‘The Next Journalism,’ and EdNC’s commitment to leadership
Tom Rosenstiel, the founder and former director of media studies at the Pew Research Center and former executive director of the American Press Institute, has recently published a book, “The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy.”
In a chapter titled, “Beyond storytelling” and a section titled “Track how journalism is helping,” he shares the story of EdNC, concluding, “By having a clear goal of a public benefit, and designed by people largely outside journalism, a little-known nonprofit startup has created a serious educational publication that is making a difference.”
Bill Burke, who founded The Optimist Institute after a long career in the media, also recently interviewed me for his podcast, “Blue Sky.”
Among many things, we talked about an analysis this past February from the Pew-Knight Initiative finding a majority of Americans (57%) express low confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public.
At EdNC, our leadership to act in the best interests of the public starts with mindset and the importance of investing in journalists as leaders who are equipped and capable of aligning leadership of the self, the organization, and society, as called for by the Aspen Institute.
The second step involves organizational psychology and development and designing the day-to-day practice of journalism in service of our mission and our audience.
“The journalism of listening and seeing well requires time,” Pope Francis has said. “We need journalists who are willing to ‘wear out the soles of their shoes’, to get out of the newsroom, to walk around the city, to meet people, to assess the situations in which we live in our time.”
The third step involves having a theory of change ensuring community-centered, asset-oriented, inclusive journalism and impact.
Our documentary that follows an academic year at a community school, which recently was honored by the N.C. Press Association with first place for video and is now airing on PBS North Carolina, is a great example. It took more than a year to make and cost more than $50,000, and it is exactly the kind of community-first storytelling to which we aspire.
In service of democracy
What does it mean for EdNC and other outlets to strive to ensure our work is in service to democracy?
It starts with owning that not all news carries a public benefit.
Since our beginning, we set out to build and invest in an architecture of participation. From content inception to distribution to impact, our work is in service to our mission and our audience.
Here are the questions we ask ourselves every step of the way.
What is our mission? I read our mission at the beginning of every meeting of our team, board, and strategic council.
Operating as a nonprofit carries a higher responsibility given the public’s trust in us and the benefit we receive of not paying taxes. Do we understand and implement with fidelity our fiduciary responsibilities, including the duties of care and loyalty?
This article on “measuring the impact of ideas” reminds us that operating as a nonprofit does not relieve us of the responsibility to ensure our work intersects with demand and to strive for our work to be better than elsewhere in the market.
What is our statement on journalistic independence?
What is our child safeguarding policy?
Have our leaders and team been trained on the fault lines that have historically been present in journalism?
Are we wrestling with the consequences of extractive journalism, and has our team been trained in conscious inclusion?
Can we explain our approach to strengthening democracy across four dimensions: the people, the organization, the communities served, and the systems impacted?
“Based on the Maynard Institute’s experience working with news organizations across the country,” they recently found, “EdNC has developed one of the more mature, integrated, and operational approaches to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in journalism. Rather than treating these concepts as separate initiatives, the organization has embedded them into leadership, journalism, organizational systems, and community relationships.”
Are we conducting an ongoing content audit of both individual articles and the content holistically?
When we work with communities who have been marginalized or harmed by the media or are just new to the media, are we offering a training on knowing your rights when working with the media, even us?
Are we sharing our platforms to elevate as many voices as possible? Do we offer trainings on how to write a perspective or op-ed?
Recently, for example, EdNC published this perspective authored by two LatinxEd fellows. Andrea Freile, the executive director of LatinxEd, reached out to us post publication, thanking us for Derick Lee’s leadership in training them on the process. “It’s just so beautiful to see that partnership,” she said.
What is our policy on the allowable uses of artificial intelligence?
Do we have a way to track and report the good — and bad — ripple effects of its work?
We hope other outlets will ask themselves these questions.
We hope funders will ask the outlets they invest in these questions.
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EdNC’s commitment to the public interest
EdNC’s mission has not changed since we launched in 2015, and it has never been more important for all journalism — and especially journalism funded by philanthropy — to be accountable to a mission.
None of our content is behind a paywall, which means any reader with access to the internet can access our articles regardless of socioeconomic status.
Our mission requires us to imagine and publish the content that will move our mission, not the content that will drive clicks. A number of online vendors allow you to track which outlets have stable pageviews over time and which outlets depend on content that perpetuates the industry’s “if it bleeds it leads” reputation with the accompanying traffic spikes.
Neither in our Monday meetings to chart EdNC’s content for the week nor on our 4:30 daily editorial calls do we feel pressure to sensationalize what we are reporting on or get a story out that isn’t properly sourced.
Our DC to NC coverage uses an approach to journalism that treats news as the first draft of history. In these articles, we identify the responsible leaders, the actions being taken, and the legal authority being cited with links to primary sources. For-profit outlets too often cannot afford to link to primary sources given the likelihood that it will drive the audience off site.
“I commend you for your well structured and concise articles about the issues and current events happening within the North Carolina education system. It has been refreshing to read them truly due to the linked attachments to primary sources and supporting articles. I also appreciate the straightforward description of what is happening within the world, which excludes biased perspectives.”
Sabree Flood, North Carolina educator
Because of our commitment to this approach and Google prioritizing trusted journalistic practices like this in its algorithm, our coverage of what’s happening in DC and the impact on states has led to more and more of our audience being from outside of North Carolina — 54% last year and 51% so far this year.
While our reporters surface issues through their news coverage, our public policy analysts conduct mixed methods research on those issues prompting change.
This part of our work is a difference-maker. For example, our recent series on how community colleges are expanding childcare access and affordability has led to philanthropic investments in the N.C. Community System and the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.
It costs EdNC about $200,000 annually to show up in person in all 100 counties to build relationships and tell stories. The transition of superintendents, presidents, executive directors, and other leaders make the building of relationships a continuous, ongoing process for us. We have a spreadsheet of the deep relationships we have built in all 100 counties since our inception that informs not just our work but the work of philanthropists and policyshapers statewide. Google News Initiative told us back in the pandemic that they did not know of another outlet with a statewide approach like ours, and ours has only strengthened since then. Our reporters are encouraged to spend travel dollars locally by investing in local businesses and places to stay as we go.
Our charge to cover the whole state and the whole education continuum serves as a natural distributor of both the spotlight and impact our stories have.
Beyond democracy: minimizing harm
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics requires us to minimize the harm we do in doing the work of journalism.
The code requires us to treat sources, subjects, colleagues, and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.
It says, “Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.”
It requires us to show compassion.
It requires us to consider cultural differences.
For reporters and outlets covering students and schools, minimizing harm requires more. Reporters in schools need to be trained to observe what’s happening in classrooms and schools, including student safety, observations of teaching and instruction, student engagement, and the learning environment, with supports in place to ensure the reporters understand what they are seeing.
When outlets do harm, too often they do not understand how to assume and bear the responsibility of the repair then required.
This trust framework, recently released by the Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute, echoes our commitment to be community-focused and to minimize harm. “Avoids publishing just to be first,” says the framework, “and respects the personal privacy of sources and community unless there’s clear public
interest.”
Beyond storytelling
The importance of an archive
Steve Johnston is my favorite EdNC reader. Steve is the former copy editor of The Charlotte Observer, and when his emails hit my inbox they are the kind of dopamine rush I think many editor-in-chiefs get from those traffic spikes. Sometimes the email is a copy edit we missed. Sometimes it is tougher feedback, much like Rolfe Neill used to share with me.
Recently, Steve sent me an email about our responsibility to meet the needs of subject-specific searchers.
He called our 140-plus topic categories “one of the finest illustrations of the scope of EdNC’s mission and the breadth of its contribution to NC journalism.”
We are adding a link to our topics page in our website header and redesigning our topics page in response.
Collectively, our team and the more than 1,700 other authors we have published since our founding are writing the history of education in North Carolina.
Offering strategic support
Both because of the trust we have built and because we have been in so many schools, we see firsthand the challenges students and educators face.
We know there are better ways to address those challenges than hit pieces. A solutions journalism approach is always a better way.
But often we have found that the best way to address those challenges involve strategies beyond journalism.
Addressing inequity
Through a grant from the Kenan Charitable Trust, James Ford was on contract with the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research from 2017-2020 leading a statewide study of equity in our schools. The Center at that time was affiliated with EdNC. Ford launched the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED) during the grant, and he continues to serve as the executive director.
Raising money for others
I grew up with a (mis)perception that executive directors could only raise money for their own organization. A funder called me one day and asked me to research and write a $1 million grant about telehealth in schools for another organization. For many years, it was the largest grant I ever wrote. That grant more quickly shape shifted access to telehealth for students than journalism ever could.
Support during crisis
When education journalist Amanda Ripley — the author of “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why” — talks about leadership in crisis, she describes three phases of disbelief, deliberation, and the move to decisive action. This framework has proven invaluable to our team.
Crises have accelerated our need and willingness to try and provide strategic support, during the pandemic and then in Canton and then in Hurricane Helene.
In 2023, when Pactiv Evergreen closed a 100-year old papermill in Canton, it was the state’s largest layoff of the year. Dr. Shelley White, the president of Haywood Community College, invited EdNC to pilot an innovative model of crisis intervention to provide support for local leaders to protect educational anchor institutions, including early childcare capacity, the school district, the early college, and the community college. In December 2023, the Haywood County Commission acknowledged EdNC’s role in the Canton recovery. Most importantly, part of our approach helped reduce the number of suicides after the closing to zero.
After Hurricane Helene hit, EdNC conducting a needs assessment to identify counties hit hardest. We then provided ongoing coverage of the region and strategic support to the small, rural counties of Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, and Watauga, including using the content for stories to also provide strategic support, totaling more than $5,787,740 in grant requests and $4,044,740 raised to date. The N.C. Press Association has awarded EdNC its public service award for our coverage and strategic support of the region since Hurricane Helene.
Ongoing partner support
Derick Lee leads our support of annually identified leaders and organizations through five key levers:
Amplification | Inclusion in newsletters, posting and boosting on social media
Content | Profiles of leaders, event coverage, publication of perspectives, creation of social first and multimedia content
Leadership | Monthly or quarterly check ins
Financial | Sponsorships, grant writing, sharing other financial assets
Resources | Sharing relationships and networks, sharing our team’s capacity and expertise
Other leadership support
EdNC builds and maintains websites for other education nonprofits. When organizations experience intense growth or other distress, we support their organizational development. We maintain a spreadsheet of all the investments we have made in leadership development both inside and outside EdNC. We invest in pilots, for example the North Phillips School of Innovation to the WNC resilience project to middle school students having access to community college classes.
Audiences want journalists to be ‘stay helpers’
In a play written by high school students after Hurricane Helene, four reporters covering the hurricane serve as narrators, but they are also called out in the play by community members for how they showed up in communities after the storm.
“You know, it would go a lot faster if you would help us,” a student says to one reporter.
“How bad is it?” another reporter asks the father of a family in the play. “Look around,” the father responds.
Later in the play, as a reporter begins to help, a community member asks, “Are you a day helper or a stay helper?”
It is both a privilege and a responsibility to engage in the practice of journalism. It is even more of a privilege and a responsibility to always ask what more can we do individually and collectively for the public and democracy.
At EdNC, we aspire to help, as Rosenstiel’s book on “The Next Journalism”, Burke’s leadership on optimism, our audience, and these students call us to do.