Henrico Citizen among 20 publications nationally selected for sustainability lab
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The Henrico Citizen is one of 20 publications in the United States selected to participate in the Report for America/Local Media Association Sustainability Lab, a new partnership between the two organizations and Meta Journalism Project that is designed to help accelerate philanthropic support and revenue development for local newsrooms.
The Citizen and the other participants in the lab will get a deep dive in best practices for fundraising using approaches developed through LMA's Lab for Journalism Funding, which has helped 36 newsrooms raise more than $7 million to support local news.
Support from Meta Journalism Project will enable newsrooms in the lab, run by LMA for RFA partner media organizations, to complete a six-month best practices course on philanthropy and other revenue strategies. The curriculum is based on lessons from LMA’s Pathways to Philanthropy Playbook, as well as the Meta Branded Content Project and Reader Revenue programs. The lab will also leverage Report for America’s track record of supporting and training local newsroom leaders to venture into local fundraising, often for the first time.
“This is a crucial moment for local journalism,” said Frank Mungeam, LMA chief innovation officer. “We look forward to sharing with these 20 newsrooms the emerging best practices and strategies for sustaining essential reporting through philanthropy and other revenue streams.”
Said Citizen Publisher Tom Lappas: “We’re proud and thrilled to have been selected to be part of this lab and excited for the opportunity to learn how to build upon the sustainability efforts we’ve implemented during the past two years. As a 20-year-old independent news organization that made the transition from a print-plus-digital format to a fully digital set of platforms at the outset of COVID and has seen our average monthly readership more than triple during that time, we’re particularly interested in finding new ways to foster reader revenue streams. We’re looking forward to implementing the lessons we learn as part of our enhanced community engagement process so that the Henrico Citizen can serve this community for years to come.”
The Citizen is one of just two Virginia newsrooms that is part of Report for America, a national journalism service organization that helps place full-time reporters in local newsrooms and helps pay a portion of their salaries for as long as three years. Citizen Education Reporter Anna Bryson, who joined the staff in June, is an RFA corp member.
“We’re excited for this important collaboration with a great peer in the battle to fix the local news crisis,” said Todd Franko, RFA director of local sustainability and development. “Report for America has been a fundraising tool for more than 200 U.S. newsrooms in the last five years. This opportunity with LMA and Meta allows us to engage in a new, vital way. We’re grateful for this opportunity.”
Other participating newsrooms are the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting; the Bay City News; Black Voice News; The Colorado Sun; Dallas Free Press; The Daily Herald (Washington); El Paso Matters; Enlace Latino NC; The Gazette (Iowa); IndyStar; inewsource; The Land; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; North Country Public Radio; PublicSource; Richland Source; Voice of OC; The Washington Informer; and WKRG-TV.
The RFA/LMA Sustainability Lab will run from April through September, with fundraising completed by the end of 2022. LMA and RFA will partner to share case studies on news organization lessons and successes that can be applied across the news industry.
