IECF launches Inland Empire Journalism Innovation Hub+Fund to water the region's "information garden"
The Hub+Fund has also been designated a local chapter of Press Forward -- the national coalition planning to invest $500 to address the crisis in local journalism
A compelling case can be made that California’s Inland Empire is a “news desert.” Each day, the region’s skeleton-staffed, hedge fund-owned dailies publish entirely duplicative newspapers. Los Angeles TV stations pipe in our “local” newscasts, which portray the region as a crime scene. And many IE weeklies and digital news sites engage heavily on churnalism – the passing along of police reports, press releases, and other pre-packaged materials as if they were news.
Listening Post Collective founder, Jesse Hardman doesn’t see the IE as a news desert, though. Instead, he regards the region as a budding “information garden” where “a vibrant community of media-makers … and even local citizens … have taken it upon themselves to get and share sourced civic information.” What that information garden needs, Hardman argues, is “a bit of watering.”
Where will that “watering” come from, though?
One promising source of funding and support for local journalism is Inland Empire Community Foundation’s new IE Journalism Innovation Hub+Fund, which held a launch event on June 3, 2024 in Redlands. The Hub+Fund is part community media cooperative, part philanthropic fund. As an IE VOICE report explains: “The Hub will serve as a central point for collaboration, training, and community engagement, while the Fund will provide financial support to news organizations and partners committed to serving the Inland Empire.”
“Community journalism is more important now than ever,” said Hub+Fund’s chair and Black Voice News publisher, Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds. “In regions like the Inland Empire, where news deserts are a growing concern, we need to find new ways to engage our communities and ensure that they have access to the information they need to participate fully in civic life.”
At the launch event, Dr. Brown-Hinds screened the following short video, which describes the Hub as “a network of locally-owned media organizations, independent journalists, and media professionals dedicated to telling local stories and improving access to information.”
The kick-off event was held as part of the Redlands Forum speaker series at ESRI headquarters. It featured a conversation on the state of local news between Dr. Brown-Hinds and former New York Times executive editor, Dean Baquet. Neither Brown-Hinds nor Baquet sugar-coated the crisis in local U.S. journalism. However, both underscored the vital importance of community journalism for civic and democratic life, as well as the promise of cooperative models.
“The economic model of journalism has shifted dramatically,” explained Mr. Baquet. “We can no longer rely solely on competition to drive our industry. Instead, we need to find ways to work together, share resources, and support one another. This is the only way we can ensure that local journalism remains strong and continues to serve our communities.”
Dr. Brown-Hinds concurred: “The challenges we face are too great for any one organization to tackle alone. By working together, sharing resources, and supporting one another, we can build a stronger, more resilient local journalism ecosystem.”
Since late 2022, IECF has seeded the Hub+Fund initiative with funds from the James Irvine Foundation, Democracy Fund, the Google News Initiative, and local donors. At the June 3 kick-off event, Dr. Brown-Hinds announced that the Hub+Fund has also been designated a Press Forward “local chapter.” Press Forward is a coalition of major U.S. philanthropic foundations that plan to invest half a billion dollars in local news over 5 years. IECF’s website explains that local chapters like the Hub+Fund “are critical to the success of Press Forward because they are closest to the ground and can identify authentically local approaches that meet the needs of their communities.”
Earlier in the day, Dr. Brown-Hinds and Hub+Fund project director, Armando Carmona also hosted a workshop for community news publishers and journalists, which I had the opportunity to attend. There, Brown-Hinds and Carmona explained the Hub+Fund’s background, structure, and approach, which includes “establishing a cooperative newsroom, engaging the public, promoting transparency and trust, leveraging technology, and strengthening media literacy.”
Dr. Brown-Hinds and Mr. Carmona also facilitated a brainstorming session on how to enhance community journalism in the IE. Participants’ ideas included more reporting and publishing collaborations, shared editorial support and databases, and local media literacy campaigns. I added that area educational institutions, such as California State University, San Bernardino, could support the Hub+Fund’s efforts by advancing journalism education and local news ecosystem research in the IE.
This summer and fall, the Hub+Fund will hold a series of community townhalls and cooperative journalism trainings. The townhalls are intended to “engage the public in setting news agendas by soliciting story ideas, questions, and concerns through interactive platforms.” The trainings will “encourage media organizations, journalists, and citizen journalists to form partnerships and collaborations” and “foster shared ethics and practices across journalists across the region.”
My take on these developments:
Community media cooperatives (sometimes referred to as hubs, coalitions, or collaboratives) provide a viable, established model for producing and supporting quality local journalism. Importantly, whereas journalism’s traditional, commercial model relied on competing newsrooms to report about local communities, cooperative models prioritize reporting collaborations among community news outlets and with civic organizations and community members. In this, the launch of an initiative like the IE Journalism Innovation Hub+Fund presents opportunities to not only revitalize IE journalism, but also to transform it and its relationship to local communities.
The IE Hub+Plus Fund's affiliation as a Press Forward local chapter is also an important development for the region’s local news ecosystem. First, it indicates the IE is on the national coalition’s radar as a region that requires funding and support for local journalism. Hopefully that will bear out when the coalition announces its first round of newsroom awardees to “address historic inequalities in local news coverage.” Second, Press Forward local chapters – most of which are run by local community foundations – provide a means of both facilitating local journalism collaborations and matching local donors’ contributions with those of larger, national foundations. Indeed, at a Knight Foundation-funded journalism research conference I recently attended, Press Forward was described as “a giant matching fund.”
Press forward and its local chapters aren’t a panacea for local journalism's woes, though. The national coalition's 5-year, $500 million commitment – even if matched by local donors – is a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of billions in annual advertising revenue that U.S. newspapers have lost over the past two decades. As IECF notes, “The challenge of rebuilding America’s local news landscape is vast and will depend on creating new local efforts alongside new investment by local and national funders, smart public policies, and a variety of other revenue approaches.” I’m of the opinion that public policy interventions, especially, are vital and long-overdue. As the Lenfest Institute’s Jim Friedlich told the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “The clearest path to creating billions of dollars of support for local news is public policy … The likelihood is that Press Forward creates a multiplier effect, generating new policy support and new commercial investment as well as new local and national philanthropic interest.”
I’m also interested to see how Press Forward approaches grant-making – particularly matched grant-making – in communities and regions that are not just news deserts but also philanthropy deserts. According to an analysis of 2016 foundation data by UCR’s Center for Social Innovation, Inland Empire non-profits receive a fraction of the foundation support that other California regions do, and IE-based foundations have smaller asset bases and give less to area nonprofits. This would seem to put IE nonprofits – including media outlets and their support infrastructure – at a disadvantage when it comes to matched grant-making.
There have been coordinated efforts to “change the narrative” and improve both external and internal giving in the region. And IECF plans to use Press Forward funds to hire a dedicated fundraiser for the Journalism Innovation Hub+Fund. Still, an equity-based approach to regional giving will be essential if Press Forward is to see information gardens like the Inland Empire truly bloom.
A side note
Long-time readers of Inland Empire MediaWatch will know that there’s been quite a lull between my first post last fall and this one. I didn’t forget about this project. I’ve just been a little tied up with a labor dispute and a grant-funded effort to forge local media collaborations. However, I have been following and posting about local news developments at the iemediawatch Instagram handle, which I encourage you to follow. And I plan to use this Substack to publish more installments on the IE news mirage, among other topics. Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and please drop a comment to let me know your thoughts on these local news developments.