For decades, public media has played a meaningful role in communities around the country. As we consider how we ensure local news is sustainable and replenishes original reporting, the American Journalism Project wants to better understand where public media organizations fit in the industry’s future — and how they can evolve to meet the current moment.
About our public media grants and pilot
The American Journalism Project made its first philanthropic investments in public media with the goal of examining the role public media could play in rebuilding local news. These pilot investments were made with the support of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Wyncote Foundation.
The intent of this pilot program, which is now about halfway through its duration, is to explore how investments in new business and revenue capacity can accelerate local public radio organizations’ transition into primary local news providers capable of addressing the growing news and information needs in their communities. As such, we considered a number of essential criteria when selecting our grantees: we chose organizations that had already begun this work and were well-positioned to leverage this type of investment. It was important for the organizations to already be committed to this work – meaning they were producing high-impact civic journalism and meeting the needs of traditionally underserved communities, while also ensuring that the newsrooms had innovative programming and revenue strategies.
In April 2021, we made three-year philanthropic investments in Louisville Public Media (LPM) and WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina. These investments are supporting each organization’s journey in becoming their respective communities’ primary local news provider by funding new business capacity. Both of these organizations fit our foundational criteria, are consistent with our core values, and have the opportunity to provide the critical learning objectives for both us and them.
LPM and WFAE’s goals
Despite working in very different markets, the two organizations have a number of shared goals that our investments support. Each organization is focusing on increasing local philanthropic support for local news, decreasing their reliance on broadcast-driven revenue, and building new revenue streams to support their local programming. Both organizations are also using this as an opportunity to sharpen their strategies toward becoming a primary local news provider for their communities.
In addition, LPM aimed to unite its three existing stations and news products under one brand to further position itself as the go-to digital source for local news. WFAE also aimed to undergo a comprehensive strategic planning process.
Pathways to success
Midway through these grants, we took a deep-dive look at the progress being made during the pilot, and learned more about the internal and external factors that are essential to advancing public media organizations as the primary local news providers for their communities. To examine progress, we looked at each organization’s revenue and content, including examining whether each organization was producing more original content than at the beginning of their grants.
This deep dive, which began at the end of 2022, revealed many pathways to success, which are outlined below and in a full learnings report, released today. Our examination also underscored that the success behind philanthropic investments goes beyond the dollars, and requires organizations to have strong leadership, the willingness and ability to shift organizational culture, a strong sense of priorities, and digital savviness. This examination highlighted actions can take — and where philanthropy can continue to experiment.
