Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Journalism: What Funders Can Do

"There is really no way to overstate the importance of representative journalism."

Efforts to build diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in journalism are led by both news outlets that specifically serve diverse populations and by field-strengthening organisations that provide support to these outlets and/or to journalists from diverse backgrounds. Produced by Dot Connector Studio for Democracy Fund, this report explores the work of organisations seeking to build DEI in journalism, and proposes concrete ways that funders can increase their support for this work.

According to American Society of News Editors (ASNE)'s 2019 Newsroom Diversity Survey, people of colour comprise 21.9% of salaried newsroom workers among the organisations that responded to the survey. The ASNE survey figure is in comparison to the approximately 40% proportion of the general US population who identify as something other than "White alone, not Hispanic or Latino". The authors stress: "The failure of newsrooms to fully reflect their communities, to build a culture of inclusion that supports and retains diverse staff, and to foster equitable models of reporting that reflect the truth of people's lived experiences is undermining trust in media and risking the sustainability of the press."

To explore how funders might move forward to ensure that journalism serves and represents the diversity within the United States (US), the authors analysed funding trends for nonprofits working specifically to improve DEI within journalism for the period 2013-2017. To do so, they looked at Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 resources, as well as data from the Foundation Maps for Media Funding by Candid.

The report found that:

• DEI-focused organisations receive a very small slice of journalism funding. Of the US$1.1 billion that went into journalism more generally in US in the time period studied, only 8.1% went to DEI-focused efforts. The authors add: "To invest fully in changing structural and institutional inequity in journalism, funders must consider questions around how gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity intersect."
• Funders are focused on larger, better-resourced organisations, not a diverse pool of smaller grantees. And while some organisations receive funds from multiple foundations, foundations are less likely to support many different organisations across the field at the same time. "To be clear, the entire field - including large and small organizations, and those that focus on traditional journalism as well as those with a more expansive focus - needs more support."
• 74% of revenue for DEI-focused field-building organisations comes from grants and contributions. "[T]he outsized representation of foundation funding in the budgets of these organizations means that foundations must be intentional to ensure that grantmaking is inclusive and based on trust."

The report proposes actions that funders can take:

• Funders can engage in focused collaboration with other funders. For example, the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund (REJF) includes Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Google News Initiative, and the News Integrity Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. REJF is committed to: investing in news organisations led by and serving communities of colour; supporting news projects that provide information to communities that face the greatest barriers in access to news; and strengthening the organisations that are developing creative and innovative ways to reach communities with relevant news.
• Funders can share more resources across a diverse pool of grantees. Democracy Fund's Journalism DEI Tracker is a tool that helps funders identify prospective grantees and find useful resources to share with current grantees. The tool includes: over 70 organisations and outlets in the field; professional development and training opportunities for journalists from diverse backgrounds; a list of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges with journalism and communications programmes to include in recruitment efforts to ensure a more diverse pipeline; and resources for journalism organisations to promote respectful and inclusive coverage.

"In addition to the recommendations in this report, funders can prioritize listening to those closest to the communities they seek to support and can use that knowledge to identify ways to share more resources and power with the field."