Setting the Record Straight

Sometimes you just have to get things off your chest.

When Mike Blinder asked me to join him for this week's "E&P Reports" vodcast, I didn't hesitate to say yes.

We covered a lot of ground; I hope you’ll take a listen here, especially if you are a funder or represent a for-profit media company:

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/a-frank-one-on-one-with-the-lmas-nancy-lane-on-the-end-of-meta-funding-and-the-future-of-news,241019?newsletter=241021

 If you don't have the time, here are my top five discussion points from the vodcast:

1. A healthy local media ecosystem needs many players. Let's stop the debate about nonprofit vs. for-profit. At one point in the vodcast, Mike asks me to react to a comment made by Jeff Jarvis (to paraphrase, he's OK with legacy media dying). I haven't talked to Jeff about this, but I have talked to many others who feel this way. It's ridiculous. Tell that to our Word in Black publishers (nine are for-profit) who are working hard every day to inform Black communities on important issues. Tell that to Jon Rust, Liz White, Tom Shaw, Francis Wick and the many other family owned media companies who could have sold years ago for a big payday but cared too much about their communities. Tell that to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who without Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, would not have had justice. It's insulting to the journalists, family owners and consumers of news in the many communities served by these organizations to say that legacy, for-profit media should just burn to the ground and go away. Stop it.
2. Mike asked me about paywalls and Jeff's comment that they damage democracy. He stated that "news can't be only for the elite" and asked if this concerned me. You bet it does. It keeps me up at night. At the same time, I know journalism is expensive to produce. How can we be essential to a healthy democracy if only 1-2% of people in any given market are consuming our news? We must figure this out. I talked about journalism funded by philanthropy as one opportunity. As funders pay for journalism projects and/or reporters to cover certain topics, they often require that this content be made available outside of the paywall. I applaud that. I see both sides. Without reader revenue, many newspapers would be out of business. I recently moderated a session for WAN-IFRA in Zaragoza, Spain with Seattle Times president Alan Fisco on the panel. He told the audience that 70% of their revenue comes from readers. They have been able to maintain a very healthy newsroom, one of the largest in the country, because of this strategy. He acknowledged that we haven't figured out how to make news accessible to people who can't afford a digital subscription. Our future depends on figuring this out. I hope to see a lot of industry efforts aimed at this starting next year.
3. Mike addressed the Dick Tofel (founder and former president of ProPublica) blog and follow up vodcast. If you are not familiar with the debate, Dick took shots at for-profit media and industry organizations (specifically our friends at LION and INN). He challenged funders to put all their money into nonprofits and not into other media, or nonprofit industry organizations that help media companies with their business transformation goals (like LMA). I am thankful the funding community is rejecting this notion. There are so many great journalism projects being funded in for-profit newsrooms like Seattle, but also The Record Journal (Hispanic Community Reporting Lab), The Advocate/NOLA.com (Investigative Reporting Fund), New York Amsterdam News (Beyond the Barrel of the Gun) and so many others. We believe the tax status (nonprofit vs for-profit) should not be the determining factor when it comes to funding. The investment should be made in newsrooms that have the capacity, audience and leadership to execute. That includes many nonprofits and for-profits.
4. We talked a lot about the Meta Journalism Project amidst the layoffs that impacted most of their team. I covered this in another blog post, but the discussion with Mike focused a lot on The Meta Branded Content Project. This was by far, our most successful Meta-funded initiative. It's in partnership with the Local Media Consortium and has been funded through 2024 (six years in total). To date, over $50M has be sold through the various cohorts and bootcamps (across a wide range of companies from ABC O&O down to the Seattle Medium, a small Black news organization). I shared my favorite story of Chris Bennett (Seattle Medium), selling over $500,000 in branded content revenue in 14 months after going through the bootcamp. Think industry orgs shouldn't get funded Mr. Tofel? Tell that to Chris Bennett. It was game changing for his company along with the Knight x LMA BloomLab and Word in Black, all backed by funders.
5. Finally, Mike asked about the future of TV broadcasters in light of streaming. I acknowledged that disruption is coming their way, but they are ready. They are investing more in digital, first-party data strategies, newsletters and many other areas. Our board members on the broadcast side talk about pending disruption all the time; they are not in denial. I personally think local TV broadcasters have an amazing opportunity to capture more audience/market share on the digital side. In my market, my go-to resource is the free daily newsletter from WJCT, the public broadcaster. I also subscribe to the Gannett daily, The Tributary (new startup) and the local business journal (plus the Miami Herald for state news). What I would really like to see is more collaboration in markets like mine (Jacksonville, Fl). We are slowly getting there with many efforts underway.

We're rooting for everyone in local media to win. That includes the innovative digital startups, legacy newspapers, TV and radio broadcasters. We're rooting for industry collaboration. We're rooting for journalism funded by philanthropy. Please weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.