Delve into Press Forward with Director Dale Anglin

Press Forward this week announced applications to its pooled fund would open April 30 and hired nonprofit news vet Christina Shih as associate director. That made it a great time to hear from Director Dale Anglin about the direction of the six-month-old, $500-million fund to reinvigorate local news. In response to The Pivot Fund’s questions, Anglin spoke about investing in equity, raising another $500 million, and why public policy should be part of the solution.

What does equity mean to you, and what does it look like regarding news and information? 

By definition, equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and, therefore, needs differing resources and opportunities to reach an equal outcome to others. The well-documented failure of newsrooms to fully reflect their communities, to build a culture of inclusion that supports and retains diverse staff, and to foster equitable models of reporting that consider the truth of people’s lived experiences is undermining trust in media and negatively affecting our democracy. For Press Forward, equity in news and information means more support for newsrooms led by people of color and more support for rural communities and others overlooked in urban areas. This is such an important issue, that we made it one of the four focus areas of Press Forward.

What else is needed if money alone won’t make journalism more equitable?

Though this is not an exhaustive list, I would highlight two areas:

Leadership. Like other industries, journalism needs to cultivate more leaders who understand, value, and prioritize diverse staffs and full community coverage, and can be collaborative and flexible as the news ecosystem and audiences continue to evolve.

We also need good public policy that can bring a steady flow of funding into newsrooms. Getting there means shifting the narrative so that more people are aware of the challenges communities face when they don’t get the news and information they need. 

What’s your advice for community publishers who want to be “seen” by community and national funders? How can you use your role as director of Press Forward to amplify their voices and ensure this fund supports their work?

We hear from newsrooms about their challenges in getting funders’ attention, and I wish I had a magic wand answer for this issue. In the meantime, we are taking steps to make connections. Soon, local news initiatives will be able to create a Press Forward profile, where they can upload information about their organization that all our coalition members will have access to as they make their funding decisions. That process will be available when we open the Pooled Fund for applications, so be on the lookout for that.

We also are bringing aboard new funders every week. In fact, we have more than doubled our initial number of coalition members. Many of them are new to journalism, and we are working to connect them to local news organizations.

Beyond that, my advice is to focus on two things: research and relationships. Does the funder invest in journalism already, or are they focused more on how your reporting will have an impact on another issue they care about, like economic development or climate change? Know their priorities, their budgets and how they make funding decisions. Learn how ecosystems like the arts, education, or the environment have learned to work with philanthropy. And then build your relationship based on that information. 

What do you hope will have happened at the end of Press Forward’s five years?

We are still in the process of establishing metrics for Press Forward’s success and will be sharing more on that in the future. For now, we are looking for: 

• More dollars: Raising our $1 billion goal and deploying it in communities around the country.
• More funders: Recruiting new individual donors and all types of foundations to support news and information across the country and helping our country realize that we all need to help pay for the journalism we need to make quality-of-life decisions.
• More exploration: Identifying new business models and revenue streams that can lead to sustainability and ways to ensure communities are informed. This includes helping news and information outlets understand their audiences better so they can tailor what and how news gets delivered. 
• More collaboration: Having newsrooms work together, sharing stories and resources on important issues. 

How does Press Forward enter a community in a way that is additive and not competitive with publishers who are already having success getting access to local funding?

We do a lot of listening in local communities. First, we encourage our local chapters to listen to their communities, about what information needs are and aren’t being met. We all have blinders. We encourage chapters to conduct deep research into their local information needs.

Then as a national coalition, we are talking with the local funders and chapters to find out what they need from us to ensure that their news ecosystem is set up for long-term success.

We’re not here to parachute in and impose. We’re here to provide the seeds that can help local ecosystems flourish.