8 Comments

Thanks for this write up. Big Philanthropy, which has so much sway, needs watchers.

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Excellent article. Thk you

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JOLT- not endorsing but funding is hard for me to understand!

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Thanks for shining a super trouper on the process.

"After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we are unable to fund your organization at this time. We received an overwhelming response with more than 900 applications, and each one was reviewed thoroughly by a committee of journalism and philanthropy leaders and the Press Forward staff."

After careful consideration, we had a party celebrating 25 years of our existence anyway.

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Always nice to see philanthropy joining forces alongside Alden Global Capital to drive journalist labor exploitation toward its rational destination.

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Oct 31Liked by Richard J. Tofel

Sorry, I lost my head for a moment — the comparison to Alden Global Capital isn’t fair.

Alden pays a lot more.

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Your comments on Press Forward’s $20 million in grants to the 205 newsrooms are spot-on.

I think the best time to subsidize a local news, digital-only outlet is at startup, not after it’s up and running. If it’s already operating and has yet to find a sustainable revenue source grant money would likely be wasted.

The money, as you suggest, should go to actual, journalistic news organizations that already meet or have plans to meet specific requirements. Here’s my list of some minimum conditions:

• A policies, procedures and standards manual that includes a news writing and video editing style and procedures guide and personnel policies. (It should be based on and include references to traditional journalism standards.

o The policy should include a strict prohibition against doing actual (not pseudo) investigative reporting until experienced and/or well-trained reporters are on staff, until the outlet can afford libel insurance, and until the outlet has access to and can afford a defamation attorney to review investigative story drafts.

• A beat reporting system. (Aka franchise reporting) It should be part of a plan to provide comprehensive, blanket coverage of the community.

• An existing practice or feasible plan to emphasize video.

o Includes a software/hardware platform to manage video from the field to distribution to selected channels archiving.

o All reporters trained as VJ’s to shoot and edit smartphone video.

o Includes a system and method for live reporting form the scenes of news events.

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Thoughtful piece and good reporting! (Have you considered a career in journalism?!?) It's a shame that the Press Forward campaign seems to be mostly about handing out scarce dollars and not about creating models and program that would enable small newsrooms to create a viable future for themselves. The "teach them to fish" model would have served the industry far, far better than just scraps.

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