Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere

👥 We are not alone. Tiny newsrooms abroad share their stories

By Amy L. Kovac-Ashley

This month, I had the incredible privilege of attending the recent International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, to represent Tiny News Collective. As a first-timer at the event, I spent time observing, learning and listening. I paid close attention to who was there and who was missing. Not wanting to take my privilege for granted, I want to share some of the important takeaways from the conference and how they relate to our work at Tiny News.

1. The struggle of small newsrooms is happening worldwide.

Tiny newsrooms in the United States are not the only ones struggling for survival in a difficult business and social climate. Over and over at the conference I met people from other countries talking about the same challenges, the same funding constraints. But just like here, they are still doing amazing work against all odds.

One example is Catarina Carvalho, founder and editor of Mensagem de Lisbon, which focuses on stories about the people of Lisbon and takes a people-centered approach to city and urban matters. Publishing in Portuguese and also in Creole (to reach Cape Verdean and Guinean communities), they also do pop-up newsrooms in underserved communities and produce live journalism in a theater. All with just five staffers.

“No story is too small for us,” she told me. And one of their goals is to cover communities with authenticity and empathy, without creating “news victims” as she put it. Catarina said on LinkedIn that she found most people at the festival to be “kind, attentive and respectful of others” — and appreciated how they had each other’s back.

If you want to learn more about Mensagem’s live journalism, you can watch the recording from her session called, “Stories you can feel.”

2. Funding challenges abound across borders.

Local newsrooms, which were not highlighted much in Perugia, struggle for funding in Europe, especially in less wealthy Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, etc.). That contrasts with more funding in Northern Europe and Nordic countries, which often support public media and have richer donors. Catarina mentioned that a challenge, similar to what we have in poorer states and regions, is that the donor culture in Southern Europe is less developed. That makes it hard for a smaller publication to raise money from its audience.

And what about Press Forward and its goal of investing $500 million in local news in the United States? That’s astounding to European publishers who couldn’t contemplate that kind of influx of funding. 

Ultimately, it was interesting to see how small news outlets, even in differing political and social environments, have the same core question: How can grassroots news organizations, who are community-focused, become financially sustainable? The more we find solidarity across borders, the more we can find shared solutions. 

3. Black journalists and leaders face similar barriers in newsrooms and at media conferences abroad.

Just as Black people have trouble finding representation at media conferences and in newsrooms in the United States, they also have been shut out in Perugia. Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder of the Haitian Times and a Tiny News board member, learned that five proposed panels for the festival that focused on Black journalists were rejected. Sara Lomax, co-founder of URL Media, had the idea that Black attendees could create their own space, Black Beyond Borders. It eventually was folded into the official program and co-organized with the Maynard Institute.

During the discussion, Garry said a journalist from the Middle East said that all their panels were also rejected, but praised the Americans for doing something about it. “The packed room made one thing clear: journalism institutions may believe they’ve addressed race in their newsrooms and coverage. They haven’t,” Garry wrote in a piece on URL Media.

“This was not a side event. It was a correction. And if Perugia taught us anything, it’s this: when the door doesn’t open, sometimes the most consequential thing you can do is build a room.”

🗣️TNC Around Town: TNC development director Doug Keller and executive director Amy Kovac-Ashley will attend the Media Impact Funders conference May 28-29 in San Francisco.

TNC News

TNC adds four new members to its board to align with strategic plan

As Tiny News Collective matures into a new phase of development, it is adding three board members and one interim officer who have the experience and expertise that will help the organization as it charts a new course through a Strategic Plan focused on growing membership, increasing staff and board capacity, elevating the field and becoming sustainable. 

The new board members are:

Steve Katz: Steve has worked in the fields of community housing, theater, environmental advocacy and, since 2003, journalism, when he started at Mother Jones, eventually being named its publisher. In 2022, Steve was named assistant dean for advancement at UC Berkeley Journalism, where he now serves as special adviser to the dean. 

Garry Pierre-Pierre: Garry is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, media entrepreneur and leading voice on Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. He is the founder of The Haitian Times, an award-winning publication that has grown from a weekly newspaper into a nationally recognized digital outlet serving Haitian communities in the United States and beyond.

Ben Werdmuller: Ben is the senior director of technology at ProPublica. Previously, he served as the first CTO at The 19th and co-founded one of the web's earliest social networking platforms. As part of investing in early-stage media startups at Matter Ventures, he helped teach venture design to newsrooms and mission-driven teams. He recently published this piece that looks at the funding issues for both public interest media and public interest tech.

Kimberly Spencer (interim treasurer): Kimberly Spencer is a fundraising strategist and media sustainability leader dedicated to building strong, community-rooted journalism. With more than 20 years of experience across the nonprofit and media sectors, she is the executive director of the Colorado Media Project, where she supports news organizations by investing in the local news and information ecosystem. 

They join current board members Lillian Ruiz, Tyler Fisher, Jillian Bauer-Reese and Amy Austin. 

Read the whole story here.

5 Questions with Damien Willis of Organ Mountain News

For our latest “5 Questions with…” feature, we checked in with Damien Willis, the founder of Organ Mountain News, a publication covering Doña Ana County and the surrounding areas of southern New Mexico. One of the only locally owned and independent news outlets in the area, Organ Mountain News launched in 2024 and works to provide its community with paywall-free news.

Damien is an award-winning journalist who worked at the Las Cruces Sun-News for more than 15 years as a weekly columnist and then as a reporter. After spotting gaps in local news coverage, Damien launched OMN to provide community members with a centralized news site where they can learn more about their community.

“Long term, the vision is to build OMN into a reliable, community-centered newsroom that consistently delivers essential local coverage,” he said. “A big part of that is actively listening to the unmet needs of the community and letting those conversations drive our coverage.

Over time, that means continuing to broaden the scope of reporting while maintaining the speed, clarity and consistency that have come to define the site as it is today.”

Read the whole profile here.

TNC newsrooms experiment with audience growth, sustainability through Tiny Vitals

Tiny News has been supporting newsrooms through an innovative metrics program called Tiny Vitals. For the second cohort of the program, the focus was on newsrooms navigating major transitions — from closing print editions to launching new digital products, from refining audience strategies to building long-term financial plans. 

In a recent Lightning Talks gathering on Zoom, newsroom leaders shared how they used the program to pause, examine their data, and rethink assumptions about how audiences find, engage with and support local journalism. They tried out paid social media campaigns, AI tools, in-person community presence, bilingual content and audience segmentation to improve engagement and sustainability.

Learn more about what newsrooms learned in the program here.

Join an AMA with Elaine Díaz Rodríguez to learn about Tiny News

Want to learn more about Tiny News Collective? You’ll have a chance next week when our membership director Elaine Díaz Rodríguez runs an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on May 5 at 3 p.m. ET. She’ll walk through what membership actually looks like, who it’s for, and how founders are using TNC to build community-rooted newsrooms. Whether you’re pre-launch, early stage or just exploring your options, this is a chance to hear directly from our team and get your real-world questions answered. Register here!

Founder Shoutouts

🏆 Fellowships and fundraising 💰

We love to see fellowships, creative fundraisers and more among our members. Here are highlights from the past month:

🧪 Kelly Glass from The VP Chicago received a Health Science Reporting Fellowship from Public Narrative and the Alliance for Research with Chicagoland Communities at Northwestern University (see image above). A freelancer for TNC member Harvey World Herald, Nicole Jeanine Johnson, is another fellow in the program. 

🏛️ Bryan Vance from Stumptown Savings received a Local Business Journalism Fellowship from the National Press Foundation to go to Washington, D.C., for a four-day training.

💡 Jai Smith of Lehigh Daily was a finalist for the Big Idea Competition from the Keystone News Summit in Hershey, Penn.

💰 TNC members Amy Bushatz of Mat-Su Sentinel (pictured left), Claudia Amaro of Planeta Venus (pictured right) and Cindy Fisher of Black Belt News Network (not pictured) were invited to attend the RJI Rural Revenue Transformation Workshop at the University of Missouri. 

🛥️ Black by God | The West Virginian lost a $300,000 grant from the USDA, but will seek to raise $100,000 during a 24 Hour Podcast Telethon Fundraiser on the water in Charleston, W.V., on May 2-3.

✨Landmark moments

We love to see our members launch and celebrate big moments! 

🚀The Petaluma (California) Voice launched this month! It’s a nonprofit covering local government, schools, business, arts, events and the environment.

💖 Barrenside also launched this month, started by founder Brennan Crain, who recently quit his job at WBKO-TV to run the independent, community-centered news outlet focused on transparency, accountability, connection and local impact in Barren County, Kentucky.

🗳️ Mendo Local held its first candidate forum, with four candidates for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors answering questions based on the publication’s reporting.

⛸️ Mat-Su Sentinel had two big landmarks: Its first fundraising event on ice, with bands playing while people skated, raising $4,000 for the publication. Plus, the Sentinel opened its first brick-and-mortar office in downtown Palmer in a 1950s-era building.

🗣️ Speaking up and speaking out

We love seeing our TNC founders out in the real world, giving talks, sharing knowledge and being recognized. Here are some highlights:

🎤 Brittany Harlow of Crosswinds News hosted and moderated the Osage News Editorial Board Congressional Candidate Debates (see photo above). 

🎙️ Crystal Good of Black By God | The West Virginian shares reflections on the role of community journalism in disaster recovery on the Worthy Ground Exchange podcast, produced by Invest Appalachia, the Central Appalachian Network and ReImagine Appalachia.

📣 Two TNC founders recently ran webinars for the Online News Association: Cara Kuhlman of Future Tides ran one on developing walking tours; and Rahim Jessani of Bottom Up Media ran one on video storytelling for journalists.

🏫 Jai Smith of Lehigh Daily spoke to 120 journalism students from nine districts across Lehigh Valley at the fourth annual Student Journalism Summit.

Stories with impact 💥

💗 We love to see TNC members team up! Newsberg partnered with Stumptown Savings to compare grocery prices to help locals in Newberg shop smarter. Plus, Stumptown Savings released its latest monthly price tracker, including a new data visualization feature.

🪫 Connect Puerto Rico covered the recent move by the U.S. federal government to redirect $1 billion in solar funding promised to low-income Puerto Ricans to help them prepare for the next hurricane.

⚖️ The Latino Newsletter filed a lawsuit against the Puerto Rico Police Department for failing to respond to a records request related to its border security grant from FEMA.

Resources

Richart J. Margolis Award
The award is designed to help developing journalists make progress on non-fiction writing projects that reflect important social values. The selection committee judges applications on the quality of the writing samples and the relevance and potential impact of the proposed project. Submitted samples should all be non-fiction pieces that give a clear indication of the applicant's ability to write well and apply journalistic skills effectively. Apply by July 1.

The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant
The program supports emerging and established writers who cover contemporary visual art. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in four categories — articles, books, short-form writing and translation — the grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies. Apply by May 6.

GNI Growth Catalyst Program with Blue Engine Collaborative
Provides up to $100,000 in support for high-performing newsrooms that want to expand geographically. Includes one year of expert consulting, coaching and strategic planning support from Blue Engine, and collaboration with other publishers in the program. Apply by May 7.

Beyond stress: What journalists should know about burnout from American Press Institute, May 5 at 1 p.m. EDT
In this self-reflective session, you will contribute anonymously to a series of prompts to learn actionable insights for reassessing and repairing your relationships with work. This event was created specifically for those working within news organizations.

Featured image: The International Journalism Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. (Photo by Marco Dottori / #ijf26)

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Big Blast from Tiny News. Be sure to follow us on social media to keep up with the latest from TNC and our amazing group of founders!

Follow us on LinkedIn. 
Follow us on Bluesky. 

The Big Blast Credits

Written by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley