Center for Cooperative Media to send NJ community and ethnic media members to first Independent News Sustainability Summit

Travel stipends allow five news organizations to send representatives

Five representatives from New Jersey’s community and ethnic media will be at the first-ever LION Publishers Independent News Sustainability Summit in Austin, Texas, in late October. As small and local print newspapers continue to struggle and digital revenue sources remain unstable, the three-day conference will tackle the survival of independent news businesses and focus on the intersection of operational resilience, financial health and journalistic impact.

Kenneth Miles, publisher and editor of Trenton Journal; Mark Tyler, publisher and editor of Atlantic City Focus; Diego Maya, publisher and editor of The Latino Spirit; Kleibeel Marcano, co-publisher and editor of Reporte Hispano; and Don Tagala, senior reporter of ABS-CBN’s The Filipino Channel, will join hundreds of journalists and media executives from across the country for the Summit. This group includes veteran journalists for local news outlets that focus on the African American, Asian and Latino communities in Trenton, Camden, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Passaic, Newark, Paterson, Jersey City and other neighboring cities in New Jersey.

This diverse, multi-lingual delegation from New Jersey is supported by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Each organization has received a $1,000 stipend to defray their travel, registration, food and hotel accommodation costs during the conference. Financial support comes from Democracy Fund.

The journalists will have the opportunity to network, listen and share knowledge from their own and experience with speakers and attendees — and, as a result, improve their business operations in order to inform, educate and serve their communities more effectively.

“Access to innovations and best practices for building a sustainable newsroom are essential to the longevity of ethnic and community media,” said Cassandra Etienne, assistant director for the Center for Cooperative Media. “These outlets struggled even before the pandemic in establishing certain revenue streams such as large advertising placements, so supporting these publishers in New Jersey to connect with these resources is a priority for the Center.”

The 2022 Independent News Sustainability Summit is hosted by LION Publishers, the News Revenue Hub and RevLab at The Texas Tribune and sponsored by the Knight Foundation. According to the summit website, the event will bring together independent news publishers to discuss editorial, operational and financial lessons by:

• Sharing what we’ve learned from coaching news publishers
• Bringing in other journalism and small business subject-area experts
• Facilitating conversations between publishers so they can hear and learn from one another’s work

“Since the COVID pandemic, I have not had the opportunity to make many in-person summits,” Miles said. “I’m looking forward to the LION Summit, because it will give me an opportunity to meet other journalists and entrepreneurs across the country who own and operate media outlets.”

“I’m also looking to learn new ways and exchange ideas about growing my audience and looking for innovative ways to make my newsletter sustainable,” Miles added.

Marcano said while his website’s audience traffic has grown dramatically, the revenue and subscriber base of the print copy of his publication have been in decline since more Latino readers consume news digitally. “I want to learn new strategies and, hopefully, see the rate of readership and advertising revenue of our print edition go up again,” he said.

Partnering and sharing sources with other organizations is key to the survival and sustainability of local newsrooms, according to Tagala, the lone wolf of The Filipino Channel, serving at least 500,000 Filipino Americans on the East Coast.

“I want to see more collaborative journalism projects between newsrooms in New Jersey and other states,” Tagala added. “It may be a big ask, but that’s what I am hoping to take away from this Summit.”

Anthony Advincula is the ethnic and community media programs coordinator at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Contact him at advinculaa@montclair.edu.

About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.