Industry collaboration - a key ingredient for getting funded

We say it all the time at LMA: “Collaboration is hard!” It's been one of our four core pillars since 2018 because it’s a key driver of sustainability. And that makes it worth the challenge.

For the past six years, we have put our hearts and souls into industry collaboration with the following major projects:

• Three regional efforts: Oklahoma Media Center, Solving for Chicago and Amplify Ohio.

• Two national collaboratives: Word In Black and News is Out.

• Fiscal agency/management for two groups: Solving Sacramento and the New York and Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative.

• Knight x LMA BloomLab: Sustainability for 26 Black publishers.

• LMA Family and Independent Media Sustainability Lab (FIMS): A cohort of 12 companies.

• LMA Lab for Journalism Funding: More than 100 media organizations have gone through the cohort-style lab.

• Queer Media Sustainability Lab: A cohort of six LGBTQ+ publishers.

All these efforts rely on the willingness of media executives to share, collaborate and remove their defensive posture. They must be vulnerable, open and transparent for this to work.

Our learnings have been well documented over the last six years, summed up in three key points:

• It starts at the top. Without the full commitment and involvement of the CEO or equivalent, the effort fails.

• Collaboration requires a significant investment of time and engagement. The best performers make every meeting, often with a team of people on the calls, and do their part.

• When the funders are more engaged, the project is more successful.

Today, I’m adding a fourth point:

• Collaboration results in more funding for journalism and business sustainability.

Our best case study is Word In Black, which spun off to a public benefit corporation in January of this year. All publishers in the group have received significant funding for their journalism as part of this collaborative. All 10 have mini-beats for education and health reporting; they also distribute content related to climate justice, finance, racial healing, the intersection of religion and social justice, and more. This has enabled all 10 to significantly grow their newsrooms and add staff/resources.

This creates business opportunities with newsletters, events and reader revenue. All the publishers have grown those areas of their business as well. On the commercial side, the publishers have focused on branded content campaigns with some of the largest brands in the country including Deloitte, Wells Fargo, AARP and Biogen. These partnerships focus on public service content such as the warning signs of Alzheimers or the racial wealth gap. It's a win/win that delivers far better results than banner ads, and comes with premium pricing.

News is Out took the WIB playbook and hit the ground running. This group is approaching $2 million in total funding since launching two years ago. This success led to the funding of the Queer Media Sustainability Lab, which also included technology stipends.

Then something magical happened. We call it collaboration on steroids.

News is Out had worked with Comcast Foundation on a project in 2023. As the group talked about how to take it to the next level, the NIO publishers recommended adding Word In Black. In December of last year, a $1 million partnership among NIO, WIB, Local Media Foundation and Comcast Foundation was announced — providing a journalism fellow in each of the 16 news organizations plus infrastructure funding. The fellows will receive training and support from NBC Universal executives and will collaborate with TV news organizations in their markets. This means content from Black and LGBTQ+ publishers may be featured on broadcast stations in local markets. A kickoff meeting took place in Austin about eight weeks ago with NIO and WIB publishers meeting each other for the first time. Some are already talking about further collaborative projects in their local markets.

We always knew the NIO/WIB collaboration could be very powerful. When we submitted our application to Yield Giving last May, we filed jointly on behalf of both collaboratives. Our application was successful and the funds will be used to take the journalism produced by these collaborations to a whole new level. Word In Black will announce a major project related to the 2024 election next week that was only a wish-list item a few weeks ago. WIB will make three hires in the newsroom focused on investigative reporting, community-focused events, and management/copy editing. Game changing hires. NIO is starting strategic planning this week, another wish-list item just a few weeks ago that now can happen, which will result in a 2-to-3-year plan. Journalism focused on LGBTQ+ issues will be at the heart of that plan. A double collaborative effort is appealing to funders who are looking for scale and impact. The Yield Giving funding helps 16 publishers - that's powerful.

This success has caused us to rethink our approach to collaboration. The more the better and that means collaboratives working with other collaboratives.

We noticed our most successful labs are the ones with the highest level of collaboration. The Knight x LMA BloomLab focuses solely on sustainability. The publishers receive up to $50,000 each in technology stipends as part of the lab experience, and three full-time, dedicated directors work with them day-to-day. The publishers share it all with each other – their challenges, success stories and failures. This sharing lifts everyone up and makes them stronger. Without this willingness to share and collaborate, the lab isn't nearly as powerful.

Per the new fourth point, this lab attracted two other funders, Commonwealth Fund and Walton Family Foundation, to provide even more support (including full-time health reporters for three participants selected from lab Cohort 2 via a competition). As we look at the numbers after completing Year 2 of the 3-year project, the intensity of this lab is paying huge dividends. Every publisher who followed Points 1 and 2 above (senior level involvement, and significant investment of time) has shown significant improvement in revenue growth, especially on the digital side. And the secret – nearly all of them have increased their philanthropic funding of journalism (many started at $0 at the outset of the lab).

Next up will be shared services. The concept has been talked about for a long time in our industry. Knight x LMA BloomLab is ready to take this on and prove out the model. The trust among the members is there, and their tech stacks are now in order (a common tech stack has been a critical component in WIB's success).

All the other collaborations we manage have similar stories. Oklahoma Media Center spun off to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in late 2022; we still provide some management services. OMC continues to attract new funding for its work with trust in news. And it benefits from an engaged lead funder, Inasmuch Foundation.

The Lab for Journalism Funding has helped 101 media companies attract more than $22 million in new funding. An alumni network has also formed because … the collaboration is the secret sauce! Learning from each other is a critical factor in the success of the lab. New funding will allow us to create more services and support for this group. NOLA.com / Times Picayune/The Advocate now has 24 reporters funded by philanthropy and has started a 10-person newsroom in an area of Louisiana viewed as a news desert. Publisher Judi Terzotis is on record saying this never would have happened without the lab experience. Now Judi is paying it forward, helping other publishers with their strategy.

FIMS Lab, Queer Media Sustainability Lab and our other efforts all are producing similar results.

Bottom line: if you are not involved in industry collaboration, you are missing out on all kinds of opportunities. As more funding becomes available, collaborations will continue to be attractive for all the obvious reasons.

LMA's collaboratives will be well represented at the 2024 Collaborative Journalism Summit in Detroit this May. The Center for Cooperative Media has organized this event for several years and is also a great convener and resource for those in the industry looking to collaborate more. More information here