Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere

🌠 TNC’s resolutions for 2025: Focus on founders, be vulnerable and transparent, and find like-minded partners

By Amy L. Kovac-Ashley

When I think of what’s to come in 2025, the top two feelings that come to mind are trepidation and hopefulness, two seemingly incongruous responses to what’s happening in the world. On the national level, we are right to be concerned about the effects of the new administration on the role and functions of the press in all corners of the country. But it is at the local and community level where I and we at Tiny News Collective look for and hold onto hope — hope as a verb, not just a noun. As Irish writer Seamus Heaney, paraphrasing the first president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel, said, “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.” 

In 2024, we have come a long way, and we are prepared to go much further together in 2025: TNC membership has more than tripled this year, and we expect that growth to continue, smartly, into the new year. We’ve got new and improved infrastructure and staffing (thanks, Andrea Faye Hart and Erica Perel) to support that growth. And we are building on a strong foundation of local partnerships.

No matter what happens in the country at large, people will always find ways to come together in community to make a difference. That will include more people raising their hands to provide quality news and information with integrity that brings people together. Doing work from the ground up is essential: It’s where change happens and can take the deepest root.

So as the calendar turns to 2025, we wanted to share a few new year’s resolutions with you all. And we want you to hold us accountable:

1. Focus on founders.

We are a membership organization, and our members are the beating heart of what we do. 💖 In a recent member call, we discussed the many kinds of impact TNC entrepreneurs are having on their communities and the wins of this year. We also had very real conversations about how hard this work is. We are so excited about our recent funding from MacArthur Foundation (see item below) because it allows us to provide the in-depth support that founders need most, including catalytic grants (i.e., funding). Everything we do in 2025 will be in service of our founders, who are deeply in service to their communities, and we look forward to welcoming many more entrepreneurs into the fold next year.

And of course we will celebrate their achievements along the way. Milestones come in different shapes and sizes for founders of small indie outlets, and we are developing a unique metrics dashboard for small newsrooms. Right-sizing the metrics that matter for this part of the field is necessary: For example, TNC member Woodbury News Net in Minnesota recently hit 2,200 newsletter subscribers and is now able to hire a new part-time editor. That might not mean much to larger newsrooms, but in our community that’s a big win! 

2. Be vulnerable and transparent.

One thing I love about our community of founders is their ability to be vulnerable together about what’s working and what isn’t — and to be transparent with each other and to their communities. In our last newsletter, our membership director Andrea Faye Hart wrote about the importance of generative space that allows founders to share their experiences in a brave way. It’s refreshing to hear someone say, “I recently got a grant, and this work is challenging” – holding nuance in the situation in a way that others can relate to.

My wish is for more vulnerability and truth-sharing in our community — and in the journalism field at large — where people feel comfortable and confident sharing what’s working and what’s challenging. With transparency, we can start to make real change. A good example of that was a recent post by TNC member The 51st that explained their finances and need for funding directly with their audience in detail and exactly why they need to reach 2,000 paying members.  Vulnerability and transparency is what we should look for in the new year, from a viewpoint of strength, not weakness.

3. Find more like-minded partners.

One of my own personal resolutions is to keep being curious and looking for opportunities for our members through new partnerships within and outside the journalism world. How can we weave ourselves into the fabric of civic engagement organizations? I think a lot about public libraries and the role they play in communities, helping inform people and also caring for them. I would like us to pursue partnerships with more like-minded, mission-aligned organizations that aren’t connected to journalism only.

As we leave 2024, we choose to lean into hopefulness and the power of community. We thank our staff, our members and our network of supporters, including folks who subscribe to this newsletter, for walking this journey so far and ask you to keep walking with us into 2025. We wish you a happy and healthy new year, and we'll see you on the other side, as the work and the journey continues. 💙❄️

TNC News

MacArthur Foundation announces $2.275 million grant for TNC and its members

We are pleased to announce that Tiny News Collective has received a transformative grant of $2.275 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to boost our internal infrastructure and the services we provide to community-based media entrepreneurs. This historic grant is designed to nourish the seeding of grassroots media-making and news entrepreneurship and will allow TNC to provide catalytic funding to Collective members to support their growth and sustainability.

TNC will use the funding to:

1. Provide micro-grants to TNC members to help them develop their leadership skills and build their capacity. The funds will also be used to provide assistance for members’ immediate startup needs and spark collaborative innovation among members. Nearly a third of the MacArthur funding will be re-granted to founders.
2. Build TNC’s infrastructure and capacity to support our growing community of members while continuing to lean into the mutual aid ethos that makes TNC distinct. With more capacity, we can intentionally grow our geographic scope and build local clusters of indie publishers, with an emphasis on underserved markets. 
3. Partner with other journalism support organizations and experts in journalism and civic engagement to provide more services to our members. 

Read more about this exciting announcement.

5 Questions with Samantha Carrillo of UpLift Chronicles

For our latest “5 Questions with…” feature, we talked with Samantha Anne Carrillo of UpLift Chronicles, a project of New Mexico Black Leadership Council (NMBLC). The mission of Uplift Chronicles is to provide essential information and perspectives, amplify Black and multicultural voices and narratives, and empower connection and engagement among BIPOC affinity groups in New Mexico, with a focus on the International District of Albuquerque. 

The publication started as print-only, but with the help of Tiny News and support from the New Mexico Local News Fund, it launched a regularly updated website on Ghost last August. Samantha talked about which stories have resonated with her audience, the launch of the website and their plans to start selling advertising.

Read the whole feature to learn more about Samantha’s important work with UpLift Chronicles.

Wichita Foundation renews partnership with TNC, Info Challenge grantees

One of the best partnerships in the brief history of Tiny News Collective is getting even better, with the Wichita Foundation’s Press Forward Wichita renewing and enhancing its initial investment in three Wichita news startups: Planeta Venus, TMBP Media and The SHOUT. Those startups were awarded support via the initial Info Challenge run by Wichita Foundation to identify underrepresented voices in media to create a more inclusive news landscape. 

In the second year of this partnership, TNC will use our knowledge and expertise to host strategic planning sessions with these diverse organizations as they grow out of the startup phase. Together, we’ll help these founders define sustainability on their own practical terms and define their longer-term dreams, impact.

The newsrooms will receive additional funding from Press Forward Wichita, a local news and information initiative of the Wichita Foundation. This investment will help the founders define and reach new editorial and business goals. With TNC’s assistance, they will also further develop their own leadership skills, identify and cultivate shared collective resources, do asset mapping of their stakeholders, and better understand their data and impact metrics.

Read more about the partnership.

Founder Shoutouts

Artist Pay Project gets an exhibit at the University of Michigan

🎨 People in the Ann Arbor area had a rare opportunity to see TNC member Makeda Easter, founder of art rebellion, in real life at an exhibition at the University of Michigan. Easter’s Artist Pay Project was featured in the exhibit, “Making It: $napshots from the Artist Pay Project,” with an opening night reception on Nov. 15. The project aims to shed light on financial challenges by artists, fostering a timely conversation about compensation and sustainability in the arts. 

Two TNC member launches in New Jersey

🚀 It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a drone! In this case, it’s Brunswick Bird and the Torch of Montclair that recently launched in New Jersey, just in time to suss out what’s been flying overhead. The Bird offers a newsletter to give you “everything you need to know about East Brunswick in 5 minutes or less,” while the Torch offers “layered, in-depth coverage to the issues that impact Montclair.” Congrats to both! 🎊

TBMP Media opens Left on Read bookstore in Wichita

📚 More real-world action from TNC members! Dr. Latasha Eley Kelly, a.k.a. The Millennial Black Professor, opened a new bookstore Left on Read in Wichita featuring Black authors. She plans to record live podcasts there and host other community events. Kelly also recently received a 2024 Wichita Business Journal Diversity & Inclusion Award. Go Dr. Tasha! 🎉

BoriMás, Intersection Magazine founders named as HEAL fellows

❤️‍🩹 Congratulations to Delonte Herrod of Intersection Magazine and Mariela Santos-Muñiz of BoriMás (pictured top left and bottom right above) who were named to Solutions Journalism Network’s HEAL Fellowships recently. The fellows report on, for and with young people who are facing mental health challenges and healing through innovative community responses. Delonte will report on the ways local institutions provide services to youth in Prince George’s County/Washington, D.C., while Mariela will report on art-related solutions for mental health challenges by young adults in Puerto Rico, and share art-related resources that promote their mental well-being.

Tucson Spotlight ‘breaks the mold’ in Southern Arizona

🏜️ TNC member Tucson Spotlight and founders Susan Barnett and Caitlin Schmidt got their own spotlight feature in the Arizona Sonoran News recently. They were lauded for being a women-led news outlet (with all-female staff) that has published more than 160 stories since launching on October 1. “We are the 33rd largest city in the United States, and our newspaper is a shell of what it used to be,” Schmidt said. “Are we getting to a place someday where we don’t have a newspaper anymore? I don’t know. But I do not want to live in that city.”

Resources

RJI fellowships from the Reynolds Journalism Institute
Applications are due by February 7. Remote fellows receive a $25,000 stipend and $5,000 impact bonus, and residential fellows get $100,000 for project costs and a monthly $5,000 living stipend. 

Women in Journalism Workshop, April 11 to 13, 2025, at the Reynolds Journalism Institute
An annual workshop that focuses on challenges, accomplishments and issues specific to women in the journalism industry today. Follow the link to apply to attend next year’s workshop.

How infrastructure is foundational to local news from Press Forward
Learn more about Press Forward’s open call for infrastructure grants (due January 15) and how current Press Forward funders are supporting journalism support orgs.

The Care & Collaboration Toolkit from The Appeal and Reynolds Journalism Institute
The toolkit is a practical resource for news organizations that want to better support their journalists and include them in the decisions that impact their lives and work.

Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University
A transformative learning opportunity open to journalists working in all media in every country around the world. Those selected for the program spend two full semesters at Harvard auditing classes and receive an $85,000 stipend for the year. Apply by January 31, 2025.

Knight-Wallace Fellowships at the University of Michigan
Journalists eager for growth and committed to the future of journalism can spend an academic year at the University of Michigan to access the resources of the university and dive into a journalism project. They receive an $85,000 stipend and $5,000 to cover relocation costs. Apply by February 1, 2025.

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Big Blast from Tiny News. Be sure to follow us on social media to keep up with the latest from TNC and our amazing group of founders!

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tiny-news-collective/

Follow us on X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/tinynewsco

The Big Blast Credits

Written by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley and Andrea Faye Hart