JFP By The Numbers: The Importance of Legacy Newsrooms
Posting: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Rusty Coats
Executive Director
I recently spoke on a panel at the JFunders Conference, a valuable gathering of journalism and documentary funders organized by Media Impact Funders. The panel, titled “The Basics of For-Profit Grantmaking: A Practical Session for Funders,” was emceed by MIF’s Nina Sachdev and also included Keisha Knight, Director of IDA Funds and Advocacy, and Tracie Powell, Executive Director of The Pivot Fund.
View the slideshow shared at the conference above
The practical “how” portion of the panel was straightforward, if sometimes wonky. In any industry, the “back of the house” generally isn’t celebrated because it’s mechanical and—if done correctly—invisible. It supports the mission by taking care of the administrative clockworks that are at once hugely important (think compliance) and sometimes tedious. My metaphor for a well-run “back of the house” is the conference you attend where the WiFi works, the food is passable, the mics don’t hiss and the AC isn’t arctic, so that all you remember of the conference is the value of the speakers and the networking. If any of those middleware trivialities go awry, that’s all you’ll be talking about. The goal in hosting a conference is that the middleware functions to the point that it becomes invisible.
So we talked about different models of fiscal sponsorship, duties of care, protections for funders and recipients, the value of editorial independence, funder and newsroom transparency, acknowledgments, taxes and all the other things that should be handled so that the mission—the front of the house—can shine.
The “why” portion of the panel was passionate and eye-opening for many of the funders in the room, because it hit the guitar lick all funders want to hear: Impact.
“Impact” is a powerful word with a fluid definition among news funders. It ranges from reaching underserved audiences, reaching decision makers, championing under-reported stories (anywhere on the spectrum between tragedy and victory), winning awards and recognition - all the way up to the White Whale of Impact: coverage that contributes to positive social change, whether that’s as soft as a shift in attitude or as pivotal as actual policy changes. But the common denominator is audience. You can’t have any impact if your funded coverage doesn’t go anywhere.
So, to prepare for the panel, I contacted most of the 50+ news organizations (I omitted the Associated Press, which has several positions funded through JFP, because I thought that would skew the data) to ask that they share their digital audience numbers: unique users, in-market users, pageviews, email newsletter subscribers and other metrics. In the end, I had digital metrics from ComScore and Google Analytics from JFP partners ranging from national newspaper chains to a syndicated public radio show to a podcast that provides news roundups for children ages 8-12.
This took some convincing. Some news organizations still treat these numbers as proprietary, even though they often use them in sales materials. But I assured them that JFP would only share the numbers in the aggregate. (And, for our broadcast newsrooms, I did not ask for Nielsen numbers, because—at least for now—that’s like asking your mother to share a family secret at Thanksgiving.) But, after much reassuring and some cajoling, we were able to arrive at JFP’s aggregate audience.
And that number is staggering.
In a typical month, JFP-funded stories receive more than 100 million pageviews across the United States. In at least two months in 2024, when stories went viral, those stories received 1.2 billion pageviews.
I’ll let that sit for a moment.
One hundred million pageviews on an average month. One-point-two billion a month when a story or series catches lightning.
There’s some “how” to explain such high numbers from stories produced in local newsrooms, some serving communities smaller than 100,000. One “how” is that stories are shared across the network of similarly-owned news organizations. For example:
A climate series on unregulated chicken farming in North Carolina from a JFP-funded reporter at The News & Observer also appeared on more than a dozen other news sites owned by The McClatchy Company.
A story from a JFP-funded First Amendment reporter about how a school board in Indian River, FL, banned a book called (wait for it) “Ban This Book,” appeared in nearly every site owned by Gannett - and then spread to dozens other news outlets (whose audience numbers I didn’t count).
When selling digital advertising, numbers matter. They also matter for impact. The climate series in North Carolina won four national journalism awards and, despite North Carolina’s super-majority state legislature, prevented some pretty heinous riders in bills from becoming law. (Chicken farming still is unregulated in North Carolina; see: “super majority.”)
The panel audience at JFunders was stunned by the numbers - and also credulous. One funder said that a guiding principle for a foundation she’d worked at was “ownership matters,” and that meant steering away from newsrooms owned by hedge funds. This is understandable but, as I shared, manageable.
JFP-funded positions are covered by agreements - these are contracts - that guarantee the funds only will be spent to support coverage (generally, a beat such as education, climate, public safety, etc.) for a specific amount of time.
These funds cannot be used for general operating expenses and, in most cases, reside in a separate ledger of accounting at the funded company.
To ensure that the funded reporting reaches the broadest, most diverse audience in a given market, no JFP-funded story can be behind a paywall. They may be metered, but in no circumstance can they be “subscriber only.”
If an ownership company issues a mandate that, say, all employees will take a two-week, unpaid furlough - or some other expense-saving mandate - it does not affect the funded positions. And, if the company insists that it does affect the funded positions, JFP lets the kind folks at corporate know that we will claw that money back and will not fund positions with them again.
The back of the house isn’t shiny, but it can be sharp.
But our policies also reflect a front-of-the-house North Star for JFP, and for me. I can—and have—said scorching things about Alden Capital and its organ-harvest business practices. But I cannot say a single coarse word about the work done by the journalists at The Denver Post, The Chicago Tribune or other Alden-owned newspapers. Blaming the journalists - and, more importantly, withholding support to fund journalism for those communities - reminds me of something my father taught me: “It’s better to be right than righteous.”
JFP works with all types of news organizations. You could say that we’re the three-dimensional chess version of agnosticism when it comes to business models, ownership and platforms. We work across nonprofit and for-profit planes as well as working across digital, analog and emergent platforms. Our guiding principle is to work on behalf of journalism, not business.
After the panel, a funder that focuses solely on nonprofit newsrooms—mostly ones that are just coming out of the ground—said that, while JFP’s numbers are impressive, the newsrooms they fund reach “quality audiences.” I hear that a lot from news organizations that have a very strong mission—and sometimes very deep funding—and very small audiences. I responded that, at best, “quality audiences” is apologetic for diminutive impact. At worst, it’s elitist.
Audience metrics provide a tangible return on investment, demonstrating that funding is making a real difference in connecting people with trusted, local journalism. Every week, JFP hears from funders about how important these numbers are - and how these numbers show the impact of their investments to their boards and constituents.
And funders agree.
“As funders, we don’t just care about the quality of the information, we also care about the number of people benefiting from the journalism,” said Diogo Freire, Managing Director of the Green South Foundation, a major funder of climate journalism. “So we pay close attention to the size of the audience and how engaged they are.”
JFP continues to be at the forefront of ensuring newsrooms across the country inform their community about the issues that matter most to them. And the numbers—and the impact they represent—speak for themselves.
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Media Contact: Rusty Coats, Executive Director | rusty@jfp-local.org | (813) 277-8959
