LMA 2021 Impact Report focuses on four core pillars

Reinventing business models for news is hard work. It’s mentally exhausting and frustrating at times. It’s also exhilarating when the hard work pays off.

We released our 2021 Impact Report today. While it’s an opportunity to celebrate what’s working, it’s also a way to hold ourselves accountable to the funding community that supports our work and to the entire local media ecosystem that looks to us for guidance and inspiration.

Despite continued disruption from the pandemic, 2021 was a year of great transformation and progress for local media organizations. LMA’s four core pillars — philanthropic funding, industry collaboration, sustainability for publishers of color, and business transformation — serve the industry well.

Philanthropic funding surged during 2021 and is poised to explode in the next five years. We’ve been predicting this for some time; it’s great to see it unfold. Some of the highlights include:

• The LMA Lab for Journalism Funding has helped 36 local news organizations fine-tune their strategies. To date, the group has raised well over $8 million collectively. The Sacramento Observer tripled the size of its newsroom. NOLA.com/The Advocate/Times-Picayune raised over $1.5 million and doubled its investigative reporting staff. Fast-forward to 2022, and Report for America has joined Google News Initiative and the Lenfest Institute in funding the lab. We’ll now have cohorts focused on three different scenarios: RFA newsrooms, newcomers to philanthropic funding, and news orgs that are more advanced in their funding efforts and have dedicated resources.
• Word In Black secured $2 million in revenue since launching in 2020. $1.5 million of that is from philanthropic support. This support has allowed each publisher to establish a mini-beat covering education thanks to funding from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In 2021, this resulted in over 250 education stories. Talk about impact! In 2022, the publishers will expand that education beat with renewed funding from CZI, and establish health beats thanks to funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Commonwealth Fund. All of this funding also supported WIB infrastructure with four full-time positions including education and health reporters and two data journalists.
• Oklahoma Media Center is approaching $1 million in philanthropic funding since launching in mid-2020. This is led by Inasmuch Foundation, the epitome of a local funder that cares deeply about journalism. The Promised Land reporting project covered the landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision on tribal sovereignty. OMC members teamed up for a diverse and historic level of collaboration that included all three independent tribal news organizations and produced more than 350 stories across the group.
• For 2022, we announced one of our most ambitious initiatives to date – the Knight x LMA BloomLab – focused on sustainability for Black locally owned and operated media organizations. This $3.2 million lab, funded by the Knight Foundation, will include $1.3 million in technology stipends to 26 publishers; access to three full-time dedicated directors who will serve as an extension of the publishers’ teams; travel and education support and much more.

Yes, you bet we are bullish on philanthropic funding. In addition to journalism projects, we are heartened by the amount of funding going to business transformation initiatives and infrastructure.

Industry collaboration is a core pillar for us:

• In addition to the collaboratives mentioned above, we also manage or help manage News is Out: National Queer Media Collaborative, LMA Covering Climate Collaborative, Solving for Chicago, NY/MI Solutions Journalism Collaborative and Solving Sacramento. Each one is different and unique.
• They all are focused on producing great journalism and business strategies that will ensure sustainability for all members of the collaborative. A terrific example is the story-sharing technology, funded by Google News Initiative, that allows climate collaborative members not only to share stories, but to monetize them.
• The most successful collaboratives have a passionate lead funder (or two) and buy-in at the top levels of the participating organizations.

Sustainability for publishers of color is extremely important to our mission:

• Nearly 100 publishers of color participated in LMA labs, boot camps, accelerators and collaboratives in 2021; that number will only grow in 2022.
• 50% (15 of 30) of the publishers in the Meta Reader Revenue Accelerators, co-managed by LMA, represented BIPOC-owned organizations. We distributed $750,000 in grants to the 15 publishers to help them strengthen their consumer revenue strategies.
• Dozens of publishers participated in The Meta Branded Content Project’s BIPOC boot camp. One great example to share - Chris Bennett and his team at The Seattle Medium has sold over $450,000 in branded content revenue through February 2022 as a result of this experience. More impact!
• Word In Black has been one of the most successful LMA-led initiatives in our history. We’re now working on the long-term strategy with the 10 publishers including business structure and conversion to a for-profit entity. It’s the only experiment of its kind in the industry with 10 legacy Black publishers coming together and launching a national digital startup. Newsletter subscribers are approaching 40,000. It’s a model that deserves more attention from the industry. Working with these publishers has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Business transformation is weaved into everything we do:

• Since launching The Meta Branded Content Project in 2019, publishers have sold over $50 million in new revenue. Credit Julia Campbell, Liz Hayes and Peter Lamb, now in their fourth year. Wow.
• Word In Black has sold $500,000 via branded content and sponsorships. The AARP Caregivers series last year was a huge success. In 2022, we’ll be tackling early warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease through a new branded content partnership with a pharmaceutical company.
• Meta reader revenue participants realized nearly $1 million in customer lifetime value.
• Word In Black is approaching $20,000 in reader revenue with more than 50% recurring donations.

I would be remiss if I did not mention our board of directors and staff. Collectively we are willing to make bold moves and take risks. It’s in our DNA. Our board and staff are reflective of the communities we serve in every way imaginable. Women are front and center at LMA and LMF – 21 of 30 board members are female. The next five LMA board chairs will be women and I am one of only a few female CEOs running an industry trade organization. In addition, 27% (eight) of our directors are people of color. It’s an honor to work with this group day in and day out.  

I want to especially thank the funding community for your support in 2021 and 2022. Shout outs to Meta Journalism Project, Knight Foundation, Google News Initiative, Inasmuch Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Solutions Journalism Network, SNPA Foundation, AARP, Walton Family Foundation, The Lenfest Institute, Report for America, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, Democracy Fund, Kirkpatrick Foundation and the thousands of individual donors who support our work and the work of our local news fund participants. Your financial support has real impact.

We hope you enjoy reading the 2021 Impact Report. A big thank you to Frank Mungeam, our chief innovation officer, for his hard work in putting this together. Reach out to any member of our team to learn more. Cheers to another terrific year of reinventing business models for news!