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Dale R. Anglin has spent more than 20 years in the nonprofit sector funneling millions of dollars to social service organizations. Among these projects is Cleveland Documenters, a local initiative. It paid hundreds of residents to take notes at government meetings and later expanded into regular reporting and investigative reporting as the nonprofit news organization Signal Cleveland. “We need people with journalism backgrounds, and we also need people like me with community and philanthropy backgrounds,” she said.
The combination will work on a larger scale. Mr. Anglin, who has never worked in a newsroom, was named last week as an unexpected choice to head Press Forward, which receives funding from a coalition of 22 philanthropic organizations including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. In her role, she is committed to donating at least $500 million over the next five years, raising an additional $500 million within that period, and creating an initiative that will inspire America’s struggling local news businesses. will be led.
“This is going to be a bit of an iterative process,” Anglin told CJR earlier this week. “Once the money starts going out, what can we learn from those who were receiving grants?” How do we, as a group, process what we’re learning? ?” Anglin added that she was attracted to the job because it is a collaboration between multiple donors. “I think of it like an orchestra. It needs a conductor.”
Her fresh eyes also attracted funders. MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey told CJR: “Dale stood out among a very strong pool of people as someone who brought many complementary strengths to the position of national leadership.” . He said she brings a “triple threat” of skills given her philanthropy, funding of local journalism and her work within the community. She said: “It was important to find people who brought the right combination of skills.” of “It’s a search challenge, but we couldn’t find anyone to do it,” he said.
Such is the case with Ken Doctor, a respected analyst in the news industry who now heads Lookout Local, a digital news agency based in Santa Cruz, California.
Ms. Anglin’s background gives her both a “broad range of experience” and a “fresh perspective,” he said. “We hope she’s passionate enough not to romanticize about her past.”
When he starts on March 11, Mr. Anglin will be tasked with overseeing Press Forward’s use of $500 million donated by donors. He has three ways to utilize money. The first is what Press Forward calls “coordination grants,” in which foundations that partner with Press Forward decide which news organizations and news issues will be funded. Second, a portion of the funds pledged by these foundations would be placed in a national pool managed by Anglin and the Press Forward board of directors. This fund currently stands at approximately $70 million. The third element is establishing local groups to raise funds in specific communities.
“Press Forward” has already started. Since last fall, the organization has set up shop in six states and established “chapters” made up of donors, local news outlets and community members. Press Forward announced Wednesday it will expand to 11 more states, including Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey and Wyoming. These chapters are responsible for financially and developmentally supporting news activities in their respective regions and can now apply for up to $250,000 in Catalyst Funding. Anglin expects this initiative to take up a lot of time before it takes hold.
The idea for Press Forward was announced last June in an essay by Palfrey in which he explained that MacArthur was seeking to end investment in issues such as climate change, nuclear weapons, and criminal justice. Next, the foundation said it would double down on boosting local news to “drive interest, engagement and investment in philanthropy, especially by regional and local donors.”
The MacArthur Foundation is contributing $175 million to Press Forward’s pool. The rest came from Knight ($150 million), Hewlett ($10 million), Carnegie Corporation ($5 million), and other donors whose contributions have not yet been made public.
Anglin’s interest in community work came from his mother, who was a high school English teacher in Chicago. After graduating from Smith College, Anglin enrolled in the master’s program in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on child development and government. “I realized that the job I wanted to do was probably in the nonprofit field,” Anglin said. Her first job after graduate school was as an analyst for the Congressional Research Service, working on issues related to her family, child care, and health. She eventually headed to Newark, New Jersey, where she worked for Community Corporation, an organization that promotes programs, and then she partnered with marginalized communities to improve living standards and engagement. I worked at the Improving Victoria Foundation.
In Newark, Anglin was able to deepen his interest in children and youth. She oversaw several youth education and employment programs at the Victoria Foundation. And she continues to approach her role at Press Forward with children and young people first and foremost. “If you want to think about Press Forward in the next 10 years, where are young people now? How are they thinking about how they get their news?” Anglin said. “These are our customers in a few years.”
Anglin’s work do not have Palfrey said he would use the $500 million to plant seeds everywhere.
Instead, she wants to identify and fund local news success stories. It may also be replicated elsewhere. “Good catalytic philanthropy is not about spreading what I call peanut butter and trying to get very equal funding everywhere regardless of quality,” Palfrey said. “This one is a little more meaty in that we try to support a variety of examples that help chart the path to a sustainable future for local news.”
But it’s unclear how the best samples are determined, Docter said, and he believes Anglin faces several conflicting choices. It funds collaborations between different news organizations, funnels money to rural areas where news deserts are most pronounced, targets traditionally disenfranchised and underrepresented communities, and dailies that go out of business. It may be possible to replace the . Doctors believe his fourth option is the best bet.
“The biggest issue is how to decide who gets the money. There has been a lot of talk about picking a ‘winner,'” Doctor said. “What do you mean by ‘winner’?”
Meanwhile, the gradual rollout of Press Forward has frozen some funding activities at newsrooms across the country, said former ProPublica president Dick Tofel. Some Coalition officials and donors outside the Coalition have delayed funding recipients until they know what Press Forward, MacArthur, and Knight are doing. “People like to see what large organizations are doing. They look to major organizations for leadership,” Tofel said.
Palfrey said local donors see this as an attractive project, like a symphony orchestra or a community hospital, because Anglin will also be tasked with helping change perceptions of news. Solving local news problems will take more than the first $500 million, he said, which is why the next $500 million must come locally. And those lessons will need to be spread widely to see if what worked in rural Mississippi can be replicated in big cities like Chicago and Philadelphia.
Anglin said sustainability and revenue diversification are key. “Like anything else in philanthropy, you have to give dollars and give again three years later, and to be honest, not all funders are willing to do that.” she said.
Palfrey added that the cash isn’t just for nonprofits. He said Press Forward will still fund some for-profit newsrooms, even though “it’s time for local news to declare that their primary business model is nonprofit or barely profitable.” Told.
Tofel urged caution.
“It is almost always a mistake to declare a charity successful the moment funding for something is announced. Any sense of victory here is too premature,” he said. “More money could be put toward making a difference.” Once the grants are paid and news organizations begin to put that money toward pursuing their own goals, the hard work takes place. to start. You will know whether this effort was successful or not. ”
Feven Merid and Ayodeji Rotinwa are staff members of CJR. Merid is a staff writer at his CJR and a Senior Delacourt Fellow. Lotinwa is a member of CJR.
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