(originally published in JSK fellows)
Change can be hard. This is not news, but I was shocked to learn that major change efforts in companies fail about 60–70% of the time. I actually found this to be a huge relief. It’s not just that journalists are uniquely terrible at change. Everyone is!
My JSK Journalism Fellowship itself is an experience in embracing change: like many other fellows, I moved thousands of miles and returned to a college campus for the first time in decades. In such an unfamiliar setting, I’m always looking for commonalities.
In a recent discussion with fellow JSK Fellow Natalia Antelava we realized that at root, the journalism challenges both of us are working on while at Stanford really boil down to the difficulty in dislodging the status quo. It’s probably the root of most of our challenges, whether it be in realigning oppressive systems toward justice or figuring out how to respond to external disruptions in technology. Whatever the manifestation, getting people to think or work in a new way is hard.
I am seeing some glimmers of hope in two areas: public funding for journalism and the editorial independence that worker ownership of news organizations allows.
Public funding for journalism and a civic good
Amidst numerous additional rounds of layoffs, the topic of how the heck do we pay to keep journalism going is never far from many of our minds. For over two years, the Media Power Collaborative has been convening journalists and media advocates to build a shared understanding of the media policy landscape, and to enable us to use that knowledge and the relationships built through the collaborative to fight to strengthen local media.
Through the MPC convenings we’ve learned about the history of how journalism got to this moment and lots of ideas of where to go next. These meetings are happening alongside ongoing public conversation about the journalism funding landscape. Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy who co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change Center, has been writing frequently about how rejecting the market and embracing public funding is our only way through this mess. Way back in 2017, City Bureau co-founder and media strategist Darryl Holliday also wrote about how we can’t rely on billionaires to build the news we need. In addition to questioning where we look for funding, work like Media 2070 and research by Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D. and Tracie M. Powell (JSK 2016) seeks to ensure that funding of the future doesn’t replicate racist disparities of the past and present.
While the mindset shift of public funding is beginning to take root, several states are exploring their own experiments, many inspired by groundbreaking legislation for a public funding pool in New Jersey, led by Free Press. According to their website, their annual grantmaking fund for journalism projects has made 81 grants totaling $5.5M since the program began. Grants of that size aren’t on their own going to fund entire news organizations, but they are inspiring experimentation in other states. In Wisconsin, there are three bills proposed with ideas for funding — the funding pool like in New Jersey, a fellowship like in California that would use state funds to pay for reporting fellows at local news outlets, and a sort of subscriber voucher program. Washington state and New Mexico have also passed bills to create fellowship programs like in California. We need experiments like this to find out what will work more holistically.
Pickard linked to a piece about “non-reformist reforms,” a nearly impenetrable bit of academic jargon. But hidden in the piece is one idea for resetting the status quo: incremental reforms that, when they are in service of world-changing goals, can be useful and necessary to create change. These state funding examples are doing just that. $5M now, maybe $50M in 10 years? Five states now, building the blocks toward federal policies? The big goal guiding this work is serving community information needs. The incremental changes are each of these experiments to fund and sustain that reporting. With these efforts, I see hope and a responsibility to keep trying different ideas all guided by that clarity of purpose: a thriving civic news and information ecosystem.
And it’s been heartening to see journalists themselves take up this challenge. I’m really inspired by Flaming Hydra’s co-op model — exactly the kind of anti-capitalist experiment we need. Flaming Hydra is a new online publication that kicked off with a crowdfunding campaign and a few months later started publishing. I doubt the shared earnings from Flaming Hydra are replacing any of the writers’ full-time incomes soon, but I appreciate they’ve decided to start with a bigger pool of contributors than community-funded startup efforts typically have. It means that in the short time they’ve been publishing, they’ve covered a much wider array of topics than a lot of other sites that have found success by being a bit more niche.
It’s been great to see the success stories of those more niche sites though, like how the journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media became profitable after six months (!) through a mix of ads, donations, subscriptions, and merchandise. Also employee-owned Defector, a subscription-based sports and culture publication, is doing so well they were just hiring a reporter. (Plus Defector does an amazing job documenting their budget each year, a true community service to all other small outlets trying to figure out how to fund their reporting.) I’m excited to see what additional experiments organizations try that push back against the dominant narratives of rich saviors as what journalism needs.
Worker-owned newsrooms mean editorial independence
Another benefit of being worker-led is editorial independence. Already, I can see how this is influencing Flaming Hydra’s editorial decisions. They publish two stories each weekday. In their very first issue, both pieces spoke directly about the war in Gaza and specifically journalism’s role. Arwa Mahdawi’s piece in particular is a writerly wonder, drawing you in with a very on-point assessment of the false promise of self “fulfillment” via work and seamlessly pivoting to our collective responsibility to Palestinians and the journalism industry’s complicity. In the weeks since, they’ve had several other pieces that relate to the war, including Myriam Gurba noting how while PEN International has called for ceasefire, PEN America has not. In the greatest bit of joy to hit my inbox lately, they also published an interview with Black feminist activist legend Barbara Smith, which is largely about her recent organizing for a ceasefire resolution from her town’s city council. The conversation with writer k.e. harloe is about local organizing on international topics and the importance and beauty of solidarity.
You don’t have to be a co-op to be capable of this kind of commentary. One of the top stories on The TRiiBE remains Morgan Elise Johnson’s piece from October outlining her research and understanding of colonialist propaganda surrounding Palestine. Morgan co-owns The TRiiBE with co-founders Tiffany Walden (also a JSK Fellow this year) and David Elutilo. They get to make the editorial decisions that work best to serve their audience, not anyone else.
The path forward is together
In the Flaming Hydra’s interview with Barbara Smith, Smith walks us through a bit of her personal political backstory and it is filled with solidarity: Central America Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, Ukraine Solidarity in her town and nationally, and Black4Palestine. She explains:
As a person of color living in the United States, I mean, it’s obvious what’s happening [in Gaza]. I don’t have to wonder, like, “How did that happen? Why did that happen?” These are status quo relationships of colonialism, power, racial superiority, and dominance. There’s a history of solidarity between people of African heritage and Palestinians.
As Smith describes, people have worked together, across, and within oppressed groups. They’ve drawn on their interdependence, and by sharing resources and perspectives, worked to push back on that status quo and create something new and more expansive.
In journalism, we have the same opportunity. We can learn from each other and support one another to envision new futures. And we don’t have to just wonder if it’s possible to succeed with new experiments because, even in a time of so much ruinous “disruption,” we’ve got some flaming shards of hope.
I always love chatting experiments and money and imagining how to make things even a tiny bit better. Reach out if you’d like to chat_.
- Header image description: a light up sign with CHANGE in big red letters and a smaller sign with different bills underneath it
- Header image: Felix Burton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Last modified on March 1, 2024
