No risk, no reward. 💰 You can learn a lot by doing, but you have to be willing to take the risk. And be patient. For nonprofit news organizations, it takes time to build earned income as a revenue stream. 🙌 Excellent conversation with Richard Tofel and Evan Smith, the founding CEO of The Texas Tribune from 2009-22 and now a senior adviser at the Emerson Collective and a professor of practice at The LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. 🧠 Smith shared many smart ideas about how nonprofit news organizations can generate earned income from events, business sponsorships, and advertising. ✅ Some highlights: "I was the cheapest man in America over the years that I ran the Tribune. Because I really did believe that, as our friend Jim Brady said recently at the Knight Foundation Media Forum, there are two paths forward for sustainability in journalism. One is bringing in more revenue and the other is reducing your expenses. I actually think there's a strategy for putting on events at a relatively low cost. And I preach this all over the country." ... "Mission Local, SF is one of Emerson's grantees. It is a small organization, a staff of fewer than a dozen. I was just with the leadership of this organization last week in San Francisco. They cover the Mission District of San Francisco. This is literally the definition of hyperlocal. And I encouraged them to do community events at a small venue where they host a city council member or some community leader who is working actively on an issue. Joe Eskenazi, who is the editorial lead of the organization, is a well-known commodity. He's been a very visible and respected journalist in the community for many years, and he is an interviewer with chops. Joe Eskenazi is leading conversations with these folks. They've put on a number of these events over the last year that have been successful. They figured out on a hyperlocal scale that they can do a version of what the Tribune was able to succeed at on a grand scale. It's lead gen for audience. It's lead gen for sponsorship. It's lead gen for membership." ... "We need innovation and risk-taking in our sector from a revenue standpoint. If we simply are going back to the well every time, to the same funders or the same kinds of funders, then there will not be a sustainable path forward for the news industry. We need to be looking for new sources of revenue that do not come close to compromising the independence of the journalism." ... "If you don't have dreams, you have nightmares. My view is in this business, we need more dreamers. We need more people who see the potential for this. If we say this is hard, we can't do it, the nonprofit news sector will never go anywhere." #journalism #nonprofit #news #community
A candid conversation about earned income in nonprofit news. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter https://lnkd.in/e-aZdbGr
