Seeking Sustainability, Part 3: VOSD's Scott Lewis and others on engagement, community-building
Seeking Sustainability: Presentation on engagement and community-building from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
This spring, the Knight Foundation hosted a roundtable discussion exploring a crucial issue in journalism: the sustainability of nonprofit news organizations. This week, we're passing along some videos of the conversations that resulted (and, as always, we'd love to continue the discussion in the comments section). We posted Part 1 of the series, a talk focused on business-model viability over time, on Monday, and Part 2 — on revenue-generation — yesterday.
In today's pair of videos, Scott Lewis, CEO of Voice of San Diego, leads a discussion on the crucial topic of community engagement: how to leverage limited resources to build community, how to develop meaningful comments boards and conversations, how to use new technologies to develop audience affection, how to translate loyalty into money — and how to measure the murky issue of "audience engagement" in the first place. Scott's introduction is above; the video below features a conversation among Knight's panel of heavy-hitters.
Among them, in general order of appearance: the Center for Investigative Reporting's Robert Rosenthal, Texas Tribune's Evan Smith and Higinio Maycotte, The Bay Citizen's Lisa Frazier, the St. Louis Beacon's Nicole Hollway and Margaret Wolf Freivogel, the Chicago News Cooperative's Peter Osnos, Voice of San Diego's Buzz Woolley and Andrew Donohue, the New Haven Independent's Paul Bass, the Gotham Gazette's Gail Robinson, the FCC's (and formerly Beliefnet's) Steven Waldman, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund's Nick Penniman, and Seattle CrossCut's David Brewster.
Seeking Sustainability: Discussion on engagement and community-building session from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
Tags: Uncategorized Andrew Donohue Buzz Woolley David Brewster Gail Robinson Gotham Gazette Huffington Post I-Fund Knight Foundation Margaret Wolf Freivogel New Haven Independent Nick Penniman Nicole Hollway Paul Bass Peter Osnos Robert Rosenthal Scott Lewis Seeking Sustainability St. Louis Beacon Steven Waldman Texas Tribune video Voice of San Diego
Seeking Sustainability, Part 2: John Thornton and others on strategies for nonprofit revenue generation
This spring, the Knight Foundation hosted a roundtable discussion exploring a crucial issue in journalism: the sustainability of nonprofit news organizations. This week, we're passing along some videos of the conversations that resulted (and, as always, we'd love to continue the discussion in the comments section). We posted Part 1 of the series, a talk focused on business-model viability over time, yesterday. And in today's pair of videos, John Thornton, chairman of the excitement-inducing Texas Tribune, leads a discussion about a topic near and dear to the hearts of even, yes, nonprofit news outlets: revenue generation.
"It is nowhere in the mid-life venture capital playbook to start a nonprofit news organization," Thornton noted; "and so none of us would be doing this if the central mission weren't about public service."
Thornton's introduction is above; below is a discussion that it sparked among the nonprofit all-stars Knight brought together for the occasion — among them The Bay Citizen's Lisa Frazier, the Chicago News Cooperative's Jim O'Shea and Peter Osnos, the Texas Tribune's Evan Smith, Voice of San Diego's Scott Lewis, The Atlantic Philanthropies' Jack Rosenthal, Seattle CrossCut's David Brewster, the New Haven Independent's Paul Bass, California Watch's Mark Katches, J-Lab's Jan Schaffer, and the St. Louis Beacon's Nicole Hollway. The group discussed finance-crucial issues like publicity, community, membership incentives, collaboration, demographic measurement, branding, corporate sponsorship, and more…not from a theoretical perspective, but from the point of view of practitioners who spend their days thinking about how to keep their organizations thriving.
The conversation, by the way, is well worth watching all the way to the end: The video closes with group members discussing some of their more outlandish — and, so, intriguing — ideas for revenue-generation.
Tags: Uncategorized Business Models Chicago News Cooperative collaboration David Brewster Evan Smith J-Lab Jack Rosenthal Jan Schaffer Jim O'Shea John Thornton Knight Foundation Lisa Frazier Mark Katches New Haven Independent Nicole Hollway nonprofit journalism Paul Bass Peter Osnos regional nonprofits revenue Scott Lewis St. Louis Beacon Texas Tribune The Atlantic Philanthropies The Bay Citizen Voice of San Diego
Seeking Sustainability, Part 1: Voice of San Diego's Woolley and others on the role of the "venture mindset"
This spring, the Knight Foundation hosted a roundtable discussion exploring a crucial issue in journalism: sustaining nonprofit news organizations after an initial injection of funding gets them off the ground. The Seeking Sustainability conversation sought to examine nonprofit outfits not just as recipients of philanthropic funding, but also — and more so — as businesses that share many of the same concerns that their for-profit counterparts do.
"Traditional media companies have been particularly distressed by shifts in the markets and business models that historically supported them — and the conversation about how to 'save' or 'reinvent' journalism has been largely focused on their concerns," Knight noted in its summary of the roundtable. But
to a growing group of practitioners, funders and observers…the challenge is not saving traditional news organizations or traditional forms of journalism. The challenge is creating, strengthening and protecting informed communities and local information ecosystems, of which journalism is a necessary component.
Thus enters the nonprofit model, which allows organizations to pursue a journalistic mission without the competing demands of operating a for-profit business. Nonprofit news startups have been created in communities across the country, most with funding from major donors or foundations. The Knight Foundation alone has funded more than 200 experiments with what it calls a "build to learn" approach.
To benefit from the education those startups have been receiving, the foundation convened a group of experts to share practical insights about improving and sustaining nonprofit journalism. It also, thankfully, recorded the conversation that resulted. In a series this week, we'll pass along the videos of those conversations (and, as always, we'd love to continue the discussion in the comments section).
In today's first pair of videos, Buzz Woolley, chairman of Voice of San Diego, discusses the power of what he calls the "venture mindset" in journalism (above). In the second video (below), he is joined by an all-star panel of nonprofit startup leaders, including — in general order of appearance — J-Lab's Jan Schaffer, the Chicago News Cooperative's Peter Osnos and Jim O'Shea, the St. Louis Beacon's Margaret Wolf Freivogel, Texas Tribune's Evan Smith, Voice of San Diego's Andrew Donohue and Scott Lewis, Knight president Alberto Ibargüen, the Center for Investigative Reporting's Robert Rosenthal, the Connecticut Mirror's James Cutie, The Bay Citizen's Lisa Frazier, Oakland Local's Susan Mernit, and the New Haven Independent's Paul Bass.
Tags: Uncategorized Alberto Ibarguen Andrew Donohue Bay Citizen California Watch Chicago News Cooperative Connecticut Mirror James Cutie Jan Schaffer Knight Foundation Lisa Frazier Margaret Wolf Freivogel New Haven Independent Oakland Local Paul Bass Peter Osnos Robert Rosenthal Scott Lewis St. Louis Beacon Susan Mernit Voice of San Diego