.
Whenever he would go to social gatherings on weekends or visit the mosque, Taher realized, the Bangladeshi immigrant families that he’d meet had almost exactly the same questions in his mind: where to find a reasonable car dealer, a trusted immigration lawyer and an experienced real estate broker, or how to access information. Those questions, though they seemed basic, kept him wide awake at night; he knew that they were critical for anyone new to this country.
A veteran journalist, Taher decided to establish his own weekly newspaper in 1996, Bangla Patrika, that would serve as a “life link” to members of his community in the New York and New Jersey areas and their loved ones in Bangladesh, covering news and information that they could use practically.
“That was the main purpose of the publication: giving information to my fellow Bangladeshi immigrants on how to live a normal life in a new homeland and, at the same time, connecting them to the homes they left behind,” he said.
Print as the flagship
Taher said that Bangla Patrika, now one of the longest-running ethnic media news outlets in the city, has remained true to its core purpose.
Despite significant changes brought by digital technology — utilizing mobile devices, blogging — joining multiple social media networks and producing slideshows and videos, Taher said that the survival of his paper still largely rests in the same community that he’s served since its inception over 20 years ago.
Like hundreds of ethnic media in New York and New Jersey, particularly among newspapers, the print edition remains to be the flagship of the news outlet — unlike its mainstream counterparts that have shifted by and large to digital and relegated its print edition to a secondary portal to news access.
In fact, over the last decade, some digital-first ethnic media publishers inNew York and New Jersey have found that some community members they serve don’t consider a news organization legitimate unless it has a print edition.
“In the Filipino community, you are not considered a ‘real’ newspaper, if you don’t have a print edition,” said Cristina Pastor, publisher and editor of FilAm.net.
Business sustainability
While many publishers can see the value of digital presence, not all in the ethnic media sector believe it’s the most effective way to keep the business afloat.
Kaushik Shah, publisher of Gujarat Darpan, a monthly magazine in Gujarati based in central New Jersey, said that his paper’s circulation grew to nearly 15,000 copies a month — a 75 percent increase over the last 20 years.
While his magazine has an online edition, mostly PDF files uploaded to its website, he said he owes the growth to his print subscribers and readers who are mostly Gujarati immigrants in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. These subscribers, according to Shah, may be on Facebook using their smartphones, but the majority of them still access their news and information through print.
“This is why enhancing my digital existence is not a top priority for us. Gujarati readers who are, for example, in San Francisco, they could get their news from other Gujarati publications based in California — we don’t have to capture them on the Internet,” Shah added. “But in order for us to stay in this business, it is not just all about increasing the number of readers from across the U.S. and around the world, but rather it is about going back to the basics: provide local content that our readers actually need.”
Advertisers Still Prefer Print
Kleibeel Marcano, publisher and editor of Reporte Hispano, one of the biggest Spanish-language weeklies in New Jersey, was on the same page. The ad sales, he admitted, have gone down, but the number of his readers — including those on social media and online generally — has increased nearly tenfold in recent years.
Kleibeel Marcano (third from left) with other NJ ethnic media reporters at a press briefing, organized by Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media. (Photo Credit: Anthony Advincula)
As he enhanced the paper’s digital presence, it also increased his overhead cost. Most interestingly, Marcano admitted that his paper, like any ethnic media news outlets on a shoestring budget, also finds it challenging to monetize digital content:
“Our biggest advertising revenue sources still come from our print advertisers,” Marcano said.
While he lost some of the paper’s big corporation advertisers, he added, most businesses in the community still place ads in the print edition.
“Whether we are expanding our reach through online or boosting our social media presence, there’s no way that we could get rid of our print edition,” Marcano said. “The Internet has inundated our readers with information that they actually don’t care about, with unreliable and untrusted sources. Because our readers know that we are part of our community and we know our community, they will continue to grab our newspaper from the newsstand.”
Oni Advincula was a former editor and national media director for New America Media and a correspondent for The Jersey Journal and The Associated Press. He is the co-author of “The State of Ethnic and Community Media in New Jersey” and has worked with ethnic media in 45 states for more than 20 years.
Our democracy is a complex political system made of an intricate web of institutions, interest groups, individual leaders, and citizens — all connected in countless ways. Every attempt to influence and improve some aspect of this complex system produces a ripple of other reactions. While some of these reactions may be predictable, many are not. This reality makes it difficult to anticipate what will happen when we try to help U.S. democracy work better.
Systems thinking can offer insight into the dynamics of the various fields where the Democracy Fund is active. It is a methodology used to gain a deep understanding of a given field or topic within the whole. By supporting comprehensive analysis, systems thinking offers a way to better identify the root causes of problems we want to address, and to find intervention points that offer great opportunity to advance change. This approach has a long history in fields as varied as ecology, engineering, urban planning, family therapy, criminal justice, organizational development, and conflict analysis and resolution. Systems thinking employs a variety of tools and frameworks for analysis, most notably systems mapping. In 2015, we began mapping several of democracy’s component systems related to our programmatic priorities. Each map is developed in collaboration with stakeholders in the field being examined — and each welcomes continued input and improvement from an ever-wider circle of participants who bring new perspectives.
The Democracy Fund exists to help ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and continually deliver on its promise to the American people. In short, we work on things that make democracy work better. Embracing systems thinking can assist us and our partners in this activity. Just as we know that democracy will face new challenges, we know that any systems map will change — becoming more accurate as new stakeholders add their perspectives, taking new form as evolution, or disruption shifts its factors and their relationships.
Context: Our Mission And Measures
In the near-term, we will measure success based on modest changes in the areas where we focus, particularly those parts of a system where we believe we can move quickly. In the process, we will capture knowledge based on both intended and unintended outcomes. Over time, and with our partners, we expect to leverage short-term wins and lessons learned to create needed motion in other parts of the system. We hope these changes will cumulatively advance how our democracy serves the American people.
To apply systems thinking in our work at the Democracy Fund, we will listen, examine, and learn and adapt.
The Systems Approach In Action
Listen: With the stakeholders involved in creating a map, we seek to hear and capture the story of how a system works. Together, we can try to make sure the map is comprehensive and reflects the nuances and intricacies of the system it describes. As a result, we believe mapping is best done with a broad and inclusive set of players and perspectives.
Examine: We study a map’s factors, their relationships, and the dynamics in play. We can then pursue questions that will allow us to identify areas where there is the potential for high leverage in the system. We will also consider where the system might “push back” on efforts for change, and explore potential unintended consequences of our actions. This analysis will lead to a program plan that addresses our role at the Democracy Fund in tandem with others working to move the system.
Learn and adapt: In collaboration with our partners, we will implement strategies over several years and track progress against the map. We can identify indicators to measure impact, and build in regular points for rigorous reflection. We will compare our lived experience to the map and to our plan, aiming to quickly identify lessons learned and adapt our approach for greater results. As we learn more about a system and how change occurs, we will update its map to reflect new knowledge and emerging realities.
At the Democracy Fund, we believe there are three primary benefits from systems mapping:
Communicating and collaborating. First and foremost describing a system can generate shared language as well as rich content for stakeholders — creating new opportunities for dialogue, negotiation, and ideas that can improve outcomes in a given field. This shared understanding can clarify the perspectives of others and reveal new possibilities for effective collaboration.
Making sense of complexity. We want to capture the elaborate set of relationships and dynamics that characterize a field. We recognize that changemaking is not a linear process, and we want to gain deeper understanding to make informed decisions about our investments and interventions.
Building a basis for action and adaptation. A map’s content informs how we strategize and implement approaches within the Democracy Fund and in conjunction with our partners. The map is a tool that helps us challenge and test our assumptions as well as track and learn from our actions. It serves as a living frame that we revise and build on as we gain insight over time.
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