We are so lucky to have Sophie Culpepper as our full-time local news reporter. For several months, she’s been working on a heavily reported series, “‘Haves and have-nots’ in nonprofit news? The view from small news outlets.” This week, we ran it in two parts: You can read part I here and part II here. For this piece, Sophie spoke to dozens of folks from small nonprofit news outlets, associations, and foundations about what they’re seeing in terms of funding. They talked with her extensively and candidly (“bacon-wrapped conferences” is a new fave phrase around our office) and the resulting in-depth pieces should be read by anyone who’s interested in the funding of news in the United States. As our deputy editor Sarah Scire noted, this package has “got everything — resentment, crunched numbers, local stories, and legitimate debate.”
(To those of you who are seeing our weekly newsletter for the first time, welcome! After several months of testing sending a Friday wrap-up to our weekly-only subscribers, we’re now sending it to our daily subscribers as well. It includes an original intro, a list of the stories we published for the week, and a select list of weekend reading from other sources around the internet. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.)
— Laura Hazard Owen
Patterns in philanthropy leave small newsrooms behind. Can that change?“All of these are choices that funders make, and they could choose differently if they wanted to.” By Sophie Culpepper. |
Many small news nonprofits feel overlooked by funders. A new coalition is giving them a voice“There are haves and have-nots in the nonprofit journalism space. And this isn’t right.” By Sophie Culpepper. |
The most popular news podcasts share the micPlus: How researchers used OpenAI’s GPT model to take on a month’s worth of “boring” and “rote” work By Sarah Scire. |
Capital B Gary’s editor-in-chief on collaborating with his hometown community“We want to meet the people where they’re at, whether that’s churches, neighborhood block clubs, salons, or barber shops.” By Will Fischer. |