Below is the transcript of the interview between Bill McKenzie, Senior Editorial Advisor at the George W. Bush Institute, and Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project
Bill McKenzie:
The American Journalism Project started in 2019 as a way to strengthen local journalism. AJP, as it is known, has since become the nationwide leader in nonprofit journalism models. The organization helps fund existing news sites, launches new ones, and works with local philanthropies.
AJP has provided grants to newsrooms in 34 states, operates in 99 communities, and its journalists produce 800 stories a week. Sarabeth Berman is the CEO, and she joins us to discuss her organization’s mission and the state of local journalism. Thank you, Sarabeth.
Berman:
Thank you so much for having me.
McKenzie:
You said recently at AJP’s annual conference that your organization is trying to build a billion-dollar infrastructure for local journalism. Tell us a little bit about that. What would be its purpose? How far along are you? And how do you get there?
Berman:
We see ourselves as playing a role in building a new industry for financing and sustaining local news across the country.
Over the last two decades, we’ve watched the unraveling of the American newspaper industry. People who are watching this video, I’m sure, are very familiar with the fact that newspapers across the country have closed, and it’s a business model that has really, in the age of the internet, failed. There is very clear research that the decline of local news is making us more polarized, less engaged, and is making our government less responsive, less transparent. We’re convinced that we need original reporting for our communities to thrive, for our democracy to function.
We think the job before us is to reimagine local news as a public good and to finance and sustain local news as such.
This is why we believe so strongly in new nonprofit business models. These organizations are, by and large, digital-first news organizations that are delivering news in the way people are getting their news today, which is online, in their inboxes, on social media. They’re financed as nonprofits, having philanthropy fund them, looking to readers to donate and become members, getting sponsors and advertising. But [they are] rethinking these as mission-oriented organizations that exist to serve their communities, to keep their communities informed, and to bring more transparency and accountability to their communities.
This effort to rebuild local news as a public good is relatively new. For a long time, newspapers were a very profitable business. Some of the great fortunes in American history were made from American papers. So really building this new infrastructure, this new nonprofit infrastructure, is an effort in financing and launching and growing organizations across the country, recruiting new readers, new philanthropists into this space.
We have a goal of building a billion-dollar sector that will be the primary employer of original reporters across the country and be [an] important part of keeping communities informed and accountable.
We’re now six years into this work. We launched in 2019. Since then, the nonprofit local news sector has tripled. The portfolio that we’ve helped grow and launch has been a big part of that growth. We see a path towards building that billion-dollar sector that you spoke of by helping to launch new organizations, helping organizations grow into more markets, and continuing to raise awareness about the importance of local news to our communities.
McKenzie:
What would rebuilding local news at scale look like? Are we thinking about a lot of indigenous perhaps pop-ups that are starting as well as bigger organizations like Texas Tribune. It is the grandfather of local nonprofit journalism here in Texas, but it’s a big operation. Are you seeing all of those and more?
Berman:
The information ecosystem has transformed dramatically. This is not going to be a reversion to where we had newspapers and we all got information because it landed on our doorstep and read it that day, or we tuned into the same broadcast once a day.
People are getting information in very fragmented ways, but the plankton that feeds that sea is original reporting.
For us, this nonprofit news industry is about building the original reporting that helps feed news influencers or Substack writers or others across the country that may be talking to communities, informing communities but aren’t doing that original reporting.
And the billion-dollar industry we’re looking to build is nonprofit organizations that either exist like the Texas Tribune, a statewide news organization, or are serving metro and smaller communities like the Fort Worth Report. And funding these newsrooms across the country that are employing journalists that are showing up at City Hall, that are showing up at school board meetings, and that are really helping to collect the original reporting that helps us not just feel overwhelmed with information but helps us feel informed.
McKenzie:
You all have been in business since 2019. What lessons would you say you’ve learned from your different approaches to local news?
Berman:
Yeah. We’re learning so much, and when you look at our portfolio on our website you’ll see we’re funding many different models. As you mentioned, we’re funding all across the country from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, from Vermont to Mississippi.
There are many differences in the kinds of models we’re funding and the kinds of communities that we’re serving, but there are some themes bubbling up. One is that this really is an effort in what we call movement-building but also helping people see the value of local news in their communities. And helping philanthropists and foundations and individuals recognize that for their community to thrive, they need institutions like this. That’s a really important part of building the revenue model. This is no longer a transaction of, I give you a dollar, I get a subscription. This is about supporting a community institution. So that’s one important part of this effort.
Another is that the nonprofit news industry started as the newspaper industry began to crumble, and so it popped up often to fill the first things to get cut: investigative reporting. It is hugely important to society, but also expensive and often takes a lot of time. Reporters will work for months on a story. So that was often the first set of reporters to get cut from newsrooms. A lot of the initial nonprofit newsrooms started as investigative newsrooms.
Increasingly, we’re seeing these nonprofit newsrooms thinking about their role much more robustly, not just investigative reporting, which they do, and they do well. For the last four years in a row, the Pulitzer for local reporting has gone to a new nonprofit newsroom. But nonprofit newsrooms also do culture reporting, community reporting, high school sports reporting, the kind of reporting that helps people feel a sense of pride and connection to their community.
Another trend and lesson we’re seeing is that these organizations that are successful are equally focused on doing great journalism and providing great information for their communities as they are on building strong, sustainable businesses.
They are spending a lot of energy in building diversified revenue that can help these organizations thrive over the long term. And then of course, staying nimble. The information ecosystem is changing very quickly. The rise of AI is changing how audience habits are showing up and also changing how newsrooms operate because AI, when used responsibly, can be used in ways that really support newsrooms. We’re seeing newsrooms really experiment and stay nimble with how to adapt to these new technologies.
McKenzie:
Let’s go to AI in just a moment. I want to go back a little bit more to how you all engage with communities and are trying to help a community define itself.
Is that hard to do? Or do you find that communities are generally receptive to having a new news source coming in? As we know, a lot of communities across the country have been losing them. Talk a little bit about that, about your involvement in the communities.
Berman:
One thing that’s interesting about this work is that it is a market failure. It’s not that people stopped wanting or needing local news, it’s that the market stopped being able to provide it. All across the country, we see communities excited about helping to build new news organizations that reflect their community, that are there on behalf of their community.
I think a lot of people are craving that kind of institution, either looking back to when their paper used to thrive or see a need for their community to be better reflected and reported on. We’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm for it. We’re also seeing these newsrooms show up as community pillars. They’re doing live events, they’re hosting debates, they’re out in coffee shops, in neighborhoods, at community events, helping people feel a relationship to the media.
I think one of the challenges of our media ecosystem is that as local news has been decimated, we are spending more and more time following national news and social media, which is remote, which is distant from our day-to-day lives. People do crave interacting with news that feels familiar, is about the issues that they engage with every day.
We fund a fantastic newsroom in Fort Worth called the Fort Worth Report. Bill, you got a sense of them last month at our convening. I know you’re a son of Fort Worth as well. And they do this wonderful series called “The 52 Heroes of Fort Worth.” Every week they’re celebrating a different hero in their community.
What I love about this is, at a time where I think people feel less connected to their neighbors, less connected to their communities, it’s a chance to celebrate the people in their communities. And over time, this helps us realize that, yes, we may have political differences, we may see things differently, but we also know that each other are good people. I think that is the force that local news can help, in addition to the investigative and accountability reporting that it does.
McKenzie:
Let’s wrap up with talking about this thing called AI, which is just everywhere. Every time you turn on the TV or pick up a paper or whatever, there’s AI. The question I have is: How does local differentiated content exist in this AI age?
Berman:
Many people who follow this industry may have seen the blazing headlines that say news traffic is plummeting. People think this has to do, and the data seems to back this up, with the fact that when you’re going to search, instead of getting directed to a news site, you’re often getting a summary. It’s preventing readers from going directly to news sites or content or media sites.
What we are finding is last year our portfolio’s audience grew. Our hypothesis is that local, differentiated news is very needed, and that people do still want that. And we are hopeful and heartened by that trend. We know that the original reporting is something that AI can’t do. AI is not going to do the shoe-leather reporting that it takes to build relationships, to cultivate sources, to dig into information that people don’t know, to go out and ask questions on behalf of a community.
And that is something that we believe needs to be upheld across the country. It’s what we’re trying to rebuild through this nonprofit news industry, and we don’t believe that it’s destructible by AI. That said, we also see AI being a tool that newsrooms can use. It used to be that dozens of journalists would have to sit in a closed room, go through troves and troves of government, FOIA documents that were messy and hard to cull through.
Now you can use these technologies to go through it much more efficiently, much more effectively. We’re trying to harness the tools in ways that can enhance the mission and really focus on growing the original reporting that we know is so important to healthy communities.
McKenzie:
Great. Thank you, Sarahbeth.
Thank you for the work of American Journalism Project and thank you for speaking with us today.
Berman:
Thanks so much for the time and for your interest in this work.
