About the authors of DEI and Accountability at the Knight Foundation
This post is part of a series published by the Community Info Coop analyzing DEI and accountability at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Read more at knightdei.org.
About the Community Info Coop
The Community Info Coop uses policy, organizing, and practice to make journalism and technology more democratic.
The Community Info Coop was founded in 2018 to house the Info Districts Project, an initiative to establish special taxing districts called “info districts” to address the local news crisis.
The organization’s Just Transition program launched that year to support parallel efforts to make existing journalism organizations more accountable to and representative of their communities. Just Transition has trained dozens of journalists in organizational democracy, supported union and cooperative organizing, and organized funding for reporting on the intersection of journalism and democracy. It began its reporting on the Knight Foundation in 2020.
That same year, the Community Info Coop launched the Bloomfield Info Project, a local news lab developing a participatory, public-service news model for New Jersey. It is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and LION Publishers and has been recognized for its reporting and innovation by the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists and the Center for Cooperative Media.
The Community Info Coop is fiscally sponsored by the Movement Alliance Project. Individual donations support its Just Transition program.
The Bloomfield Info Project has received major philanthropic support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the New Jersey Local News Lab, and the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.
The Knight Foundation has never directly funded the Community Info Coop.
About the researchers
Simon Galperin is the lead researcher and director of the Community Info Coop. He received his M.A. in Engaged Journalism from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in 2016. Simon worked in business development and engagement roles at ProPublica, Opinary, and GroundSource before launching the Community Info Coop in 2018. He was a 2019 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow at the University of Missouri and a 2022 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.
Beatrice Forman is the project’s research assistant and a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covers digital culture trends in and of Philadelphia. She is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied communications, served as the first BIPOC editor-in-chief of the university’s award-winning arts and culture magazine, and created a fellowship program for students of color interested in media careers. Beatrice has lived many professional lives, including deputy editing Billy Penn at WHYY, newsletter editing for CNN host Michael Smerconish, and writing about the creator economy for Vox.
Kira Wang is the project’s data analyst and newsroom intern at Billy Penn, overseeing its social media and covering local Philly happenings. She is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, studying political science and communication, and is the Social Media Editor and inaugural Data Desk editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian. Kira was formerly a research intern at CBS News and a research fellow at the Penn Program for Opinion Research and Election Studies, where she worked on NBC’s Decision Desk during the 2022 Midterm Elections.
