What A Year … How Our Team Adapted and Secured Key Wins Amid the Pandemic
We had big plans for the New Mexico Local News Fund in 2020. You probably had ideas and plans too. Although things look much different than we imagined a year ago, our team is proud of what we were able to accomplish during the pandemic to move our work forward with local newsrooms and communities.
NMLNF was created with a big vision — to support the growth of an ecosystem of local news across the state. That means we develop programs to support existing local news outlets and journalists. We’re also working to identify gaps in news and information resources and identifying partners are ready to step up to address those needs.
Next year, we will increase opportunities for both journalists and community members to engage in conversations about local news and partner with us to identify the best strategies for ensuring our state has a vibrant local news ecosystem for generations to come.
Here’s what we’re most proud of at the end of this very challenging year:
Emergency Support: NMLNF moved quickly to reallocate funding that we could no longer use for travel grants to support individual journalists facing financial challenges. The Emergency COVID-19 Relief Fund was distributed in partnership with the Rio Grande Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). A committee approved applications, up to $750 each, from professional journalists and journalism students who demonstrated a commitment to journalism through internships or working for a student publication. More than $20,000 was distributed to 31 journalists.
Investing In Early Career Journalists: The Local News Fellowship placed 7 recent graduates in newsrooms this year. The fellowship is managed by UNM professor Mike Marcotte and journalist & teacher Gwyneth Doland. The program expanded to include New Mexico State University this year. It will continue in 2021.
Supporting The Financial Stability of Local Newsrooms: After noting the immediate financial impact of the pandemic on local newsrooms, NMNF pivoted to create a Local News Revenue Initiative that supported 9 newsrooms and provided them with training and coaching to help them develop short- and long-term strategies to increase their funding sources. We expect to announce another call for applications early next year.
New Staff: Diana Alba Soular joined NMLNF as the southern New Mexico coordinator earlier this year. Diana is a former reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. She’s currently surveying Spanish-language news needs in the region and helped coordinate the launch of a southern New Mexico collaborative to cover the legislative session. We also hired Mark Glaser as our Innovation Consultant to manage the Local News Revenue Initiative. Mark is an associate at Dot Connector Studio and was the founder and executive editor of MediaShift.org. Mark and his family recently relocated to Santa Fe.
Collaboration: One of our top priorities for the past two years has been to address growing “news deserts” (places without local news sources) in southern New Mexico. It takes half a day to drive from Las Cruces to Santa Fe. Along with the distance, shrinking staffing in newsrooms that serve communities along the border has hampered their ability to effectively cover the legislature, compounding the existing disconnect between southern New Mexico and the hub of political power in the north.
That’s why NMLNF supported the launch of a Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative. The project currently includes three newspapers (Las Cruces Bulletin, Las Cruces-Sun News and Carlsbad Current-Argus) and one public radio/TV station (KWRG). The Bulletin will act as the main editor and we expect sister publications of the other newspapers to spread the coverage even further by publishing stories of interest to their readers. Walter Rubel, a longtime local journalist with experience covering state government, started reporting in November and all of the partners are collectively generating story ideas and leads. Each news outlet has discretion whether to publish a particular story, but in the short time the project has been live, all the partners have published most of the news articles written by Rubel.
We believe this project could help to create a foundation for future cooperation among southern New Mexico news organizations that we can build on for years to come.
NMLNF also funded four other collaborative projects this year:
- New Mexico PBS, KUNM and the Santa Fe Reporter launched a legislative podcast, Your NM Gov, that provided engaging weekly updates on what was happening during the legislative session. The collaboration evolved into No More Normal after the session and continues to cover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Mexico. The partners continue to work together on legislative and state government coverage.
- Searchlight New Mexico and Little Globe Theatre worked together to cover the impact of COVID-19 on communities across the state.
- New Mexico PBS and NM Political Report launched the “Growing Forward” podcast, which examines the cannabis industry in New Mexico.
- New Mexico in Depth and the Las Cruces Sun-News are working together to cover opportunities for young people across the state.
During all of this, our team approached every challenge with a spirit of experimentation. Not everything we tried turned out as we expected, but we learned some important lessons and are sharing those insights with local partners and other organizations that are also building local ecosystems, like the Colorado Media Project and North Carolina Local News Lab. We’re also learning from their programs and bringing back the best ideas to New Mexico. With every decision, we aimed to invest in high potential opportunities to strengthen existing news organizations and identify gaps in coverage across the state. We will release information from surveys about local news and needs for Spanish-language news in early 2021.
If you want to keep track of our work, please sign up for our newsletter. If you’re interested in joining our advisory committee or stakeholders group, please fill out this form.
We hope you and your family stay healthy this holiday season and can find some reasons to be hopeful as you mark the new year.
Best wishes
Sarah Gustavus, NMLNF co-director
Rashad Mahmood, NMLNF co-director
