Ready to Apply?

• You are at least 18 years of age.
• You are an individual or small group of individuals.
• You are based in the United States.
• You live in or are part of the community you seek to serve.
• At least one person on your team is able to use materials in English. (We are working to get our materials translated.)
• You are able to participate remotely via the internet.
• You are not in the business of lobbying or creating content on behalf of a political candidate, politician, or political entity.
• You do not work for a state, local, or municipal government entity and are not a member of Congress.

• The organization is intended to make a long-term impact in the presence of local news providers for communities that are underserved.
• The organization cannot be a legacy publication making a digital transition.
• The organization is in pre-launch, early stages or wanting to overhaul the news org in transformative ways.

• You are immersed and connected to the community you want to serve.
• You continually seek to understand and adapt to the information needs of your community
• You have a vision for how you would approach serving the community and the potential impact you seek to have over time
• You understand the journalistic ethics involved in operating a news business
• You are prepared to strategize, grow and take responsibility for the business and team as you move from being a founder to being a leader
• You are open to learning and sharing resources with fellow founders in the Collective
• You understand your organization’s role in your ecosystem; as it relates to connecting communities, meeting information needs, holding power to account, and shifting the narrative

• It is built and managed to be a sustainable business
• It’s operated with the ambitions to grow at a rate that reflects and includes the community it serves through its staff, journalism and organizational policies
• It operates as a transparent, consistent and ethical publisher of news and information
• It is responsive to the information needs of the community in which it serves and operates with a build-test-learn mentality
• It operates in an underserved community, geography or within an under-covered issue area
• It is ready to participate in a mutual exchange of ideas, resources and skills with other indie, small publishers

To help you plan your application, we’re made a worksheet with all of the application questions and a short explanation of why we’re asking the question so you have some insight into what we’d like to learn from your answer. As we’ve said before, this application is about making sure the collective can support you where you are in your journey. We want you to feel fully prepared and supported in applying.The worksheet is available via a Google Doc template in ‘View Only’ mode. You can click ‘File’ and ‘Make a Copy’ to create your own copy to work in (and collaborate with your co-founders on).

Tiny News Collective Application Worksheet

These sessions are your opportunity to speak with the TNC team about the application process, the technology stack and the services available as part of membership in the Tiny News Collective. Starting July 2024, we will be scheduling regular, virtual Ask Me Anything sessions with our membership director. Sign up for our newsletter to register for the latest AMA.

The community canvas is a thinking exercise that will help you consider the different aspects of your community’s information needs, the challenges in meeting them and how your organization can fill a role in doing so. The canvas is the product of the expertise of Outlier Media, who are leaders in the work of understanding community information needs and developing strategies to meet them.

The canvas is an optional exercise that will help you answer questions on our application.

We schedule these on an ongoing basis. Check our announcements for the next session.

The other canvas is our Lean News Business Plan Canvas. This canvas is designed to help you think through the business aspect of starting and growing your organization.

• Our team will review the full applications to screen for our required eligibility criteria.
• Each application is assigned an ID number and a copy is created with identifying information and demographic information removed.
• • Applications from organizations with co-founders will be connected.
• Each application packet will be reviewed by a minimum of 2 reviewers.
• Following the review, the Selection Team will determine the list of founders who will be invited to interview. Interviews will be approximately 30 minutes and held with the founders and at least 2 members of the Selection Committee. The organizer may be present to facilitate the logistics.
• Following the interview round, the Selection Committee will decide whether to proceed with an application.
• Founders who are invited to join the collective will have a period of time to review our policies and documentation and make their decision.

• There are multiple staff members involved in facilitating the application process including staffing our support resources, managing the incoming applications and coordinating and facilitating the selection committee through the review process, interviews and final selections.
• We have a rotating review committee consisting of members from our team, board and group of advisors, people from outside of our organization including people not from a journalism background, and small newsroom founders.