City Club of Chicago: Chicago at the Center of Local News Innovation

Thanks, Casey.

We have

Casey, Tracy, and Tracy among the panelists.

We're the Tracy Bs.

I know it's a friendly crowd, but it still doesn't mean I'm not nervous.

About three years ago, MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation out of Miami launched the Press Forward movement after much traveling across the country by many of their staffers to make it happen.

And the dream is to help save local news, innovate, create a more sustainable local ecosystem across the country.

There are now 48 Press Forward chapters across 36 states.

Press Forward Chicago and Press Forward Springfield were two of the first six Press Forward chapters.

So we do have two in the state of Illinois.

Our mission here is to find out what media thinks will be helpful, not take a top-down approach.

And so we're really experimenting and iterating very quickly.

Taylor and Amanda on my team, we're a three-person unit now, are really trying to both give grants as well as support in ways of infrastructure, trainings, etc., Just to give you an example, last week at Loyola, Jill Geisler led 20 people in a training on management of newsrooms.

people that sometimes get thrown into positions that they don't have the training for.

So we're doing all sorts of infrastructure supports from growing newsletters with help from M. Harris and doing grant writing support, et cetera.

But one of the things we're going to talk a little bit about today is also trying to bring in new funders into journalism because the existing funding landscape is not going to be enough, and even philanthropy is not going to be enough.

So we're going to talk about some of the back-end supports and innovations that we're trying to do in Chicago that might be scalable in other parts of the country.

What I mean by that is if you care about climate, if you care about education, if you care about immigration and you're not funding journalism, it's a gap.

And we know that there are lots of funders who wouldn't necessarily even go into a pooled fund for journalism that still might be interested in funding journalism.

So our goal is to bring in new funders to journalism and to strengthen the local media ecosystem, which is an oasis here in Chicago area, but there are still so many gaps and so much need.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that innovation today, and I really appreciate City Club hosting us.

Thanks, Tracy.

Now, Tracy.

Is my mic on? Tell us a little about Chicago Public Media.

Yes.

Thanks, Casey.

We have

Casey, Tracy, and Tracy among the panelists.

We're the Tracy Bs.

I know it's a friendly crowd, but it still doesn't mean I'm not nervous.

About three years ago, MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation out of Miami launched the Press Forward movement after much traveling across the country by many of their staffers to make it happen.

And the dream is to help save local news, innovate, create a more sustainable local ecosystem across the country.

There are now 48 Press Forward chapters across 36 states.

Press Forward Chicago and Press Forward Springfield were two of the first six Press Forward chapters.

So we do have two in the state of Illinois.

Our mission here is to find out what media thinks will be helpful, not take a top-down approach.

And so we're really experimenting and iterating very quickly.

Taylor and Amanda on my team, we're a three-person unit now, are really trying to both give grants as well as support in ways of infrastructure, trainings, etc., Just to give you an example, last week at Loyola, Jill Geisler led 20 people in a training on management of newsrooms.

people that sometimes get thrown into positions that they don't have the training for.

So we're doing all sorts of infrastructure supports from growing newsletters with help from M. Harris and doing grant writing support, et cetera.

But one of the things we're going to talk a little bit about today is also trying to bring in new funders into journalism because the existing funding landscape is not going to be enough, and even philanthropy is not going to be enough.

So we're going to talk about some of the back-end supports and innovations that we're trying to do in Chicago that might be scalable in other parts of the country.

What I mean by that is if you care about climate, if you care about education, if you care about immigration and you're not funding journalism, it's a gap.

And we know that there are lots of funders who wouldn't necessarily even go into a pooled fund for journalism that still might be interested in funding journalism.

So our goal is to bring in new funders to journalism and to strengthen the local media ecosystem, which is an oasis here in Chicago area, but there are still so many gaps and so much need.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that innovation today, and I really appreciate City Club hosting us.

Thanks, Tracy.

Now, Tracy.

Is my mic on? Tell us a little about Chicago Public Media.

Yes.