Session Host:
Elise Stolte
Attendees:
- Ashley
- Cole
- Liz
- Diane
- Heather
- Eric Marsh
- Kat
- Andre
- Andrea Wenzel
- Jesse
- Fabi
- Deborah
This group took on the challenge of building for sustainability beyond singular projects, which always come to an inevitable end. How can we move into a position of lasting change? We delved into this question with a prompt from solutions journalism: What’s working? Initiatives from North Carolina to New Mexico were discussed. The group grounded most of its discussion in examples from WHYY/NICE (News & Information Community Exchange). Eric Marsh of WHYY/NICE used the example of his mutual aid information network, NICE, to illustrate how to cultivate relationships between media organizations of differing sizes and targets. WHYY serves as a backbone org to support smaller outlets in the Philadelphia area.
Eric’s initiative description:
NICE funded by Knight/Lenfest (hyperlocal)
- Plan to exist 5 years
- Future of journalism is hyperlocal
- Empathy interviews/listening
- Are they from or in the community
- Mutual aid collaborative, not a top-down org WHYY serves as backbone org
- Several orgs working collaboratively, sharing content across platforms, taking social and printing it
- WHYY does not own or control content from collaborators
- WHYY provides monthly stipends and community sources
- NICE partners serve as community ambassadors
Challenges + solutions
- Getting buy-in from the newsroom and community
- This is slow work
- The group agreed that funders can help create structures to help build strong programs: “Money can incentivize good behavior.“
- A trend in philanthropy is funding collaborative efforts.
Funders want to be at the table
- They want to talk about the mission before they fund; bring them along with the discussion, if they are a part of it, they are more likely to come to the table
- Funders can help create the structure
- Money can incentivize good behavior
- A downside is its hard to get funders’ attention if you’re not already in the map
The group agreed on five ingredients for creating lasting change:
- Working in network hubs
- Changing from a news ecosystem to an information ecosystem
- Leveraging storytelling networks to amplify content and support outlets of varying sizes/reach
- Help partners reach their goals in the context of collaboration outcomes
- Create an exit strategy instead of focusing on the exit date