 Good morning, everyone. Again, welcome to Miami, and I'm just delighted to introduce Charlie Sennett from Ground Truth, Report for America. Is this mic on? Okay, Report for America is a project of Ground Truth, and to my left is Liza Gross from the Solutions Journalism Network, which has done an extraordinary job. Over how many years, Liza? Three now? Yes, yes, yes. Really bringing journalists and members of communities together to not just report and discuss problems, but solutions, and how to use journalism, a rigorous fact-based journalism to report on ways and opportunities to address problems. So first, Charlie, I'd like to turn it over to you and tell us about Report for America just a few days ago shared, you shared with us that you and Steve, that 250 journalists will be deployed to 164 news organizations across the country. So tell us a little bit about how Report for America got started and why it's important right now. Sure. Thanks. I mean, the success we've had this year, really a breakthrough year for us with 250 reporters in 164 newsrooms, never would have happened without night and without the support. So thank you. Not just the support, very tangible support, but the real challenge to us to get our model right, to really think about systemic change and to think how we're going to do this. So thank you. It's really exciting to be here. Thank you, everyone, for coming very briefly. So I am the CEO and the founder of the Ground Truth Project. We've been around for eight years. We support the next generation of journalists to tell stories that are under covered in under covered communities around the world. In 2016, we just added a comma and we said, including the United States. And we decided to do that because we decided in our, like the fourth sentence of our mission statement was, we really try to explore stories in divided societies and struggling democracies. We realized in 2016, we live in one. So why are we looking at stories in, you know, around the world? Really important stories that we were proud to tell in Egypt, Myanmar, Philippines. We did a lot of good work there. We're very proud of it. We continue to do that work. But there is no more important story than this one right here in the United States. I started in local news. We started in local news together. It was just about that long ago, actually, right? And I really think of all of the international reporting I've done began as local reporting. And I really mean that. I was a police reporter in New York City, loud bang in Lower Manhattan in 1993. The First World Trade Center bombing led me as a police reporter to start to cover the Middle East and what was nascent al-Qaida. I think the best journey to all reporting begins locally. Really deeply believe in that. So that's the origin story of how the Ground Truth Project came to launch Report for America. Report for America now is a program. As we've said, we've got 250 reporters out there this year. We have a big training in June where we're bringing these 200 new reporters on, which will bring us up to 250. The way we work is we have two big selection processes. We start off saying to newsrooms, share with us as a local newsroom where there is a place in your community that is not being served. That could be a geographic beat. It could be a beat like health or the environment or schools. Where is there a place that you need to do a better job as a newsroom serving your community? Where is there a news desert? And then what is your plan to address that? And what kind of mentoring and support would you bring to an early career journalist if we paid for that journalist to come into your newsroom? How would you really support them and make sure they do great work that serves the community? Report for America in its essence is a call to service for a new generation of journalists to understand that serving communities as a local reporter is really important and even downright patriotic. I think as Alberto has said, this crisis right now in journalism has become a crisis for democracy. So I really find myself doing things I never would have done 10, 15, 20 years ago as a journalist in terms of feeling a genuine pull to the sense of patriotism that's inside of journalism. All of us get so uncomfortable with that phrase and for good reason. But now is the time to really do a shout out to the next generation and to communities that we need your support if we're going to serve your communities. So that's the idea. We choose the newsrooms. Very selective process. We've chosen these 164 newsrooms and right now our national director, Kim Kleeman and our president, Steve Waldman are here and they're disappearing all the time because they're judging the 2,000 applications for the 200 reporters. So really competitive process. We have about 70 judges. We very carefully select the reporters. We put them in the host newsroom where we pay 50% of their salary and where we ask the news organization to do 25%. And then we help the news organization work with the local community to raise the additional 25%. So if you're a local foundation, if you had $10,000 we would do a 3X match, three times that, to help sustain a local reporter. So we're trying to really unlock the local funding and combine it with the national funding we were lucky enough to get from Knight and many others. Thank you. And one of the really great opportunities that Report for America provides for place-based funders and for community foundations is a tremendous partnership to begin tapping that local philanthropic support. Because at the end of the day the sustainability model for local journalism needs to be rooted in local communities. And at Knight Foundation we have a great opportunity to kickstart to be a catalyst, but the reason why we're so excited to have 650 people registered for this conference is because the future of local journalism it really needs to be rooted in local support. But before it can be rooted in local support it has to do a couple of things. A, it has to be trusted. And B, it has to be strong, really, really strong. So Liza, tell us how the Solutions Journalism Network is helping make journalism strong, making the reporting strong, but also helping journalists do a better job connecting with their communities. I certainly will say that. But before that I have to echo Charlie. A lot of the work we do would not have been possible without the support of the Knight Foundation. And beyond the financial support which is of course always greatly appreciated, no margin, no mission, it's the other support that you especially provide. The conversations about ideas, about challenging yourself, about iterating, about what is possible, about connecting. So thank you, thank you. It's been a wonderful ride for three years and I look forward to many more years to come. So the Solutions Journalism Network, and I want to clarify, the Solutions Journalism Network has been around for six years. Our work with collaboratives has been ongoing for about three years plus. Very simply our organization wants to promote the idea of Solutions Journalism which consists on reporting with equal rigor on the good things that a community is doing in addition to reporting about the problems. What are the responses that address challenges in a community that are having a track record of success? It is not happy journalism, it's useful journalism because when reporting on these responses we also report on their limitations. An initiative may be very effective in aiding let's say Hispanic community but not so effective in aiding the Vietnamese community and that is a very important aspect of Solutions Journalism. We started doing it individually with news organizations we would partner and in fact we have now a network of over 200 plus news organizations that have partnered or are partnering with us and we've also partnered overseas. In the United States 200 plus as I said. But a couple of years ago I also started understanding the value of creating collaboratives of news organizations that would come together to focus with a Solutions lens on a challenge particular to their community. It is unrealistic to think now with the complexity you know our demographic complexities and some especially in larger cities in America to believe that only one news organization can comprehensively capture the nuances of a challenge for that community and also we know and I was for many years the publisher at Exito which was the Spanish language newspaper of the Chicago Tribune and I know from experience how large swaths of communities are underserved by certain sectors of the media and not only underserved but they feel actively attacked, stereotyped not just neutral coverage but coverage that really is negative and stereotypical. And so how do you get away from that prevailing narrative that is not productive that it doesn't really reflect like Charlie says what is going on in a community and so the combination of creating collaboratives in a given community to focus for a decent period of time with a Solutions lens on a challenge of importance to that community this is the concept of the local media project. I have a one-pager frequently asked questions I placed it over there if you want to get more details but we started the big our big boost our big project and thanks to Jennifer we were able to really bring it to the level we wanted was in Philadelphia and it was the reentry project 15 news organizations in Philadelphia came together to report on issues of reentry and recidivism at a time when Philadelphia was redoing or reviewing its entire criminal justice system and this was the aspect of the criminal justice system that the 15 news organizations decided to focus on. For a year and a half they reported on this they produced 200 pieces they did numerous audience engagement activities at every level they involved community leaders they involved the business sector they involved the tech the techie sector in a hackathon to design apps that would help folks undergoing reentry and at the end of two years they literally changed the conversation around reentry for Philadelphia and what's more important also it changed the view of the journalist the journalists were transformed and they saw a different way of doing their work it didn't always have to be oppositional it didn't always have to be ripping the veil it didn't always have to be pointing the finger at the officials and saying you're doing a terrible job and leaving it there it just created a very productive open loop to discuss this challenge that Philadelphia faced now that collaborative has 24 members in it including also known news organizations like Temple University another you know civic actor and they are focusing on poverty on the coverage of poverty in Philadelphia different aspects of poverty ranging from access to health services to housing to educational opportunities they've been doing that now for a year and a half they are raising their own funding and they have constituted themselves into a non-profit now this doesn't cannibalize the work of the individual work of those news organizations because they have plenty of things to cover but the collaborative comes together to shine an extra strong spotlight on one topic at a time and make sure you change the conversation around that topic yeah that was an extraordinary extraordinary how this one grant again for funders it's we made an investment in a one-year project to see how journalists might collaborate together and since I used to work at the Philadelphia Daily News and my husband worked at the Philadelphia Enquirer and people at our wedding would not talk to each other because there was so much competition between and among journalists in Philadelphia I must say I initially had my doubts really journalists in Philadelphia are going to collaborate and coordinate on a story but it happened and as Liza said out of that has come ongoing work and has come a new organization called Resolve which is is leading that work and because of the success that we saw there on how the Solutions Journalism Network changed culture as well as provided new practices we made a five million dollar five-year investment to take this collaborative approach across the country and with report for America one of the things that I know Charlie we discussed early on because one of the concerns obvious concerns is what does it mean when a journalist is just arrives in a community how how can and how might report for America help ensure that that a journalist is prepared and also that a journalist doesn't do harm you know by not understanding a community and not being of the community and one of the one of the reasons why I was assured that you really truly understood that concern is because of your extraordinary reporting overseas and just the sensitivity and and just great just just great way that you worked as a correspondent abroad so tell us a little bit about how you prepare these young journalists and and how you work with communities thanks Jennifer before I say I answer that question there was a time before you held these amazing tribal gatherings where we all come together where I loved our time working together as reporters on the streets of New York City and you and City Hall and and just the feeling of camaraderie then is something that I still sort of yearn for I feel sad for a generation of journalists that doesn't have the sense that we were lucky enough to have where we competed like hell I mean we're out to beat each other every day but we had fun we supported each other and it didn't really matter also come on we can tell them we were Red Sox fans yeah we did have that we didn't secretly wear Red Sox hats on weekends I'm from Allington Massachusetts I heard Charlie speak and it was just don't you hate the Yankees so so we had that and we had Red Sox Nation and we had this this this real I don't know just this beautiful spirit of collegiality in New York where you really were out to win but we work together to there was definitely support for each other in the field I think I've tried to bring that into every corner of my career whether that was being in Baghdad or in Afghanistan or being in New York or being in Boston covering local I for me it's seamless local and global is a seamless approach to reporting you have to be respectful of the community you're in you have to be respectful of the country you're in you have to learn it you have to be careful to have in those communities to really deepen the partnerships that you can form and the bonds you can form with your colleagues so at Report for America we're very attentive to this couple things we're trying to do one we have an amazing recruitment team we've really tried to pay attention to how we recruit and we're really proud that the the core the 250 core members can reflect not only the communities they serve but the country we live in so two thirds are going to represent our reporters of color this is going to be critical to our success if we're going to really help transform newsrooms that we can be an agent for change in that way and have real opportunity for people who really are part of the communities that they are going to serve I would say approximately one-third of the reporters are from the communities the regions the states maybe where they're serving and about two-thirds aren't so there's a real opportunity for people not from Appalachia to learn about Appalachia for people not from Mississippi to come to Mississippi and do great reporting and work alongside people from Mississippi one of my favorite examples of this is Mississippi today where we have two reporters one is Eric Shelton who is from Jackson Mississippi who had been a journeyman photographer who couldn't get home and he used Report for America as a way to get a job back in his home he works alongside Michelle Lu who's from California went to college at Yale sort of like really beautifully educated super smart but really I don't think she'd ever even been to Mississippi except to drive through and she has done some of the most amazing reporting and you've probably heard about it she uncovered the spike in prison deaths inside of Mississippi state prisons which is now and as she is really adamant about pointing out along with other great reporting by other reporters in the community has triggered a department of justice investigation into the way inmates are treated in Mississippi's prisons the photographs for the big series she did in partnership with Marshall project were by Eric so the two of them are working together to me that's the perfect world that's not unlike some of the successful models for foreign reporting where you have to work with local colleagues and really get to know them and you become a team of the way they've worked together we want to we're sort of inspired to try to replicate that where we can we really think that there's a chance here also to rely on a mentoring network which we've established if any of you here are journalists who are you know on that that outer edge of taking the buy out or you've moved on or something we want mentors we want people who can come and work with our emerging journalists we also ask the newsrooms to provide a local mentor almost like someone to welcome this reporter into the newsroom look out for them help them navigate their way and we insist that they have good editing and we're truth here we're seeing this as a crisis we didn't expect they're not getting enough editing so now we're like realizing oh my god okay we knew there was the crisis of the reporters now there's the crisis of the editing along with the cuts the dramatic cuts of reporting staff have come dramatic cuts of editors take for example Charleston Gazette Mail I don't know how many of you are following this on Twitter wonderful partner of ours our first ever report for America newspaper we put an amazing reporter there they've had great success so we decided to quadruple down and give them four reporters this year under the leadership of Ken Ward who is a MacArthur genius and the editing of Greg Moore who was one of the editors who led the paper to a Pulitzer for their opioid coverage in the last five days Greg Moore has been let go and now Ken Ward has quit in protest of Greg Moore being let go that's a Pulitzer prize winning editor and a MacArthur genius in a newspaper in West Virginia that needs their leadership they're vowing to continue the motto of the newspaper which I love which is called sustained outrage and all the Twitter feeds are we know that Ken and Greg will continue to sustain outrage but they're going to probably do it someplace else now or find something they can partner with so they're going to learn that partnerships are critical something we've learned and I'm telling you honestly I'm hearing Liza talk about what Solutions Journalism Network does and I really want to share we've grown up together and these two organizations are parallel we started at about the same time we're about the same size there is really truly no better partner we have than Solutions Journalism Network I came in a kind of grumpy old school journalist and I I wasn't rude I didn't roll my eyes at Solutions but I definitely was I was not a true believer in Solutions Journalism until we did it and when we did it when we really realized how transformative it is to think about reporting not only on the problems and revealing them but report just as hard on the solutions failed solutions and successful solutions so we've tried to make it a systemic part of what we do and to really think about how we can train every single report for America core member to go into their newsroom prepared respectful and thinking about the solutions to the problems they'll be highlighting as journalists doing their job on the streets so partnership is key we were talking this morning over coffee about this journey we've had together where we've done all kinds of different I don't know we've been just totally experimenting together and having fun which reminds me of my old days with you Jennifer on the street and it's like I don't want a new generation of journalists or I don't want those of you who support community journalism or who are community journalists to forget we're not only in this to really you know be of service but it is also a wonderful adventure and I want to kind of get back to that I think there's some nourishment of the soul that needs to go on in local journalism again and with with solutions I feel like you know I'm getting very good catechism on that solutions of the sort of nourishing of the soul well and that's the culture change that has to happen for journalism to rebuild trust in communities and to serve