By Ellen Clegg
Tracie Powell founded The Pivot Fund three years ago with a mission. Combining a deep background in philanthropy, journalism, law and racial equity, she launched her novel venture philanthropy organization that is “dedicated to investing $500 million into independent BIPOC-led community news.”
Now, she is drawing industry attention to the gaping inequities that BIPOC nonprofit newsroom founders encounter in the world of philanthropic giving. In a commentary this week for Poynter Online, she highlights an exchange on X between David Simon, the white journalist who became known for his work on the TV show “The Wire,” and Lisa Snowden, a Black woman who is editor and co-founder of the Baltimore Beat.
If you haven’t yet read it, the Beat describes itself as “a Black-led, Black-controlled nonprofit newspaper and media outlet. Our mission is to honor the tradition of the Black press and the spirit of alt-weekly journalism with reporting that focuses on community, questions power structures, and prioritizes thoughtful engagement with our readers.”
And in keeping with those storied traditions, the Beat is indeed a lively read, with stories as varied as a report on demonstrations calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, an examination of the movie “Origin,” and a calendar of government and community meetings. Snowden partnered with a community group called Open Works of Baltimore to build a special kind of news box for its biweekly print edition. Called “Beat Boxes,” the street-corner boxes house the newspaper but have compartments on the top that allow residents to stash items for people in need – think anything from canned goods to a pack of diapers.
But back to that exchange on X. When David Smith, chairman of the right-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting network, and conservative columnist Armstrong Williams bought The Baltimore Sun, the announcement provided a fund-raising opportunity for the two nonprofit newsrooms covering the city — The Baltimore Banner and the Beat — which stress independent coverage rather than hewing to a partisan line.
When Snowden wrote an anodyne tweet directed at Simon’s account and linked to the Beat’s donation page — a common practice for nonprofit fundraising appeals — Simon accused the Beat of, in his words, a racially based shakedown. Then he blocked the Beat.
As Powell astutely points out, this episode highlights the disparity in philanthropic support for emerging nonprofit newsrooms led by BIPOC founders, and those led by white founders who live in wealthier communities or have more robust networks to tap. Or both.
Earlier this month, The Pivot Fund invested $150,000 in the Beat. The Beat also raised $1 million in 2022. While this seems like a generous level of funding, Powell contrasts it with the Banner. The Banner also launched in 2022 with $50 million and the backing of hotel magnate Stewart Bainum, who has talked about giving the newsroom four or five years of on-ramp.
In my reporting for our book, “What Works in Community News,” Wendi C. Thomas, the editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, talked about the dismissive and doubting culture that BIPOC founders can face when they approach philanthropic organizations. Thomas isn’t one to complain — she’s more apt to head to a local courtroom with a reporter’s notebook or simply put her head down and write. As she put it: “The evidence-based rigor we demand in other sectors doesn’t seem to apply here.”
When I traveled to Memphis to report on media enterprises in that city of 630,000, I encountered this firsthand, over drinks at a local restaurant. The man sitting across from me was voluble and highly confident. He was white, and he was sharing his observations about the rich media ecosystem that has sprouted amid the ruins of the once-robust legacy newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, which has been hollowed out by the Gannett chain. He ticked off an impressive list: The Daily Memphian, Chalkbeat, a string of business publications, public television, public radio, and broadcast TV newsrooms. In addition, The Institute for Public Service Reporting, at the University of Memphis, was breaking investigative stories.
It was an affable discussion, a quick overview. Then he asked me who else I was meeting with during my visit. I said I had been invited to a briefing at the offices of MLK50.
He looked surprised and said: “That advocacy site?”
But MLK50, a nonprofit, is not what I’d call an advocacy site. It doesn’t endorse candidates for election. There are guest essays, but the focus is on investigative reporting and explanatory journalism. Thomas and her executive editor, Adrienne Johnson Martin, focus their reporting team on issues like public health, workplace safety, affordable housing and the racial wealth gap. In a city that is 66% Black, Thomas noted, that makes some observers view MLK50 as a niche publication.
As she told an audience at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, in 2022: “When I worked at the daily paper in Memphis, if you made a list of people who were quoted on the front page, maybe 95% would be white. Maybe 85% were men.” Invoking the ghost of Walter Lippmann, she continued: “Objectivity, as a lot of journalists have said, just meant cis, hetero, American-born, able-bodied, likely Protestant white men. That demographic is not the majority of Memphis. So, if we were to reflect that position, we would be a niche publication.”
The 2023 report called “The State of Local News,” issued by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, warns that this divide is growing wider in underserved urban communities and in rural areas. That, in turn, creates an information vacuum that opens the door for disinformation and conspiracy theories to sashay in via platforms. As the Medill authors write: “This partitioning of our citizenry poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online.”
Equity in the world of philanthropic funding is part of the answer.
