Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Archives

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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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African American Media Today

Angela Ford, Kevin McFall, Bob Dabney

February 28, 2019

Today, as we close Black History Month, we’re releasing African American Media Today: Building the Future from the Past, a look at the origins of the Black press in the United States and its future, offering recommendations for better practices moving forward.

Black newspapers were essential in providing information to freed slaves and sharecroppers who sought better lives than those offered on plantations. The safe passage, potential opportunities, marriages and deaths of the new, evolving culture of a recently freed people were realized and reported on through Black legacy newspapers.The Black press has played a crucial role in the Fourth Estate since its inception in the early 19th century. In the early days, the Black press reported mainly on issues affecting the newly-formed African American community and identity. African American news organizations highlighted the challenges and triumphs of the Black community, while providing a more nuanced portrait of the lives of Black Americans when mainstream media would report predominately negative or otherwise bigoted stories of Black Americans.

Today, the Black press struggles to remain in operation. While the virtual disappearance of traditional advertising has challenged the news industry as a whole, it has been particularly damaging to the Black newspaper industry. Shrinking staffs have left many operations without tech savvy or the manpower to quickly pivot to new revenue building operations. And while some mainstream news institutions establish paywalls for their digital media platforms, many in the African American community understand that readers are unlikely to accept news through the paywall model.

We know that diversity within journalism—in stories, in staff, and media ownership—is a vital part of ensuring the news reflects the communities which it serves. Therefore, we must do our part in supporting independent Black media outlets to make sure the multitude of stories existing in the Black community continues to have a platform.

The National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA), a 70+-year-old trade association comprised of African American publishers, reports its current readership at 20.1 million per week. And its demographic is 99 percent African American. Furthermore, the Black digital audience has strong numbers among Millennials and Generation Z. Some legacy outlets and NNPA members are shifting business models to appeal to an online audience, while several young entrepreneurs have launched digital-only platforms. No matter the approach or solution, Black Americans agree – almost unanimously – we must maintain independent Black media outlets. Mainstream media does not always capture news and information that is actually relevant in as much as it does write about Black Americans. And even then, these outlets are often one-note in their depictions of the Black community.

In response to the challenges facing the Black press, the Obsidian Collection is developing four potential revenue models for Black Legacy Press and digital media platforms targeting African American audiences. As our organization grows, we are attracting new media members to this movement. We will embrace emergent technologies and innovative practices to ensure the independent lack voice remains an integral part of the American conversation and news landscape, and we hope you’ll join us.

Angela Ford is the Founder and Executive Director of The Obsidian Collection Archives, a Democracy Fund grantee. This report was written by Angela with her colleagues Kevin McFall and Bob Dabney. To learn more about their work, visit www.theobsidiancollection.org or follow @ObsidianCollec1.

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American Indian Media Today

Jodi Rave

November 20, 2018

Once a year, during American Indian Heritage Month in November, American citizens pause to recognize the Indigenous peoples of lands now known as the United States. But what happens to Native people during the other 11 months of the year? Answer: They’re often rendered invisible. That invisibility is complicated by a shrinking Native American news that faces a range of unique challenges today.

My new report, American Indian Media Today: Tribes Maintain Majority Media Ownership as Independent Journalists Seek Growth, gives an overview of the state of Native American media and the challenges we face in telling our own stories. The report is one in a series commissioned by the Democracy Fund to shine a spotlight on the important role of media by and for diverse communities in the United States.

In so much of mainstream media American Indians are invisible as contemporary people or romanticized as relics of a bygone era. The invisibility affects how policymakers make decisions about Native people whose lives are often struck by high rates of poverty, suicide, poor health care, and missing and murdered Indigenous women.

This has made Native media a critical source not only to inform and engage our communities but also to lift up our stories in the broader culture. Yet, for several reasons, we face a lack of news in our own backyards. 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.

Tribal governments can also be obstacles to independent reporting in Indian Country. An estimated 72% of all print and radio outlets in Indian Country are owned and controlled by tribal governments or tribe-owned entities, and according to a preliminary survey from the Native American Journalists Association’s RED Press Initiative, 83% of tribal journalists face intimidation and harassment when covering tribal affairs. This means modern-day tribal citizens receive news that is mostly censored and controlled by tribal governments. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and a free flow of information remain hampered without specific legal provisions rooted in tribal constitutions.

However, a small, but devoted cadre of independent media practitioners are working to create new alternatives and share their stories, free of Native government influence. I profile many of them in this new report and describe the important contributions they are making their communities. These local journalists deserve more attention and need more support. There is much to be learned from how they build and serve communities across often rural and expansive tribal lands.

Jodi’s organization, the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, is one of 155 newsrooms participating in the 2018 NewsMatch campaign. Right now every donation will be doubled by NewsMatch through the end of the year.

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Supporting Listening, Learning, and Community Connection for a Stronger Democracy

Laura A. Maristany

November 5, 2018

From rising discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities to the resurgence of fascist and white supremacist ideologies, both the EU and the United States are grappling with how to respond to the rise of hate¬¬ and fear-based politics. Magnified by foreign and special interest propaganda and misinformation, these dangerous and highly divisive movements could significantly challenge the health and future of democracy around the world. This month, I joined the German Marshall Fund Memorial fellowship program to learn more about how European democracies are responding to these threats, and to share how Democracy Fund is standing up to defend democracy here in the U.S.

After visiting with political, philanthropic, and community leaders in five countries, I was especially inspired by the work being done to foster conversation and connection between communities in both Athens, Greece and Sofia, Bulgaria. In Athens, the civil sector has created common spaces for communities to engage with each other through the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, and local government initiatives are working to integrate migrant communities. In Bulgaria, the Sofia Platform is helping communities reconnect by developing a new model for civic education, including an updated syllabus and new tools and trainings for teachers.

At Democracy Fund, we believe that healthy democracy is rooted in the recognition of the dignity of every individual and in the equal protection of their rights under the law. All people have intrinsic value and bigotry in any form undermines democracy. Grantees of our Just and Inclusive Society project are working to defend the rights and voices of targeted communities through communications and legal strategies. Democracy Fund has also funded new research on The Rise of the Alt-Right and is investing in projects that empower faith leaders to help bridge some of our nation’s most painful divides.

We also believe that constructive dialogue within and between political parties is essential to governing a complex society like ours. Americans must find ways to reestablish trust in our political leaders and institutions, and also with each other. In previous blog posts, we’ve shared how elevating constructive voices, celebrating civility, and ensuring Congress looks more like America are important keys to achieving this goal—but it’s not enough. As Speaker of the House Paul Ryan recently explained, “How do you make inclusive, aspirational politics … strategically valuable? How do you make it so this is the winning thing, this is how you win elections?”

To dig into this question, Democracy Fund is partnering with universities, think tanks, and nonprofit organizations to convene leaders from across the political spectrum and in communities across the country to listen, learn, and connect with each other. Through in-depth conversations about American identity and political philosophy, these projects aim to develop new ideas, strategies, and actionable steps towards a more inclusive America.

In a series of bipartisan events, The Project on Political Reform at the University of Chicago is convening political scientists and practitioners to discuss the scope and nature of governmental and political dysfunction. Participants work together to help identify pragmatic solutions and common-sense strategies for improving political accountability, campaign laws and practices, structural incentives influencing candidate and office-holder behavior, and relationships between governing institutions. The American Project on the Future of Conservatism at Pepperdine University is a multi-year program that brings together conservative leaders and scholars to assess where the conservative movement stands today and to imagine its healthy future. Contributors at recent events have published essays and media pieces and a collaborative principles document entitled A Way Forward, which offers innovative insights on conservatism in an age of rising populism.

The Inclusive Republic Series, an Aspen Socrates Program, provides a forum for emerging leaders and civically engaged citizens from a wide range of backgrounds and sectors to discuss American identity through examination of some of our nation’s founding documents and with expert-moderated dialogue. The Prospects for Liberal Democracy Series at the CATO Institute aims to mitigate the growing threat of populism through discussions about the future of liberal democracy in the United States among a diverse group of activists, academics, and political leaders. By promoting civil discourse in communities across the country, these convenings are working to change the nature of our national dialogue.

To push back against the rise of hate and fear-based politics, we must find ways to rebuild trust and connection with our communities and with each other. By focusing on the ideals and values that unite us, rather than divide us, these grantees give us hope for the future. We’re grateful for their commitment to helping build a more inclusive America and a stronger democracy. I look forward to sharing what we’re learning as these and other projects continue.

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Leap of Faith: Empowering Faith Leaders to Strengthen Democracy

Chris Crawford

September 17, 2018

American politics is characterized today by gridlock that paralyzes our political institutions and a rise in extremism that dominates our national dialogue and drives Americans further apart. Religious engagement is often thought to be a driver of many of these challenges. But while ideological religious advocacy can feed political tribalism through polarizing “culture wars,” the moral framework that faith provides can also help to build community and promote understanding across partisan lines.

In her latest analysis of Democracy Fund Voter Study Group data, Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute found that religious participation may help moderate Americans’ views, particularly on issues related to race, immigration, and identity. For example, Ekins says that Trump voters who attend church more regularly tend to have more favorable opinions of racial minorities, support making it easier to immigrate to the United States and want to provide a pathway to citizenship for those who are unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. Additionally, church-going Trump voters are half as likely to support a travel ban on Muslims entering the United States as those who never attend church.

Although some partisanship is to be expected in a democracy, it is also true that civil debate and principled compromise are essential to governing a large, diverse, and complex society like ours. As part of our effort to foster more constructive politics, we undertook the task of conducting a “faith in democracy” field scan—interviewing over 40 religious leaders, political leaders, and academics about the ways in which faith communities interact with Congress and other institutions in our democracy. We started with a simple question:

As a foundation committed to creating a more constructive political system, what are we missing?

Some of what we learned revealed major, cross-field implications and provided more specific context to inform our work, including:

faith voters engage more in line with their religious, racial, and partisan identities than they do on specific religious doctrines or beliefs;
important interfaith work can be supplemented by work within specific faith traditions;
“Religious Left” is not a term favored by many religious social justice activists on the Left who do not want to be seen as a mirror image of the Religious Right; and
almost everyone we spoke with mentioned the overwhelming polarization in our political system and the way in which religion can both feed and help overcome tribalism in our political system.

As a result of this deep thinking, Democracy Fund is investing in innovative efforts that empower faith leaders to build bridges, break through polarizing paradigms, and create a more inclusive America. Through this multi-level approach, we hope to identify new ways funders can contribute to strengthening our democracy and help fix the problems in our political system.

To foster deeper understanding among elites and disrupt hyperpartisanship in local communities, Democracy Fund is proud to support:

The Faith and Politics Institute in their work to convene political leaders at the intersection of their moral foundation and their public service through events on Capitol Hill and pilgrimages to historic civil rights sites throughout the country.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center which has, for the past 19 years, helped hundreds of reporters increase their religious understanding through the Faith Angle Forum conferences.

In addition, Democracy Fund’s Governance program and Just and Inclusive Society project have joined together on the following grants:

The Freedom to Believe Project brings together conservative members of Congress with their Muslim constituents through holiday meals and mosque visits in their home districts.
Sojourners’ Matthew 25 Project empowers faith leaders to build a more inclusive, respectful America through building new coalitions across the country.

As a result of our field scan, we have multiple grants focused on empowering leaders within individual faith traditions to combat polarization within their ranks, and to exercise their moral authority to speak out against the forces that divide us as Americans.

The Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University has hosted a dialogue series on Faith, Democracy, and the Common Good. Earlier this year the Initiative also hosted a conference that focused specifically on the ways in which Catholics can lead the way in overcoming polarization in our country.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention hosted “MLK50 Conference”, a conference focused on racial healing and unity in Memphis, Tennessee on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We are supporting ERLC’s efforts to turn the energy from the conference into long-term action. We believe that faith leaders can play an important role in combating the white supremacist Alt-Right movement, white supremacy more broadly, and other forms of extremism.

These initial investments complement our existing partners such as Welcoming America, The Socrates Program at the Aspen Institute, and other grantees who are conducting important work to create a more inclusive America.

Over the past year, we have learned a great deal about the ways in which religious Americans interact with our democratic institutions. Across religious traditions, we have found a 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. In supporting bold leaders who are working to unify Americans and promote our shared values, we hope to experiment with and scale models to further strengthen and improve our democracy.

We look forward to continuing to share our learnings as we evaluate these initial grants and plan our future investments.

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A Year After Charlottesville

Joe Goldman

August 9, 2018

The events that unfolded in Charlottesville a year ago were a shocking and tragic reminder that the escalation of racism, nativism, and xenophobia in our national discourse is toxic and potentially deadly.

Last year, we saw a 12% increase in hate crimes in our nation’s ten largest cities, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. New research from Professor Thomas Main further documents that so-called “alt-right” websites saw remarkable increases in web traffic between September 2016 and February of this year—collectively reaching larger audiences than some mainstream center-right online publications. And a year that began with the President excusing the violence in Charlottesville has continued with his administration using vile, dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and implementing a racially-charged family separation policy that has shocked the nation.

At Democracy Fund, we know that defending our democracy and standing up for our core values means pushing back on these forces, wherever they emerge. In many ways, the story of Charlottesville over the past year highlights the importance of several of our core programs, from our initiative on the health of local journalism to our special project on a just and inclusive society.

Let’s start with the critical role played by local journalism.

Powerful reporting of the rally and counter protests captured the attention of the nation. At a time when local news outlets are shuttering, the Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalism of the Charlottesville Daily Progress demonstrated the industry’s role in telling local stories, and of the importance of Democracy Fund’s efforts to support innovators reinventing the business model for local news.

The Daily Progress works hand in glove with Charlottesville Tomorrow, a non-profit newsroom that is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News – a Democracy Fund grantee that supports mission-driven journalism. Together, the outlets tracked the events of last summer and their aftermath, ensuring that the coverage was both meaningful nationally and true to the voices of the local community. Around the country we are seeing creative collaborations like this one beginning to stitch together news ecosystems in ways that make local news more resilient.

The courts have also stepped in to play an important role.

The Charlottesville community has found a measure of justice for the events of last summer through an innovative lawsuit by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University (another Democracy Fund grantee). Last year, ICAP sued the organizers of Unite the Right under a 1776 Virginia law prohibiting “unlawful paramilitary activity.” Recently, the rally’s lead organizer Jason Kessler became the final of over a dozen defendants to enter into a consent decree resolving that lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement, Kessler promised he will not facilitate—and rather will actively discourage—armed paramilitary activity at any future rallies in Charlottesville.

Across the nation, our grantees are working to bring together Americans of all backgrounds to affirm our shared commitment to building a pluralistic, inclusive future. Veterans for American Ideals, for example, this year reached over 4 million people with their #WhatIFoughtFor campaign, a moving portrait that portrayed refugees alongside former service members to emphasize that embracing diversity is a core American value. Faith in Public Life is bringing together faith leaders to reject hate and stand at the defense of communities under attack. Pro Publica’s Documenting Hate project is helping to better track hate and bias crime to enrich the national understanding and conversation about hate incidents. And Civic Nation has joined forces with NBC Universal to relaunch #ErasetheHate, a campaign to help amplify and accelerate the work of people across the country who are combatting hate in unique and innovative ways.

Americans of all stripes have come together over the past few years to assert their commitment to the democratic values on which this country was founded. Across the nation, we’ve seen people stand up in defense of communities under attack, a strong public repudiation of the racist rhetoric and policies by public figures, and increased philanthropic giving to efforts increasing tolerance and inclusion. We’ve also seen record numbers of women and people of color run for elected office, claiming their place in American democracy as never before. These actions represent a counterweight to the types of hatred we saw last year in Charlottesville.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the events in Charlottesville, Unite the Right is preparing to hold rallies in Charlottesville and right here in Washington, D.C. While Democracy Fund believes deeply in the protection of free speech, we believe that these demonstrations must be met vigorously and must not be allowed to use violence to intimidate others. Today and every day, we find hope and inspiration in the actions of those who stand against hatred and against those actions and rhetoric that offend the human dignity of all.

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Supporting Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Journalism

Katie Donnelly And Jessica Clark

June 19, 2018

Efforts in journalism to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the past decade have been ineffective in creating dynamic change in the stories, sources, and staff of news outlets in the United States.

Clearly, the dramatic financial downturn in newspaper advertising revenue has placed strain on all legacy journalism organizations. However, those dynamics alone do not explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism following college graduation. Or excuse the historic leadership failure of large and profitable outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks, which has an outsized impact on communities of color given the dearth of opportunity at smaller newsrooms.

The purpose of this report is to begin to understand philanthropic interventions supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism from 2009 – 2015. As a foundation new to DEI funding in journalism, which has not made any grants in this area during the period under consideration, we plan to use this report to identify major funders and recipients of institutional grants.

This report represents our first attempt to get at this information using data from Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. We are aware of the many limits of this data set due to self-reporting and challenges in categorization. Even with those challenges we are proud of the work that Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done so far to illuminate larger trends and we plan to use this report as a launchpad into further analysis of the organizations supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism.

We are already getting started. We are partnering with funders including the Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society; News Integrity Initiative and Gates Foundation in leadership training from the Maynard Institute; Ford Foundation to support the National Association of Black Journalists; Google News Initiative with the revamp of the ASNE Diversity survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark; Nathan Cummings in support of DEI initiatives at CUNY; MacArthur and McCormick Foundations with new approaches in Chicago like City Bureau and the Obsidian Collection; and Heising-Simons Foundation in paid internship with the Emma Bowen Foundation.

At Democracy Fund, our approach to journalism is focused on building trust and engagement. We break our Engaged Journalism Strategy into three tracks focused on (I) Audience-Driven Storytelling, (II) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and (III) promoting Transparency.

Through our Audience-Driven Storytelling work we invest in innovations and projects that support journalists in reorienting their work towards a focus on the concerns of their audience. This involves building inclusion into newsroom practices, supporting universities as teaching hospitals for innovation, creating communities of practice around engagement, and developing new practices, people, and products hard-wired for engagement.

Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work focuses on improving the diversity of sources, stories, and staff in news outlets. This work involves creating an inclusive environment at news outlets; recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff, including leadership; and working to develop and sustain minority ownership of media properties.

In our Transparency work, we seek to help news outlets and the public better understand one another. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration to strengthen the Fourth Estate and the democratic principles on which our nation is founded. This report is part of that commitment. We will continue to seek opportunities to collaborate with news outlets, journalism support organizations, and partner funders to achieve this goal.

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New Report: A Growing Gap in Philanthropic Support for Newsroom Diversity

Lea Trusty

June 19, 2018

Journalism has long struggled to reflect the diversity of the communities it serves, and over the past decade, most efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in news outlets have been unsuccessful in creating meaningful change within the stories, sources, and staff of newsrooms across the United States.

New research released today by Democracy Fund traces half a decade of philanthropic investment in organizations, programming, and research aimed at increasing DEI in journalism. We commissioned this report to learn from the important work undertaken up to this point, to guide our future investments, and to spark discussions across philanthropy regarding the urgent need to address these challenges with significant new resources.

This report is based on data from the Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. The data set has some important limitations due to the nature of self-reporting and challenges around how grants are categorized. Even so, Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done great work to reveal larger trends in the field.

**From 2009 to 2015, $1.2 billion was invested in journalism, news and information in the U.S.**

Recent research by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and Northeastern University, using the same Foundation Center data as well as a study of foundation 990 tax forms, found that there is simply not enough philanthropic dollars flowing into journalism to make up for the gaps in what has been lost from legacy newsrooms. Amongst the funding that does exist there are troubling gaps and disparities. Our report provides a deeper look at one of those gaps, showing that there are even fewer dollars are going to DEI efforts within the industry.

Here are a few interesting takeaways, according to data as of February 2018:From 2009 to 2015, there were 1,105 grants totaling $105.6 million from 274 funders to 294 recipients pertaining to either racial and ethnic groups, women and girls, or LGBTQI populations.

Funding has declined in these areas overall, both in terms of dollar value by $1.3 million and total number of grants by 18.
When it comes to funding that serves racial and ethnic groups, relatively few dollars go towards financial sustainability compared to programming and project-specific funding.
There has been significantly less investment in gender-related news and staffing compared to racial and ethnic groups.
Funding serving LGBTQI populations in journalism remains extremely limited.

**Here’s a breakdown of philanthropic support strategies for funding DEI in journalism.**

The past efforts represented in these numbers faced stiff headwinds and real challenges, including a dramatic financial downturn that strained the news industry. But tight budgets alone cannot explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism. Nor does it excuse the historic leadership failure of legacy outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks.

Reviewing this history, we are left with more questions than answers: How should we think about supporting programs and investigative projects looking at inequality when they may be housed at news outlets with a weak history of supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion internally? How do we rethink equitable funding so that program-specific funds at ethnic media outlets don’t exacerbate financial and structural uncertainty? And how do we ensure that investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion have broad and measurable impact across the industry?

Prior to this research we created a public database of organizations invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism, and we’ve got more research on the way that we hope will provide a better snapshot of the field of ethnic media and the challenges and opportunities facing those outlets.

Democracy Fund isn’t represented in the data released today because we only became an independent foundation in 2014. However, in our first few years we’ve prioritized this work. So far we are:

Working with News Integrity Initiative, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Gates Foundation in diverse leadership training from the Maynard Institute;
Collaborating with Google News Initiative to help revamp the ASNE Diversity Survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark;
Investing in new models like City Bureau with the MacArthur Foundation
Partnering with funders like Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society;
Co-funding the National Association of Black Journalists with the Ford Foundation;
Working alongside the Heising-Simons Foundation to support paid internships for aspiring journalists of color through the Emma Bowen Foundation.

Together with these funders, we are learning from the research we released today to ensure that our strategies are as effective and equitable as possible. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration. This report is part of that commitment.

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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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Press Release

Voter Study Group Releases New Reports on Voter Attitudes Towards Muslims and Checks and Balances

Democracy Fund

June 6, 2018

Washington, D.C. – June 6, 2018

New reports from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group reveal mixed signals about support for traditional pillars of democracy: Americans strongly support Congressional oversight of the executive branch and believe the president is subject to courts and law. However, support is lower for media scrutiny of the president and attitudes toward Muslim Americans suggest a troubling lack of commitment to religious diversity.

The Voter Study Group is a research collaboration of leading analysts and scholars from across the political spectrum. The two new reports analyze robust survey data about attitudes of Americans toward our political systems’ checks and balances and Muslim Americans:

”Muslims in America: Public Perceptions in the Trump Era,” by John Sides (George Washington University) and Dalia Mogahed (Institute for Social Policy and Understanding)
”Testing the Limits: Examining Public Support for Checks on Presidential Power,” by Lee Drutman (New America), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution) and Joe Goldman (Democracy Fund)

In “Muslims in America,” Sides and Mogahed analyzed unique data from the July 2017 wave of the Views of the Electoral Research (VOTER) Survey from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. Key findings include:

Americans view many Muslims in the United States as insufficiently “American.” The survey asked respondents what percent of Muslim Americans are described by a specific statement. For each statement, respondents moved a slider on a scale of “none” (0%) to “all” (100%). On average, Americans believed that only 56% of Muslim Americans want to fit in and be part of the U.S., and that an even smaller portion (51%) respects American ideals and laws.
Perceptions of Muslim Americans are strongly related to partisanship and cultural conservatism. On average Democrats believed that a substantial majority of Muslims (67%) wanted to fit in but Republicans believed that only 36%, or less than half, of Muslim Americans wanted to fit in.
Perceptions of Muslim Americans cross partisan lines on three dimensions: Democrats and Republicans did not differ much in their perceptions of how many Muslims are religious, have outdated views of women, and have outdated views of gays and lesbians.
Negative perceptions of Muslim Americans do not match how Muslim Americans describe themselves. For example, a large majority of Muslim Americans express patriotic sentiments. In a 2017 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll of Muslim Americans, 84% of Muslims said they identified strongly with being an American, as did 84% of Protestants and 91% of Catholics.
Almost 20% of Americans would deny Muslims who are American citizens the right to vote.

“In this report, we document a wide gap between what most Americans say about Muslims living in the United States and how Muslim Americans see themselves,” said John Sides, associate professor of political science at The George Washington University and research director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. “This gap is accompanied by substantial support for policies targeting Muslims; nearly one in five Americans would even deny Muslims who are U.S. citizens the right to vote. With the Muslim share of the U.S. population projected to double by 2050, the civil rights and liberties of Muslim Americans appear to have a tenuous status in American public opinion.”

“This paper highlights the misperceptions that fuel Islamophobia,” said Dalia Mogahed, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. “Muslims have been part of America since its inception and are just as likely to be patriotic as non-Muslims, yet many Americans believe Muslim Americans are not ‘fully American.’ These misperceptions hurt not only Muslim Americans, but all Americans.”

The second analysis released today tackles another pillar of our political system – checks and balances – and suggests Americans who exhibit less religious tolerance are also less likely to be supportive of the media’s role in scrutinizing the executive branch. The new brief, “Testing the Limits,” examines how Americans think about the relationship between presidential authority and three specific checks on presidential power: the Congress, the courts, and the press. The brief builds upon “Follow the Leader: Exploring American Support for Democracy and Authoritarianism,” also authored by Drutman, Diamond and Goldman. Key findings include:

Large majorities of Americans believe the president should be subject to oversight and restraints on executive power. For example, 91% of respondents agreed that “the president must always obey the laws and the courts, even when he thinks they are wrong.”
However, President Trump’s supporters are much more likely to express support for other types of accountability and oversight. For example, 48% of respondents with a favorable view of President Trump agreed that “the media shouldn’t scrutinize the president.”
Among President Trump’s supporters, lower levels of education and lower levels of interest in news are associated with lower support for checks on executive authority.

“It is encouraging that support for checks on the presidential authority remains high,” said Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman. “Even among Trump supporters who express dissatisfaction with democracy or openness to authoritarian alternatives, many support Congressional oversight and say the president must be bound by the law. However, it is extremely concerning that support for media scrutiny of the president – a pillar of our democracy – is not as high, particularly among the president’s supporters.”

“Our analysis found strong support for American democracy’s distinctive set of checks and balances,” said Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America. “However, the differences in partisan attitudes toward these key institutions is worrisome, as it highlights the fragility of essential democratic institutions that are currently under attack.”

“Our democracy depends on popular support for its norms and institutions, including Congressional oversight of the executive branch, a free and independent press, and the rule of law,” said Larry Diamond, senior fellow, Hoover Institution. “We can take heart that most Americans express support for democratic norms and institutions, but we have work to do to increase understanding of their importance and the values that they represent.”

The full reports can be found at www.voterstudygroup.org, along with other research from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group.