Report for America boosts local journalism support in NC and nationally

The nonprofit Report for America, which bills itself as a "national service organization" addressing the nation's local news crisis by funding local journalism positions, will greatly expand its footprint in North Carolina and nationally in 2020, the organization announced early this week.

Ten organizations and 13 NC-focused beats (some new and some continuing) were on the RFA list. Nationally, RFA plans to help fund 250 journalism positions in 2020, its third year: four times as many as in 2019. North Carolina will see an equivalent jump from this year.

Applications are open now for journalists who want to fill the new reporting and visual journalism roles.

North Carolina newsrooms selected to host 2020 RFA positions:

The Associated Press (Raleigh) —NC state legislature, especially healthcare, education and prisons. (Part of a national plan funding 14 new AP statehouse reporters)
Carolina Public Press (Asheville) — Voting systems and election fraud (more details in the nonprofit newsroom's announcement)
The Charlotte Observer: Two beats: The status of poor communities in a prosperous city, and the affordable housing crisis in Charlotte (Observer story)
La Noticia (Charlotte) — Affordable housing around Charlotte
The News & Observer (Raleigh) — Three beats: Housing, gentrification and legislative accountability, minority communities and watchdog reporting about Hurricane Florence recovery (N&O story)
NC Health News (Chapel Hill): Maternal health, prison health and other topics
WFAE/ Charlotte Mecklenburg Library / Digital Public Library of America (Charlotte) — Two positions for a partnership using both radio and Wikipedia to fill news deserts, via a WFAE reporter and library-based community editor
WFAE and La Noticia (Charlotte) — immigration and deportation (La Noticia story, in Spanish)
WRAL-TV — Eastern North Carolina

The grants support half the cost of each new position; local organizations are responsible for part of the remaining cost and raising philanthropic funding to cover the rest.

The RFA approach, an initiative of a larger nonprofit called the GroundTruth Project, connects to a bigger trend in the quest to fund independent journalism: Newsrooms, including for-profit organizations that have seen major job cuts, are turning increasingly to philanthropy.

McClatchy, for instance, recently announced an effort to raise money for 10 community-funded "journalism lab" projects among the company's 30 newspapers nationally. As Nieman Lab also reported, the move picks up on successes in Seattle, Boston and elsewhere in developing philanthropic support for legacy news operations.

The N&O will incorporate its two new Report for America positions into a larger "Growth & Housing Lab" launching in 2020 to cover rapid growing the Triangle region, according to the N&O story announcing the RFA grant.

In Charlotte, public radio's WFAE will team up with partners with two separate RFA grants. One will support a collaboration with La Noticia, the Spanish-language newsroom, to report on immigration and deportation.

Another will team WFAE with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (each will have an RFA-funded staffer for the collaboration) on a fresh approach to informing Charlotteans about local government and the political process. Ju-Don Marshall, WFAE chief content officer, shared some details with me via email:

"The reporter, who will work for WFAE on what we're calling the civics beat, will be partially embedded (two to three days a week) at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library so that he/she can interact directly with library patrons to determine what kind of information/news they are interested in," Marshall wrote. "The reporter will also work closely with the library-based corps member, who we're calling the Community Wikipedia editor, and the Wikimedian-in-residence at the Digital Public Library of America.

"The idea is that the reporting will help feed the work of the library's Wikipedia editor. Both local corps members, the reporter and community editor, will have wraparound support from the library's community engagement team and the staff at WFAE to also facilitate community events aimed at boosting engagement and news literacy around these important topics."

As RFA and the local news organizations begin taking applications to fill the 2020 journalist roles, those newsrooms will be raising money for their share of salaries. A year goes by quickly, so news organizations also will be thinking ahead on what comes after the RFA grant ends.

In seeking and accepting funding for news, organizations can draw on lessons from public media and the growing network of nonprofit newsrooms on managing both the how-to-raise-money questions and the need for structure around editorial independence and donor communication.

Some resources for newsrooms and funders:

"How for-profit newsrooms can adopt API's nonprofit funding guidelines" — American Press Institute, 2017
"Guidance on philanthropic funding of media and news" — two sets of guidelines: one addressing newsrooms, another developed for funders, API, 2017
"Survival tips for nonprofit newsrooms: Fundraising, membership and sustainable models" — Global Investigative Journalism Network from its recent conference, also applicable to for-profits' fundraising efforts
Model donor transparency and editorial independence policies — Institute for Nonprofit News

New NC Local editor: Ryan Tuck

I'm delighted to announce that Ryan Tuck, who brings deep experience as a journalist (Bloomberg, Wilmington StarNews and others), lawyer, digital news leader (McClatchy, Southern Pines Pilot) and strategist, will take over NC Local beginning in January. Tuck, who earned his undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a Triangle-based independent consultant currently working with EducationNC and the UNC-Knight Foundation Table Stakes program, among others. Look for a full introduction and a glimpse of what's next in the Dec. 17 edition of NC Local. Meantime, check out Ryan's bio on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

Storylines

Noise about Silent Sam; Andrew Carter on Riley Howell; "Away Message" podcast news; DTH breaks investigation story

After WRAL and The News & Observer posted the first stories on Thanksgiving Eve about a settlement between the University of North Carolina and a Confederate organization over the statue called Silent Sam, additional facts and questions continued to surface on Twitter and through media reports:
- On Twitter, news that the university would give the NC Sons of Confederate Veterans organization access to a charitable trust worth $2.5 million, along with the gift of the statue, sparked questions and criticism. WRAL's Sarah Krueger posted pages from the settlement documents beginning Saturday.
- Picking up on tweets by local attorney T. Greg Doucette, IndyWeek's Thomasi McDonald dug deeper and posted a story Sunday evening reporting that the settlement had been signed before the actual lawsuit against UNC was filed.
- WRAL and The N&O posted similar stories Monday. The N&O piece included text of an email sent to NC Sons of Confederate Veterans members by the organization's "commander," which Doucette had posted to a Dropbox account only to face a copyright challenge by the email's apparent author.
- Also Monday, a Daily Tar Heel story addressed some of the many questions surrounding the settlement and lawsuit, along with campus reaction. UNC System leaders, including interim President William Roper and BOG Chairman Randy Ramsey, haven't spoken publicly about their decision.
- On Tuesday, The New York Times published an op-ed, "Why Did UNC Give Millions To a Neo-Confederate Group?" by William Sturkey, an assistant professor of history who teaches a new course at UNC-Chapel Hill, Race & Memory, launched this year as part of a larger teaching initiative in the wake of the Silent Sam protests.
Andrew Carter's recent narrative piece for The Charlotte Observer and News & Observer on the family of Riley Howell, killed a year ago while trying to stop a gunman at UNC-Charlotte, reflects both care and craft. Carter structured the story around the family's experiences since the 21-year-old from Waynesville died, bringing both keen observation and empathy to his reporting on intensely difficult and private moments.
Our State magazine's Jeremy Markovich has wrapped Season 3 of his "Away Message" podcast with an episode on Jeff Postell, the then-rookie cop who captured convicted bomber Eric Rudolph in Murphy in 2003. Season 4 is already in the works, "all about the Mountains-to-the-Sea Trail," Markovich reports, and Our State has expanded into longer-form video.
The Daily Tar Heel reported Tuesday that UNC-Chapel Hill women's rowing head coach Sarah Haney had resigned, five days after the DTH broke a story about a university Title IX investigation involving the program.

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Bulletin board

PolitiFactNC moves to WRAL, Qcitymetro's new initiative, Ida B. Wells Society job, Williams and Bruno honored

David Menconi, the 2019 Piedmont Laureate and former N&O arts and music reporter. will moderate a discussion in Chapel Hill tonight titled "How to cover politics and stay sane: An election year preview." The event, at 7 pm at the Chapel Hill Library, also will feature independent journalist Kirk Ross, USA Today political writer Steven Petrow and reporter Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan from The N&O and Herald-Sun.
PolitiFact, the national fact-checking project founded by Duke's Bill Adair, has moved its Truth-o-Meter and North Carolina partnership to WRAL from its previous affiliation with The News & Observer, and The N&O has rebranded its efforts as The N&O Fact-Checking Project. (PolitiFact reporter Andy Specht tweeted earlier about his move to WRAL). Other media can use many of the fact checks: At WRAL, senior producer Ashley Talley says PolitiFactNC emails most of the state's newspapers, news radio and TV stations links to the web story and video the day after they air. Those outlets can use any of the material as long as they credit WRAL and PolitiFactNC. However, WRAL excludes other Triangle media from the sharing, which limits the project's impact in the politics-heavy capital region. The N&O invites questions or suggestions for fact-checks via an online form and offers a contact link for outlets interested in republishing its fact-checks.

Charlotte's Qcitymetro.com announced the launch of its new journalism initiative covering the city's Historic West End this week with an invitation for community input. Qcitymetro is using the Hearken platform to gather questions from residents as it begins its reporting, supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation.
There's still one more day to apply for the new job of director of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which works to train and support people of color in investigative journalism. The director, based at UNC's journalism school, will report to the society's leadership and oversee the group's programming and operations; find more information and apply here.
WFAE public radio recently honored longtime Charlotte Observer editorial writer Ed Williams with its inaugural First Amendment Award. The station's Lisa Worf interviewed Williams, also a former WFAE board chair, about his newspaper years and the state of journalism.
WSOC reporter Joe Bruno was included in Forbes magazine's new "30 under 30" lists for 2020. The online feature highlights outstanding people in a number of fields. Bruno was recognized in the media category for his work in covering the 2018 Bladen County election fraud scandal.

Worth reading

A former public official sees the other side of records delays

Former Charlotte City Council member Kenny Smith ran into an experience familiar to many reporters — the failure of a public agency to turn over public records promptly, or to explain its delay — and wrote about it in an op-ed for The Charlotte Observer. Smith notes that the city's public records portal (like others used by UNC and various municipalities) acknowledges requests promptly, but provides no information on status or reasons. (Hat tip: Rick Thames)