There’s no question that nonprofit news outlets are producing some of our most important journalism right now. The big question is: Who’s reading it?
With a few exceptions (John Oliver’s ProPublica shoutout notwithstanding), nonprofit journalism struggles to reach large audiences, build subscribers, and secure longterm funding support. Those Facebook ad buys are pricey, after all.
The result: We’ve got more and more great journalism being produced — on topics of vital national importance like health care, criminal justice, and climate change — by outlets that can’t match the reach of the for-profit media, and that face significant resource concerns and possible contraction in the future. Not a good look for democracy.
The solution: Team up!
At my publication, we call this effort to build partnerships and expand audience Project Sprout (because we like to give fun names to everything). We’re a member of story-sharing consortiums with fellow forward-thinking outlets, and we’re in constant search of new distribution methods. These efforts can expand the visibility of one of our stories tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold.
But that only gets you so far if all those publications have a largely overlapping audience nested securely within the progressive bubble. Many nonprofit editors have the same concerns — I know, because we talk about it with each other constantly.
In the coming year, those nonprofit editors will seek out new partnerships and arrangements, with radio networks, newspaper chains, community outlets, social media networks, and one another. And their work will be in demand, because there’s a growing realization that the journalism they produce is vitally important and needs a larger audience.
Pooling resources and knowledge — something I’ve been doing with an informal group of nonprofit enviro editors who think collaboration beats competition — can also help push beyond the financial and resource constraints that small, scrappy outlets face.
In the environmental field, these partnerships and coalitions will include a focus on new ways of reaching readers who care about clean water, safe communities, and conservation, but who probably aren’t burning up to read the latest climate news. We’ll see an increased focus on local and state stories and community-based reporting, with a determination to get those stories in front of local audiences.
Teamwork…well, it works. Now we’ll need a fun name for that, too.
Scott Dodd is executive editor of Grist.
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
David Weigel A test for online speech
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones