 good morning everyone good morning hello hello hello good morning and welcome to the the 13th annual night media forum this is our as you can plainly tell this is our largest convening ever thank you for the hardship of coming back to Miami in February for those of you like Diane Kaplan from Alaska I know this is really rough duty for you I'm Albert O. E. Bargwin I have the privilege of leading the night the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which is dedicated to strengthening democracy by supporting informed and engaged communities the foundation is the legacy of Jack and Jim Knight brothers who through the lat throughout the last century built one of the country's largest and most successful newspaper companies a collection of proud independent minded local newspapers the economic model as you all well know that enabled the Knight brothers to successfully publish dozens of geographically distinct newspapers each bound to the culture and context of its place was already declining in the 90s 1990s advertisers had begun to find more efficient technology enabled ways to reach audiences and readers were migrating to a wider range of other news and entertainment options and I would observe editorially often not distinguishing between the two but the tsunami of change had hardly even begun when I offered the first invitation to the conference to this conference to what became this conference which was actually at the at the council and found a of the the council and foundations community foundations meeting and Robin Ryder who organized this conference for us the 13th time thank you Robin but she was sitting just like she is now in the front row and I just thought this is something we ought to get together for and I said well I don't understand why there's a thousand community foundations and not a single one of you understand that information is at the core of everything that you're doing so something's wrong and we got to talk about it and so why don't you all come on us to Miami next February this was September and Robin who is white already turned whiter still and and and we did and that began what has been really a wonderful wonderful experience for all of us but at that time we didn't even know the word smartphone the iPhone had not yet been announced it was announced some months later today 81% of Americans own at least one nearly 40% of Americans now consume news exclusively online and 13 years ago it was 4% and if you can imagine it 98% of the people who attended that first conference that first then called night media learning seminar 98% said that they primarily got their news from a newspaper digital has upended the business in obvious ways and in ways were just beginning to grasp more people have access to information it's true than ever before that's the good news and the bad news of course is that fakery on the web threatens to stabilize this threatens a stability of civic and political life media has always been a double-edged sword this is not new it's always been a tool for both open and dictatorial systems but that tool has never been as effective as quick or as far-reaching as today the inventor of the World Wide Web with all due respect Al Gore intended in Tim Berners-Lee intended it to be free and universal his words you'll hear from him tomorrow but over the years I've heard him say many times that the biggest threat to the free and to that free and universal ideal was the lack of authenticity on the web if there's no authenticity there is no trust and if there's no trust in society it's easy to turn away from the institutions that do the difficult work of protecting freedom in a pluralistic society and flock instead to leaders will promise easy solutions we know that road and it leads away from democracy as you know trust in American institutions from church to courts to business as plummeted among the few institutions that Americans do trust their libraries and the military and I think it's because their missions are clear these are really important lessons for us their missions are clear and their execution is apolitical at night we saw that some of those same distinguishing qualities clear mission delivered in an apolitical fashion and relatively easy to verify in local news a recent poll from Gallup supports that finding that most Americans place more trust in local news and feel a deeper sense of connection to local reporters as a result and as a foundation rooted in 26 different local American communities we decided to double down on our investment in local news three hundred million dollars where the distance between reporter and news consumer is the shortest though we're funding local news mainly in the non-for-profit area we are genuinely business model agnostic what we know is that to be independent any news organization any local news whatever news organization whether for profit or not for profit must be sustainable must not be dependent and to accomplish that they must be run in a business like way examining different ways to build successful sustainable news organizations regardless of the platform is why we're gathered here as Arthur Schulzberger said some 20 years ago it's about the news not about the paper but if we think the medium does not affect the message of course we're doomed to fail we have to understand where the audience is why the audience is there and how to reach them this work has simply never been more important a couple of weeks ago we released another study this one commissioned from Bendix in an amandi that examined why 43% of the American electorate did not vote in 2016 43% that is in case you're counting 100 million Americans who just said I'll take a pass on the quintessential act of citizenship what we found directly links voting to news and information 38% of non-voters said they they lack confidence that elections represent the will of the people that's 38 million Americans who doubt our elections are free and fair and making the link to news the less likely a respondent was to read and follow the news the more likely he or she was to feel alienated and suspicious it really should worry us that people 18 to 24 years old are even less likely than other voters to follow the news which leaves them feeling less informed around election time and less likely to care or trust elections the truth is they not only feel less informed they are less informed because the necessary work of journalism isn't being performed at the same level any longer since our inaugural conference in 2008 a quarter of the newspapers in the country have vanished 25% have vanished and not to make it too personal the company that produced the wealth that allowed the nightbrothers to endow night foundation has filed for bankruptcy brings it right home in response shortly before the conference last year we launched as you know a 300 million dollar initiative to support and reimagine local news and to search for sustainable operational models our investments largely fall into four areas direct support of local reporting indirect support of local reporting through national organizations support of legal efforts to protect local media and the research and research into the impact of journalism and media on democracy all of these efforts are meant to promote informed citizenry and in an engaged community and let me talk just a little bit about our progress in this in this last year since I I last reported to you I feel like I'm reporting to the annual meeting of shareholders here old habits die hard for almost 15 years which of course in internet terms is about 17 lifetimes night foundation has been a direct supporter of many experiments in local media and the fact that you know the names of Texas Tribune and Voice of San Diego and the New Haven independent men post Mississippi today that's testament that those upstarts have legs when the IRS ruled last year that the Huntsman family could convert the Salt Lake City Tribune into a nonprofit a precedent setting decision that affirmed local journalism as a public good local journalism as a public good worthy of tax exemption we were among the first funders of the new entity and in Philadelphia with the late Jerry Lenfest when the late Jerry Lenfest purchased the Philadelphia Enquirer and put it into a trust for the city's benefit we supported that as well our second bucket investing in national organizations supporting local news include the American journalism project you'll hear much more about that at this conference a venture philanthropy initiative that will invest and actively support some 35 local digital news organizations pro publicas initiative to partner with local news organizations on investigative reporting projects the solutions journalism project which trains journalists to cover not only the challenges communities face but also how to solve them the news literacy project which is training tens of thousands of high schoolers around the country and report for America which just announced they will place 250 reporters in 165 newsrooms this year this year alone and raised nearly a million dollars in their ongoing search for other support I think that's not bad for a year's work art but we're not done and I meant that about Steve Waldman and Liza growth not about what we did although what we did was not bad our our third area of funding is in defense of a free press when the news business was great and it was the business the news organizations in this country paid paid a kind of liberty tax they aggressively defended and even expanded the boundaries of free expression and free press in their coverage and through litigation when I was at newsday I was the guy who retained counsel when we refused to disclose our sources in the Anita Hill story the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas story so I can tell you since we paid almost a million dollars to say no that that tax was was was real but it was also necessary news organizations especially small local ones can no longer shoulder that burden alone we and others must step in our response has been the creation of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University which I sincerely believe will continue to protect free expression and free press for generations and night's endowment at the reporters committee for freedom of the press will allow them to manage a national network of lawyers to defend local journalists finally we've also helped create the Knight Research Network to inform future policy with data and understanding that network includes some of the nation's most respected academic institutions public and private representing a range of perspectives and sections of the country we're committed to understanding how technology is transforming our democracy and how we can intelligently govern the digital public square what is the role of media and technology in exacerbating polarization among partisan and ideological lines what are the consequences of regulating news and information published on social media platforms what would be what would happen if we broke up these platforms can democracy function in news deserts these are just a handful of the many questions the Knight Research Network will explore is exploring in order to provide policymakers and regulators with research to inform public policy of options Knight's investments in these four areas are this is really important to me that you understand this is not a lament for the loss of newspapers but it is about a loss it's about a civic loss without reliable local news you can't know who you're voting for or what the issues or challenges or opportunities facing your communities are it is as central as that to the democracy to the way we run this republic I should note here that this work largely done last year has been brilliantly led by my colleagues Sam Gill our senior VP and chief program officer and Jennifer Preston our vice president for journalism there in the audience I I of course and as usual will take credit for everything they did that you liked and any problems will will let them resolve I should also note that this work that that I really I really do love the fact that this is merely what night is doing this is so different than when we began this conference 13 years ago there are so many more organizations many represented in this room committed to meeting the information needs of communities and lessening the gap between those in the know and those who need to know I'm beyond proud to see more than 600 of you here ready to learn from each other and breakout groups and hallway meetups you'll meet community foundation and place-based foundation leaders journalists media tech experts and you'll meet some of the best library leaders in the country who are meeting here in an overlapping conference organized by my colleagues George Martinez and Lily Weinberg and actually as a side note it should tell you something about the way we approach these things the George's vice president for for for IT at night foundation and Lily is director in the communities program so it is about technology and it is about community I'm particularly pleased to welcome back Tony Marks who's president of the New York Public Library and co-chaired the recent night commission on trust media and democracy at the Aspen Institute and our former night colleague John Bracken who's now executive director of the digital public library of America aside from the breakout groups that will allow for great discussions you'll also hear from leaders in their fields like Brian Hooks of the Charles Koch Foundation Diane Kaplan from Rasmussen Foundation in Alaska feather Houston from windcoat in Philadelphia have your Soto who recently just absolutely deserted us in Miami where is he shame on you for leaving to go to become president of the some foundation in Denver I don't remember the name of it gene Cochran who used to be the head of the Duke endowment and has since become president of interim president of 73 other organizations since his so-called retirement and my favorite of all time Mariam Nolan who has not missed a single one of these who is the head of the community foundation of southeastern Michigan she Mariam also was a night trustee who voted on the on the grant to make this initial this this this this conference actually happened you'll hear from A.G. Sulzberger the still relatively new publisher of the New York Times talking about the future as he sees it Judy Woodruff participated in the very first of these conferences and returns to interview White House digital chief digital officer Ori Reinet and the digital director of the Obama 2012 campaign Teddy golf interestingly Paul Paul Huntsman who I mentioned is at the Salt Lake Tribune the newly nonprofit Salt Lake Tribune will be here and I'm particularly pleased to welcome my friends or Tim Berners-Lee who as I keep telling my friends is the actual inventor of the World Wide Web you're in you're really in for a treat from the start this conference had two goals one was building stronger communities and the other was to engage funders as active participants in creating an informed citizenry we began a discussion with community and place based foundations to figure out what role they might play some ran with the idea and others just hung back but the importance of information to our democracy hasn't changed since then what has changed is the many many more people that now recognize that news and information is a thing as John Oliver would say in a community and a democracy a fundamental thing that needs to be nurtured that's why we were so thrilled and inspired by Charlene and Ron Esserman's announcement last night to support investigative reporting in South Florida with a two and a half million dollar endowment at the Miami Foundation the Esserman yes the Esserman family fund for investigative journalism will allow the Miami Herald to investigate reporting fellows to to offer investigative reporting fellowships to early career reporters in partnership with Knight Foundation the fund will also provide a ten thousand dollar prize annually the Esserman Knight journalism prize to a journalist whose reporting has made a major impact on the people of South Florida I've known the estimates for a long time they are civic leaders they are arts community leaders in Miami but what I love most about this is that now as a family because this is not just Charlene and Ron it is their their four children and their nine grandchildren who are all actively involved in this because this is about us and about our future generations they have chosen to create this fund to support journalism as Charlene said last night a free press is essential for our democracy and for our community we love that at a time when the future of local journalism is in peril as she said they are willing to step up and I am hopeful that that will be an example to many many other people we need to engage more we need to engage many more partners who share the Esserman's concerns and our concerns about the threat to democracy from a diminished local press we need to build a broad and deep coalition of Americans who give a damn about our democracy but are not used to thinking maybe about this is a thing they actually can do something about so going back to the spirit of that first conference let's raise that thought at every conversation over these next two days what can we do to convince our friends and colleagues that this is not a spectator sport that if you're an American who cares you belong in this game as a player let's make sustainability the through line of the night media forum jack night said one time he was 83 and pretty crusty at that point said I just want to be known as a guy and this is my my this is what I aspire to is as a Mindy and Alex who will will I tell you maybe I'm already there a little bit but jack night jack night said I just want to be known and his wonderful voice I just want to be known as a guy who is open-minded fair and opinionated we are here all of us to work towards solutions to work toward those opinions so let's get started thank you