The first five years of my career were maybe the last easy five years in newspapers. From 2003 to 2008, the Missouri paper I worked for toyed with innovative design, let me spend a year reporting a single story, had a committee to attract young readers and treated the internet as an afterthought. 

I spent the second five years of my career, which began with the Great Recession, at a nonprofit digital newsroom in St. Louis. There, we listened to the community through something called the Public Insight Network; partnered with other media and community institutions to cover big issues including race, immigration, aging and the census; and every year we held a gala for supporters. 

I’d never seen so many fur coats. 

Now, in what’s almost my eighth year at Poynter, there’s more and more blurring between those two worlds as for-profit newsrooms start making philanthropy part of how they make money. I don’t see any fur coats, thank goodness, but I do see newsrooms that only ever asked for subscriptions or advertisements starting to ask for donations. 

I wrote about that today and appreciate what The Pivot Fund's Tracie Powell said about the opportunity philanthropy now has to shake up journalism.  She said:

“We cannot invest in organizations that do not believe in hiring staffs that reflect their communities. We cannot do that again. We can not invest in news outlets that only consider serving a segment of the population, and that’s always white, affluent communities. We cannot repeat that mistake. It cannot be journalism as usual and it cannot be philanthropy as usual.”

Want more? Check out this piece over at Better News on how The Post and Courier in Charleston brought in $1 million through philanthropy.

Another very recent example of for-profits working with philanthropy – Earlier this month, Advance Publications’ Alabama Media Group launched Education Lab, “an ambitious move into community-funded journalism, with coverage of Alabama schools and children supported by philanthropic funding.”

Welcome to the club. It’s a growing one.

While you’re here:

• Read this follow-up by my colleague Angela Fu on the NewsGuild’s report on harassment at the Pittsburgh Guild.

• Learn more about LMA’s 2021 Local News Fund. There’s an informational webinar later this week.

• Sign up to attend Lenfest News Philanthropy Network’s November summit.

• Follow the work of Tracie Powell’s Pivot Fund by signing up for the newsletter.

• Learn more about foundation and donor support at Better News.

• Hey newsrooms, Report for America’s deadline is Sept. 30!

• Congrats to the recipients of API’s Local News Ideas-to-Action Fund.

• Congrats to the 24 news organizations that are part of LION’s second Google News Initiative Startup Boot Camp.

• Read Elahe Izadi over at The Washington Post on how “The Indianapolis Star showed Simone Biles the ‘magnitude’ of gymnastics abuse.”

• Learn about the GroundTruth Project’s grant from a cryptocurrency-backed community fund.

• Speaking of cryptocurrency, which my 14-year-old understands much better than I do, a former newsprint mill in Washington will apparently become the home of a massive mining operation. 

• Check out the Tampa Bay Times’ Community Reader Panel.

• This week in the Tampa Bay Times, I wrote an obit about a woman who was breaking glass ceilings decades ago.

• And finally, I was a judge for Current’s Local That Works contest, and here are our five finalists. They stood out not just for stellar journalism, but for work that is working really hard to be part of, listen to, learn from and serve their communities. 

That’s it for me. Last week I pooh-poohed September Halloween decorators. Now, I’m falling under their spell but trying to hold firm.

Think of me,

Kristen