Press Forward just sent us a message

I am not suggesting that we should all drop everything we’re doing to chase after foundation dollars. I am suggesting that maybe it’s time to admit that what we’ve already done isn’t really helping fix the local news crisis.”

Tom Davidson, the Bellisario Professor of the Practice in Media Entrepreneurship at Penn State University

Press Forward’s long-awaited grants for closing local news gaps* were released in mid-October.

Tucked among the 205 grants of $100,000 each was a huge message for those of us in public media:

We're doing it wrong.

Harsh? Perhaps. But let’s weave together some threads.

First, in the year since Press Forward was announced, public media was among the chorus of organizations clamoring for a share of the $500 million slated to be given out over the next five years.

NPR’s board and senior leadership issued a “position paper” attempting to argue that local NPR affiliates could use Press Forward money to close local news gaps in their communities.

Did it work?

Among the 205 grantees are only 11 broadcasters. Of those, only five are NPR-member stations. Of the $20 million in grants given in this round, only $500,000 is going to what we’d traditionally call a mainline public media organization.

Those other grantees? A station covering Chinese-American and immigrant communities in Seattle. A volunteer-led station that serves indigenous and migrant communities in Ventura, California, and another serving rural Humboldt County (population 135,000) in isolated northwest California.

And those five NPR station grantees don't fit our usual notion of a public radio station. Two are in Alaska — KDLL in Kenai and KUCB in Unalaska, and two others are in the Colorado Rockies and New York's Catskills — all serving isolated geographies with a shortage of other news outlets. The final public media grantee is the noteworthy collaborative newsroom of a consortium of 17 Indiana stations.

When you look at the websites of stations receiving these grants, you’re far more likely to see a headline about the shortage of rural childcare or a fight over a local homeless encampment than you are to see an NPR story about Congress.

So, thread one: Press Forward means it when they say they want local coverage.

Thread two: The goal is to serve entire communities — especially those traditionally ignored by mainstream reporting. Hint: Those underserved audiences aren’t the traditionally white, traditionally old, traditionally wealthy audiences who comprise most NPR and PBS station audiences.

The evidence for that is in the non-broadcast parts of the grantee lists — organizations serving new Americans, like The Haitian Times in New York, several dual-language websites to serve Hispanic-, Latino/a- and Asian-American communities, and organizations in rural communities where traditional weekly newspapers have closed.

Thread three: For the past year, the leaders of Press Forward and its major grant partners have told us what they want — and it isn’t our traditional work.

One example from a foundation leader speaking on background: “Everyone keeps saying, ‘Don’t forget about us!’ Well, what do you want me to remember? What’s your idea?”

Or this is from Jim Brady, VP of journalism programs at Knight, who spoke to the Public Media Venture Group last year: “The history of public media in digital has been poor. It is your time now to show up with a big collaborative idea.” Or Brady again, on a webinar about Press Forward last March: “What are basic, healthy things like sports, weather, food … since trust in local is better than for national news, what things locally can bind people and community?”

Or even more bluntly, from yet another foundation director who wished to remain anonymous: “Public media doesn’t want to innovate.”

Ouch.

I am not suggesting that we should all drop everything we’re doing to chase after foundation dollars.

I am suggesting that maybe it’s time to admit that what we’ve already done isn’t really helping fix the local news crisis.

Being the fourth microphone on a podium at a mayor’s press conference isn’t filling gaps.

Regurgitating a non-profit’s news release into a 40-second reader isn’t covering underserved communities.

And pleading for cash to slightly grow our traditional coverage isn’t digital innovation.

I get it: Audiences are dwindling, membership is down, and every station leader faces enormous challenges in simply maintaining what they’re doing today.

So, reimagine instead of muddling through.

Start with honest conversations with your communities. Figure out what’s needed. Try something different — and then look to Press Forward and local philanthropy to give you seed money.

They’re sending us a message. Are we listening?

*Requisite notes and disclaimers: Plenty of other Press Forward grants have been given out, especially by the major funders like the Knight, MacArthur and Joyce foundations, which make their own funding decisions. This round was from the “pooled fund,” comprising roughly 20% of Press Forward’s total giving, by centralizing money from smaller grant-making institutions that can’t run a journalism funding program independently. Disclosure: I was a first-round application screener for these grants and read roughly two dozen of the 931 applications.

And, yes, this round was expressly designed for organizations with annual revenues of less than $2 million. However, Press Forward leadership emphasized that they were willing to consider newsroom budgets and factor out all the operational costs broadcasters bear.

Tom Davidson is a professor of the practice in media entrepreneurship at the Bellisario School of Communications, Penn State University. He was a reporter, general manager, senior executive and product leader at Tribune, PBS, UNC-TV and Gannett. He can be contacted at tgd@tgdavidson.com.