Transformative Media Network: Building Capacity to Authentically Serve Communities
4/3/2017 

Title:
Transformative Media Network: Building Capacity to Authentically Serve Communities

Describe your project:
Think of your most trusted news source. For some, it may be CBS, ABC, or CNN. But for many of us, our most trusted news source is the one that is most authentic to our community. It’s the podcaster who sounds like our friend, the YouTube show that speaks deeply to our personal history, the website that keeps us up to date on the issues we care most passionately about. We trust the news that is produced by people who understand who we are.

What if we could get all (or most of) our news from this trusted news source? What if, instead of a top-down system run by a few coastal editors and producers, we could build a bottom-up news network that begins with and centers communities?

Our ambitious project is a prototype of this kind of truly transformative media network. Our goal is to bring together outlets working within local geographies and demographies with outlets working within national demographies and areas of interest in order to create ongoing equitable local-national partnerships.
 
We will begin in three metro areas: Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. In each area, we will organize 12-15 local news outlets plus 5-8 national outlets authentically engaged with communities of interest. Beginning with face-to-face meetings in each city, we will hold monthly in-person or video meetings; ensure each cohort member is involved in at least one local-national partnership; support cohort members in forming equitable partnerships with each other; and train members to use a Slack-connected cloud database as a sustainable ongoing way to develop new partnerships.These long-terms partnerships are where the lasting transformative trust will develop.

The aim of this prototype is to build infrastructure. Tangible collaterals include a Code for Equitable Partnerships to set guidelines around racial/gender/geographic equity in partnerships and the Slack-driven searchable database.

What problem are you trying to solve?:
The “fake news” conversation usually focuses on the stream of misinformation coming from social media. But social media is not the source of our problem. If the public had trusted sources to provide all the news we need, most of us would treat Facebook news the way we treat the National Enquirer—a fun read, but not something to inform the choices we make in our daily lives.

The deepest problem we face is that the public no longer trusts the mass media outlets that once provided a one-stop source for news. Frankly, one reason for this lack of trust is that newsroom cuts have disconnected most of those mass media outlets from local communities. So, seeking out stories that truly reflect our lives, many of us turn to social media. 

Luckily, we don't have to choose between mass media and social media. A significant sector of news is still highly trusted by the public—independent news outlets that are authentic to the communities they serve, whether those communities be geographic, demographic, or communities of interest. Examples include the Twin Cities Daily Planet, an award-winning outlet serving Black readers in Minneapolis-St. Paul; Bitch Media, serving millennial feminists nationally; and Earth Island Journal, serving those passionate about the environment. 

What makes these outlets powerful, however, is precisely that they are niche. They can provide news about the niche, but that still leaves their communities without news relevant to other areas of their lives. A reader of the Twin Cities Daily Planet still needs news about the nation and the world; a reader of Earth Island Journal still needs news about her local politicians. 

What’s needed is a way to deliver all the news a person needs via the news outlet he trusts the most. That’s the problem this project begins to solve.

Who will be impacted by your project and how do you understand their needs?:
This project is designed to build dynamic infrastructure for media outlets seeking to serve community-based needs. It will most directly impact local outlets by providing them with partners for national news, and national news outlets by providing them with partners for local news. It will provide white-dominant outlets with a more authentic way to tell the stories of people of color, and outlets serving people of color with an easier way to distribute their content. 

We know the needs of these outlets intimately because we work with them daily. The Media Consortium represents over 80 independent news outlets: local, regional and national. Through our TMCinColor program, we have begun working closely with another 20 outlets that primarily serve communities of color. Through our close relationships with New America Media, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the Alliance for Community Media, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters we have come to know their members in the world of ethnic media, alternative newsmedia, public access channels, and community radio.

Most critically, this project originated with a strong request from the Media Consortium members and the community media staffers present at our TMC2017 conference that we build an infrastructure for collaboration. That support was echoed when we engaged our community by asking them to choose which project we should put forward for this proposal—the unanimous choice was this Transformative Media Network proposal.

Please list team members and their qualifications:
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Executive Director, The Media Consortium

Jo Ellen has run the Media Consortium for six years. A leading voice on collaborative partnerships within independent media, Jo Ellen recently gave the plenary address at ACM and publishes frequently in MediaShift. She formerly served as managing editor and associate publisher of Tikkun, and was a consultant for the Independent Press Association. Jo Ellen serves on the board of the Foundation of the Alliance for Community Media and on the board of the Foundation for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

Manolia Charlotin, Associate Director, The Media Consortium

Deeply familiar with ethnic communities, Manolia is herself an immigrant of Haitian descent who speaks five languages. As a journalist who has led 3 community media outlets, Manolia understands the desire of these journalists and storytellers to tell the truth of their communities, and knows how to support them in their work. She has led numerous collaborative media efforts, including 35 reporting collaborations among 40 Media Consortium members.

What progress, if any, have you made on this project?:
Our project is ambitious. We propose it only because we have spent several years working towards building a transformative media network.

We first tackled the difficulty of helping understaffed, highly independent outlets learn to collaborate with each other. In 2015, the Media Consortium ran 35 collaborations among 40 different outlets. We learned from that experience that outlets need a project manager to keep the project on track, and resources to cover the additional time spent by reporters and editors on the collaborative aspect of a project.

As the 2015 collaborations were ending, we saw the rise of a number of community-based movements, including the Black Lives Matter movement, Standing Rock, and Latinx organizing around immigration reform. We responded early in 2016 by asking Race Forward to hold an all-day racial equity workshop at our annual conference. That workshop has proven critically important in helping outlets that have historically been white-dominant to partner equitably with outlets that are racially diverse. 

Our successful 2017 (un)conference, to which we invited staff from 20 local outlets run by and for people of color, led to a call by those assembled for this project. 

We also already have deep roots in the three cities where we will test our partnership strategies and tools. We already are running a group of 15 outlets in Chicago, funded partly via our Impact Driver program with The Chicago Community Trust. In Boston, Media Consortium member Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has already organized 13 community news outlets. And at our annual conference in March, a very vocal group of 8 outlets from Los Angeles asked us to start up a regional network there. 

We are in contact with others working in the collaborative space, including Free Press and SJN, and look forward to knowledge sharing with them.

Organization:
The Media Consortium, a project of the Foundation for National Progress

Website:
https://themediaconsortium.org

City:
San Francisco

State:
CA

Which of the following best describes your organization?:
Non-profit

I confirm that I am 18 years of age or older::
true