Scaling sustainability: How Knight Foundation’s investment strategy uplifts the entire local news ecosystem

Knight Foundation is a Presenting Sponsor of the 2024 Independent News Sustainability Summit. LION is profiling all Summit sponsors with a Q&A to help members learn more about their work.

Hayley Milloy, LION Publishers: What is your 30-second elevator pitch (or 75-word pitch) to a LION member on what Knight Foundation does?

Duc Luu, Knight Foundation: At Knight, we support the 26 communities that once hosted Knight newspapers through investments that expand the arts and deepen community resilience and engagement in democracy. We also invest nationally and locally in organizations, ideas and products that enable publishers to build sustainable, audience-centered newsrooms. We envision a future for news that is defined by revenue diversification, rising consumer demand for news and information, and innovation in how our industry creates and distributes our products. To shape a thriving journalism landscape, we also emphasize technology that facilitates community engagement with journalists to drive positive change in local contexts.

Hayley: What do you do at Knight Foundation? Why did you join the team?

Duc: I am the director for sustainability initiatives on the journalism program at Knight. I invest in newsrooms and support organizations that model and drive the long-term financial sustainability of local news business models. I joined Knight after serving as the publisher for Washington City Paper, the local alt-weekly for the Washington, DC, area. The drop from a profitable year in 2019 to running a print-based organization through the pandemic showed me that our business model is fragile and needs urgent funding and innovation. I know firsthand how difficult it is to sustain local journalism, and I also know how important it is to communities. At Knight, I want to ensure that communities have the important civic news and information they need to make decisions and feel connected.

Hayley: For independent news outlets, what are some best practices for obtaining and sustaining philanthropy as a funding source? What have you seen work?

Duc: I believe philanthropy is an important and growing revenue source for newsrooms. However, grants (especially from Knight and Press Forward) should be viewed as a catalyst for publishers to secure local sources of funding. This includes community foundations and major donors — local sources that care about local causes. The success and expansion of Press Forward local chapters, often run by community foundations, is an encouraging sign that local news outlets are becoming accepted as recipients of grants and donations.

Hayley: We know Knight Foundation is interested in finding and funding sustainable models for local news. What does this look like in practice? How has philanthropy changed over the years? If you were predicting, what do you offer as some future trends in philanthropy?

Duc: Our core strategy focuses on scaling the infrastructure for local news publishers that will sustain the entire local news ecosystem rather than picking and choosing among the thousands of independent newsrooms around the country. These resources are widely available to publishers and include everything from legal support services for filing FOIAs to raising reader revenues with off-the-shelf tools and services. Fundamentally, these are things that publishers tell us they want and need to start, grow, sustain their organizations and be responsive to the changing needs of our industry. We want publishers to focus on deepening relationships with their audiences and communities, while spending less time worrying about the dozens of decisions that any small business has to make in order to stay in business. I think the main trend in philanthropy is the growth of Press Forward and its local chapters to help bring more local philanthropy to the table, for nonprofit and for-profit newsrooms. That’s a trend that will hopefully outlive the five-year trajectory for Press Forward.

Hayley: What’s one question you think the independent news industry — our members, vendors, support organizations like us, and funders like you — should be asking about the future of doing this work?

Duc: How are we meeting the needs of our audiences and our communities? The hundreds of millions of Press Forward dollars are meant to provide publishers with a runway. At the end of that runway, however, there has to be a business model, products and an organization that is deeply centered on giving our audiences what they want and need to make informed decisions and feel engaged in their communities, while translating that service into financial support from our readers, local funders and advertisers. Audiences must ultimately believe that our products are made for them and that we are tangibly making their communities better. Otherwise, there’s no amount of philanthropy that can overcome that core demand problem. It’s the (likely apocryphal) Yogi Berra quote: “If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, then no one’s gonna stop them.”

Hayley: Are there any upcoming or future initiatives that Knight Foundation is working on that you want to preview for us? Are there any major Press Forward developments?

Duc: I think the best way to get a preview from us is to meet us in person at upcoming events, such as the LION Summit and ONA 24, where we will have extensive programming. With Press Forward, there are upcoming events for funders and local chapters in the fall that will help sharpen our strategy in bringing in more funders and more support for newsrooms. We expect to announce more local chapters in the coming months.

Hayley: What’s the best way for LION members and others to take advantage of Knight Foundation’s offerings and support?

Duc: Keep up with all our announcements on the Knight Foundation website and be sure to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, News @ Knight. Those are great ways to keep up on our initiatives and thinking.