Note: This piece is part of a series on how Press Forward’s funder coalition is investing according to the initiative’s four investment priorities: local news sustainability, equity, infrastructure and public policy. Our first piece covered infrastructure, and this one puts the spotlight on public policy and the growing role it plays in supporting local news.

It’s a strange notion for journalists to consider getting support from the government, the same government they are tasked with covering as watchdogs. But there’s a long history of government support for local news, going all the way back to the Post Office Act of 1792 that subsidized postage rates for newspapers. That history stretches through the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967 to support public media all the way to a  modern renaissance of policy support for local news.

If states are the laboratories for democracy, as former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, then they have been doing prodigious lab work for local news public policy, alongside some ambitious cities.

New Jersey, for example, with crucial organizing from Free Press Action funded an independent Civic Information Consortium in 2018 with bi-partisan support that has given out more than $7.5 million in grants to 50-plus news and information organizations. California, New Mexico, Washington State and Illinois have all funded fellowship and scholarship programs to help increase the pipeline of local reporters, while cities including New York City, Chicago and San Francisco have set aside a portion of their marketing budgets for smaller community and ethnic media outlets. The Center for Community Media at CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism was instrumental in supporting this work in New York City, while advising in other markets.

Going even bigger and bolder, New York State and Illinois have passed bills to give payroll tax breaks to newsrooms, with New York allocating $90 million over three years, and Illinois allocating $25 million over five years. Plus, California made a controversial deal with Google to provide $250 million over five years to support local news, with money coming from the state and the tech giant. Notably, all these efforts have been tracked and nudged along by the indefatigable team at Rebuild Local News, along with a growing cadre of local and national coalitions. 

So what’s the role for Press Forward and our coalition of funders? That’s been discussed and debated by a core group of 40 funders in a Press Forward working group this year, and Darryl Holliday, Jenny Montoya Tansey and Josh Stearns eloquently laid out some initial core values and focus areas. These include investments in coalition-building to grow the movement beyond journalists and publishers; developing more model policies and research; and case-making with more stories and messaging to build support for these public policy initiatives.

The group has created a special policy fund that expects to begin disbursing funds in the coming months to folks on the ground doing the heavy lifting of advocating for local news, with a focus on the states.

To better understand Press Forward’s approach to public policy, we spoke to three funders to find out their philosophy on public policy investments, along with some examples of recent funding they’ve made.

Angelica Das, Associate Director, Public Square, for Democracy Fund

Over the last decade, Democracy Fund has provided more than $10 million in grants to organizations such as Common Cause, Free Press, Media Justice, Multicultural Media Correspondents Association, Rebuild Local News and local organizers working on policy for stronger media and digital equity. 

 

What is Democracy Fund’s philosophy in funding policy work to support local news?

Democracy Fund believes that we cannot transform our local news ecosystem without changing the inequitable systems that are at its foundation and we need long-term support for local news at levels that philanthropy alone cannot fill. Media policy can be part of advancing both these ideas. Nearly all other democratic nations robustly support the public’s access to quality, fact-based information, and throughout our history in the U.S. we have, too, from public libraries to public media. Today, if we believe local news is truly a public good, then we must support it that way.

To align with this philosophy, we approach funding policy work in two major interconnected ways. First, securing public financing for journalism. Public financing has benefits above and beyond more money for journalism. Research has shown that publicly funded journalism can be more aggressive in covering the government than its commercial counterparts. And publicly-funded media is more accountable to communities, rather than advertisers and shareholders. The models and structures for public financing will look different across the country because the needs and resources of each community are unique.

The second funding pillar is defending First Amendment rights in order to protect and preserve the independence of local news. Without these core rights, all the additional dollars in the world won’t make much difference. To defend these, local news producers need access to legal resources both in moments of imminent threats and in daily operations. They regularly face attacks from political leaders who aim to influence coverage, access or whose power and position may be challenged by reporting. 

One of the key guardrails against political meddling in the press is a vibrant legal defense and a strong constituency of community members who will defend local news.

What are some recent investments you’ve made in public policy?

We have supported media and digital equity policy for over a decade – because this work is long-term and must be approached with patience and a collaborative mindset. Some of our recent investments from our Press Forward Aligned Grantmaking budget include:

• The Racial Equity in Journalism (REJ) Fund Policy Fellowship: The REJ Fund provides both general operating support to BIPOC-led and serving newsrooms, and serves as a community convener, ally and support system for their grantees. We think it is vital that this community be leaders in policy discussions about the future of news. The fellows will help develop models, ideas and networks that will support this community to shape the solutions the field pursues. 

• The New Mexico Local News Fund: The Fund has already had success with public financing for a reporting fellowship program for the past two years. We provided additional support to the Fund to continue their research and education on how to potentially expand that program, explore tax incentives or investigate opportunities for more direct support in what currently appears to be a promising political environment. Because foundation funding in New Mexico can be limited, this kind of multi-pronged approach makes sense for securing greater long-term sustainability and stability for journalism across the state. 

(Full disclosure: The author of this story was involved in advocating for local news in New Mexico.)

• Strengthening legal support: Democracy Fund also believes that bolstering press freedom in response to risks and uncertainties in the near future is critical at this moment. We have a history of supporting press freedom, and renewed our support for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Lawyers for Reporters who provide pro bono legal representation for journalists to enable and protect courageous reporting. We also need first amendment experts helping guide policy development and implementation. 

We’ve additionally renewed support for The Legal Clinic Fund for Local News, a pooled fund that supports the capacity of university law clinics defending First Amendment rights and training law students to do this work. Together, these investments are fortifying legal support for local news across the country. 

 

Jenny Montoya Tansey, Senior Program Officer, Just Democracy, at Skyline Foundation

 

Skyline Foundation considers journalism essential to a thriving democracy and supports organizations working to strengthen the news and information ecosystem and innovate new models.

What is your philosophy in funding policy work to support local news?

We believe in collaboration. The main reason we got involved with Press Forward in the first place was our sense that the scale of the local news challenge would require a coordinated effort to address. That’s true for the policy component as well. Several Press Forward funders (especially Democracy Fund!) have been funding policy work to support local news for many years and their thinking was critical to helping us understand the history and the opportunity. Rolling up our sleeves in the Press Forward policy group to learn more about state policy work with other funders is enabling us to do more together, more effectively, than we could have done on our own. 

And just as we are building a bigger team on the funder side, we believe that to win long term policy victories on this issue, we need to cultivate allies outside of the relatively tiny world of local news – we need to bring leaders across business, labor, government and community into this movement.

Another important aspect is creating partnerships where we can learn with and from grantees and key stakeholders. The first thing our Press Forward policy group did when setting out to research state policy opportunities was talk with a number of policy advocates at national organizations about how they saw the state landscape, how they did their geographic targeting, how they evaluated policy models, and what we should look for in effective state partners. We learned so much! We couldn’t do this work without their partnership. The perspective of state and local partners will also be important to informing the work going forward.

Skyline has embraced many trust-based grantmaking practices. Some of them, like multi-year, unrestricted funding, can be particularly useful as applied to public policy. Policy work is long-term work. It takes time to do the small scale experimentation, cultivate the right legislative champions, build and maintain winning coalitions – and that’s honestly the easy part. Then you have to implement the policy, and refine, strengthen and defend it. In recognition of those realities, Skyline prioritizes long-term support. And unrestricted support can be critical for smaller state and local advocates to sustain themselves.

What are some recent examples of investments you’ve made in policy?

Rebuild Local News was our first investment in policy to support local news. We made a two-year grant in 2022 and just renewed that with a larger three-year grant this fall. When they launched, we made a $300,000 two-year grant, and we just invested $600,000 more over three years. We believe they will be crucial to these policy efforts over the long term.

We also made an additional $6 million commitment to Press Forward this fall. A portion of those funds will support policy work as a core strategy of this initiative. Moving funds to policy advocates through Press Forward enables us to provide a streamlined process for grantee partners and to be nimble and responsive to legislative timelines rather than funding cycles. 

Alongside this work, Skyline has a longstanding and growing commitment to policy that advances free speech and freedom of the press. For example, we have been supporting the Student Press Law Center, which protects and expands the rights of student journalists, for more than two decades. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press became a grantee partner this fall. Consistent with this Skyline priority, we take as fundamental the idea that any policy to support local news must protect journalistic independence and integrity. It’s an important part of the value set for Skyline.

 

Hugh Dellios, Program Director, Journalism, at Joyce Foundation

 

The Joyce Foundation invests in independent, nonpartisan reporting to illuminate the most important issues shaping the future of the Great Lakes region, and to inform fact-based policies. Joyce has invested more than $150,000 in policy work as part of its Press Forward aligned funding.

What’s your philosophy in supporting public policy for local news?

Based in Chicago, Joyce is focused on the six Great Lakes states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Our overall mission is investing in evidence-informed policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation, through six different programs: Culture, Democracy, Education & Economic Mobility, Environment, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform, and Journalism. We’ve been working on policy development in these areas for decades – research, public education, implementation, and much more, while staying clear of any lobbying.

We’ve funded reporting projects and reporting positions for quite some time. But we got more strategic about it in 2021, when we formalized and expanded our Journalism program, recognizing that the media’s financial crisis threatened to undermine almost everything else we were trying to accomplish. We joined Press Forward to help strengthen local news, and felt we could use Joyce’s experience to help explore how policy measures could help revitalize it. 

Nothing has more potential to rebuild local news than utilizing public resources, with the aim of strengthening our democracy and our communities. But how effective are all these new policy proposals? The jury’s still out in some cases. There are a lot of different ideas out there in various stages of development. We want to be involved in studying which ones will most help newsrooms,  and ultimately the communities they serve. Importantly, we also want to help explore how guardrails are built into the measures to make sure they don’t expose journalists to government interference. 

What are some recent examples of grants you’ve made in policy work?

We have issued grants in two areas: Implementation, and then public education and coalition-building. 

One example is in Illinois, where they recently passed legislation to support local news. There are three parts to it: a payroll tax credit, a scholarship program, and a notice of sale if any locally owned news operation is being bought by an out-of-state company. They are now trying to figure out how to implement the tax credit. We are trying to help with that through several grants. The first was to the Illinois Press Foundation (IPF), to help assure that every eligible newsroom in the state can take advantage of the credit. The IPF is tracking the rule-making around the law, and set up an advisory panel, so newsrooms and journalists have as much input as possible. They’re also providing legal and accounting support to newsrooms to make sure that they know how to apply and secure the tax credit when it’s ready to go. 

We issued a second grant to Rebuild Local News so they could bring in their broader expertise, having worked on similar laws in other states. They are participating in the advisory panel and helping Illinois learn from other states’ experiences, and they will document and report out how it all goes. Rebuild also plans to study the scholarship measure to find out what kinds of inputs and outputs are needed to make it successful. 

We also are among a number of funders supporting Free Press in its longer-term policy work in the Midwest. They hired someone on the ground, based in Chicago, and plan to start working on public education and coalition building in Illinois and Wisconsin. The idea is to help organize and rally as wide a coalition as possible, beyond traditional media and journalism, to support policy measures as they arise in legislatures. 

All of these grants are part of our commitment to aligned local-news funding through Press Forward.

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These funders are inspirational in how they’ve supported public policy work, in local news and beyond, to make sure that our community news outlets have the support they need to serve audiences in every area of the country. Press Forward’s public policy group and new policy fund are open to more funders who have the same goals in mind, whether it’s policy on the national, state or local level.

Mark Glaser is the Director of Business and Program Development for the New Mexico Local News Fund. He is also a communications consultant at Knight Foundation and Tiny News Collective and was the founder and executive editor of MediaShift.org.