One more type of event that appears common for local news organizations: awards to leaders in the community. That might spark thoughts of conflict of interest, but they do bring people together. The Philly Tribune, a 100+ year old Black newspaper in Philadelphia, has a range of events that bring in a significant money to them. Their "Most Influential African American" event in Philadelphia, held last year at the PA Convention Center, is an important gathering for the community. Attendance is large. Speakers are entertaining. Sponsors abound. The point is that there are a lot of very-local community-oriented events that news organizations hold, and which people outside the specific community would not be aware of. Those can spark ideas for others. It might be useful for someone, perhaps The Lenfest Institute where I work, to catalog them.
Great interview! Reading this is like looking at a painting created by two artists. One the realist and one the impressionist. Both exceptional at creating something new, interesting and beautiful.
I’m glad you asked Evan about whether funders should require earned revenue, and I love his answer. I founded El Tímpano to serve communities left behind by most media outlets—both for- and non-profit. It became clear early on that many revenue models evangelized by the field simply wouldn’t work for a news outlet centered around serving low-income immigrants. Over several years, we developed our own earned revenue strategy—one that has supported significant growth of our organization—but not after facing rejection by plenty of funders who said they loved our work but cast us off as being unsustainable, rather than taking a risk and supporting us to, as Evan put it, dream and figure it out. (I wrote about this predicament here: https://www.eltimpano.org/inside-el-timpano/toward-equitable-models-of-journalism-sustainability/)
Great column as always, though I’d love to see more interviews with women, people of color, and publishers serving audiences that look quite different from the Texas Tribune’s or ProPublica’s.
Thanks for this interview. We at Next City greatly believe in the importance of earned revenue. By this standard, it’s about 14-15% of our income. And we think there’s plenty of room to grow.
One more type of event that appears common for local news organizations: awards to leaders in the community. That might spark thoughts of conflict of interest, but they do bring people together. The Philly Tribune, a 100+ year old Black newspaper in Philadelphia, has a range of events that bring in a significant money to them. Their "Most Influential African American" event in Philadelphia, held last year at the PA Convention Center, is an important gathering for the community. Attendance is large. Speakers are entertaining. Sponsors abound. The point is that there are a lot of very-local community-oriented events that news organizations hold, and which people outside the specific community would not be aware of. Those can spark ideas for others. It might be useful for someone, perhaps The Lenfest Institute where I work, to catalog them.
Great interview! Reading this is like looking at a painting created by two artists. One the realist and one the impressionist. Both exceptional at creating something new, interesting and beautiful.
As the British are fond of saying, brilliant.
So looking forward to your chairing the George Polk symposium Friday, Dick, and pleased that C-Spain is taping it for future use.
Great interview.
I’m glad you asked Evan about whether funders should require earned revenue, and I love his answer. I founded El Tímpano to serve communities left behind by most media outlets—both for- and non-profit. It became clear early on that many revenue models evangelized by the field simply wouldn’t work for a news outlet centered around serving low-income immigrants. Over several years, we developed our own earned revenue strategy—one that has supported significant growth of our organization—but not after facing rejection by plenty of funders who said they loved our work but cast us off as being unsustainable, rather than taking a risk and supporting us to, as Evan put it, dream and figure it out. (I wrote about this predicament here: https://www.eltimpano.org/inside-el-timpano/toward-equitable-models-of-journalism-sustainability/)
Great column as always, though I’d love to see more interviews with women, people of color, and publishers serving audiences that look quite different from the Texas Tribune’s or ProPublica’s.
Thanks for this interview. We at Next City greatly believe in the importance of earned revenue. By this standard, it’s about 14-15% of our income. And we think there’s plenty of room to grow.