American Journalism Project launches major effort to reinvigorate local news with $42 million in founding commitments

Feb. 26, 2019. Miami, Fla.—The American Journalism Project, a new initiative to reinvigorate mission-driven local news through the power of venture philanthropy, today announced its official launch with $42 million in lead funding commitments, a Board of Directors, and its first three hires. Read More

As market forces fail local news, our media ecosystem are failing the communities that they have been entrusted to serve. Philanthropy, for its part, has come to the table, providing critical support for nonprofit news in innovative and unprecedented ways. Today, a new initiative announces it plan to reinvigorate local news on a large scale. Read More

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” So proclaims the fictional Howard Beale in the 1976 film classic Network. And now Beale’s mantra will ring out nightly in an electrifying new stage production featuring Bryan Cranston that opens on Broadway this week. When the film first appeared, it revealed a dystopian world where commercial media companies would harness rage for profit. And now the theatrical adaptation serves to remind us how we got here, to an age when commercial media companies harness rage for profit. Today, the radical howl of a mad prophet has become the implied mission statement of every cable-news host, as well as every blogger and social-media personality on the planet, seeking fame and glory and advertising dollars. Unfortunately the constant drone of rage and vitriol obscures sound and factual information needed to conduct thoughtful public-policy debates. What can philanthropy do to counter this unhealthy social dynamic? Perhaps it’s time for foundations to support social-media projects and platforms that will enlighten and inform users without regard to the interest of advertisers and investors. Recent revelations that Facebook adopted aggressive tactics to counter critics like philanthropist George Soros and civil-rights advocates at Color of Change have… Read More

At this year’s Media Impact Forum, we asked two important questions: “What do we want from media innovation in the public interest?” and “How do we get it?” To explore answers, we brought together leading thinkers, funders and media innovators to share their ideas and projects for an inspired digital future. The key theme for the morning was inclusion—from providing tech opportunities for all to ensuring access to knowledge for all. Wendy Hanamura of the Internet Archive served as the emcee, and David Rousseau of the Kaiser Family Foundation as the day’s host, welcoming attendees to the foundation’s Menlo Park headquarters. Watch videos from the day here. What do we want? We started with Van Jones who masterfully grounded our conversation in contrasting stories of hatred and exclusion versus those of love and inclusion. In the agricultural age, he noted, African Americans were property. In the industrial age African Americans were also at the bottom of the economic ladder and the last to be included in industrial revolution. Now with digital age, how will we create one that includes everyone? The good news? It’s only after we have a breakdown that we… Read More