Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere
By Amy L. Kovac-Ashley
Last year, we announced a partnership between Listening Post Collective (LPC) and Tiny News Collective to coordinate our support for leaders in the early stages of providing news and information to and with their communities. In line with our shared values of listening first, community collaboration, civic health and integrity, we want to share what we’ve been learning.
A quick by the numbers accounting: Between us, we now share 10 partners, and that list is growing. Through our coordinated work, we’ve witnessed how people start with one organization and then connect with the second. What we’ve observed is that the flow goes both ways: TNC → LPC and LPC → TNC.
That multidirectional movement flies in the face of the linear thinking that often takes hold in journalism and is articulated through metaphors about pipelines. What our empirical data show, instead, is that we need to find better ways to describe our work that will resonate with the people we serve and help them navigate the support they need from us (or other journalism support organizations) at any given time.
So we bent that linear approach, taking the simple, straight line and refashioning it into something new. The result looked an awful lot like the Moscow Metro map, with intersecting train lines, transfer stations from one line to another and a circle line to make it more efficient to get around.
We believe this concept allows for more imagination, flexibility and self-determination on the part of the news and information providers, centering them as travelers with agency who choose the best pathways for themselves. Our job is then to support them as they ride the metro and explore those new pathways.
For more on how our shared work is progressing based on the feedback of local partners, read this piece that I co-authored with Jesse Hardman, founder of Listening Post Collective.
We want to thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Silvia Rivera and Liliana Velázquez for supporting our work and the evolution of our collaboration with LPC.
🧳 Tiny News around town: TNC's operations director Erica Perel will moderate a panel at the 2026 NC News & Information Summit that will feature two TNC members: The Carrborean's Jennifer Yourkavitch and Southpoint Access's Wes Platt. The event takes place on March 27 in Raleigh, and you can get tickets here.
The recent arrest of journalist Georgia Fort, a TNC alum, for covering a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, shows just how vulnerable independent journalists are today. That’s why TNC started a response and resilience program to address journalist safety, both in-person and online, as well as legal and mental health support.
As we wrote in our letter of support for Georgia, “The work of independent journalists like Georgia is vital to our democracy, and their safety and freedom to report must be non-negotiable. TNC is committed to standing with our members and partners as they navigate this moment with intention, caution and solidarity. We will continue advocating for the rights, safety and recognition of all journalists and especially those doing critical work in vulnerable conditions.”
On February 17, Georgia pleaded not guilty in court, and spoke outside the courthouse about recent attacks on press freedom. “The attack on the press did not start or end with my arrest,” she said. “We live in a time when AI images and AI videos are shaping our world’s reality, with a portion of our society living in delusion. So if you stand, stand for truth … not just for all journalists, but for anyone who is having their First Amendment violated.”
Read our entire support letter for Georgia here.
For our latest “5 Questions with” feature, we checked in with Sarah Leach, executive editor, and Sheila Reinecke, board member, of Ottawa News Network (ONN). Launched in December 2024, ONN serves the people of Ottawa County, Michigan, with free, community-rooted news. The outlet was inspired by Sarah’s independent local reporting on political controversy in the county and her fierce belief that community members deserve to know what’s going on in their government. From those original political stories, Sarah, Sheila and the team have been able to build a new organization built on trust with their community.
“We aren't just about any one space — we're really here as a community asset,” Sarah said. “So we continue to try to find opportunities to work with freelancers or partner with content partners to diversify offerings for readers.”
Read the whole story here.
At the end of 2025, we invited our members to pause and reflect with us by participating in our first-ever Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. Our goal was to better understand how founders experience Tiny News Collective, what’s working, where we can grow and what support truly makes a difference when you’re launching and sustaining community-centered newsrooms.
We chose the NPS because it focuses on whether founders would recommend this community to others.
We heard from 43 founders representing 41 organizations — about half of our active membership — and the results were both encouraging and clarifying. Our overall NPS score was +53, on a scale of -100 to +100. Seventy percent of respondents identified as Promoters, meaning they are enthusiastic about their experience and would actively recommend TNC. Another 14% were Passives, feeling generally positive but not yet fully confident in their engagement, and 16% were Detractors, highlighting where expectations and experiences have not always aligned.
What came through most clearly in the comments is that our members do not feel alone. Again and again, founders described TNC as a place where they feel supported and understood as they navigate the complexity of starting something from scratch. A sense of learning with each other rather than in isolation continues to be one of the most powerful aspects of the Collective.
Read the whole story about the survey results here.
Local News Day is a national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news. The mission is simple: reconnect people to trusted local outlets, empower newsrooms to grow, and spark a national movement that sustains local news for generations. TNC is partnering with Local News Day to help spread the word. Newsrooms can partner with Local News Day to help neighbors find and subscribe to their trusted reporting through the Local News Locator Tool.
Learn more about Local News Day and how you can get involved here.
We love to see awards, anniversaries and big moments among our members. Here are highlights from the past month:
🚀 Tenderloin Voice (TL) launched its first print zine this month (see image above)! They aim to produce one issue per month. TL also had a “Community Appreciation Party” open house this week.
🗞️ Stumptown Savings joined the zine craze, launching its first print publication just in time for the PNW CSA Share Fair. Founder Bryan M. Vance also plans to create a special zine as a member perk.
🖊️ Black Belt News Network launched its first high school journalism class at Keith High School in Orrville, starting a pilot program to expand student voices and strengthen the future of rural journalism across Alabama’s Black Belt.
🏆 Mat-Su Sentinel won the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce 2025 Membership Award for Small Business. The award citation read, “Your hard work, dedication, and talent have not gone unnoticed, and we are excited to celebrate your accomplishments."
💗 La Verne Daily News is gaining momentum just four months after launching: The outlet is up to 17 paying members and 621 members total, has secured a $250 donation, built positive relationships with local police and fire departments and published a community-centered story about wildfires that resonated strongly with readers.
We love seeing our TNC founders out in the real world, giving talks, sharing knowledge and being recognized. Here are some highlights:
👩🏽🏫 Claudia Amaro of Planeta Venus and Cara Kulhman of Future Tides will present demos for their RJI Innovation Fellowships on March 5 at noon ET. Support them by registering to attend the presentations here. Recently, Cara wrote about four potential places for journalists to lead walking tours. Claudia wrote about how journalism “needs more than good intentions” when covering immigration.
🐇 🏈 TNC members wrote about the landmark Super Bowl Halftime Show by Bad Bunny, including:
🤖 Soleil Ho of COYOTE Media wrote a cautionary story about how the news startup almost got scammed by an AI-generated freelance story pitch. It could have been a “huge waste of our time and also, potentially, a waste of money.”
💖 Big thanks to members Nancy Flores, Steve Schewe, Bryan M. Vance, Daphne Magnawa, and Laura Weffer for presenting at TNC Founder Calls, where they shared inspiring stories of growth, innovation and persistence in their efforts to provide local news in their communities.
🖼️ Ethiopique and founder Henok Mengistu are featured in a special traveling exhibit (see above photo) on the freedom of the press created by Maryland Humanities to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As a partner in the project, TNC contributed to the section of the exhibit about reimagining local news. Henok was also recently featured by Press Forward in a “Local News Leader Spotlight.”
🏃🏽♀️➡️ Marissa Evans of Chisholm Free Press wrote a commentary on a recent CJR story about the Washington Post giving up on diversity long before layoffs, emphasizing, “this is a moment where newsrooms should be fearlessly investing in and running toward coverage of race in America, not away from it.”
✊🏽 The 51st was profiled in Inequality.org as a “worker-led alternative to billionaire-owned local news in DC.” The 51st’s Maddie Poore said that, “in the three days after the [Washington Post] cuts were announced we saw 700 new paid members join without us even really putting a call out there.”
📹 Rahim Jessani of Bottom Up Media was a facilitator at The Video Consortium’s Future of Nonfiction Video forum in New York earlier this month.
👏🏽 Black by God | The West Virginian commemorated Black History Month by looking at the role West Virginia played in shaping Black leaders and visionaries, including Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black history, and journalist and political commentator Tony Brown.
🛢️ Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) produced a Spanish-language podcast “Cuello Blanco, Manos Sucias” (“White Collars, Dirty Hands”) exploring the billion-dollar looting of Venezuela’s oil wealth. The series follows Laura Weffer, cofounder of Esta es la Cosa, as she retraces the steps of an enigmatic figure linked to a scheme to embezzle public funds.
⚖️ The Los Angeles Center for Investigative Journalism sued the City of El Monte for its failure to provide secondary employment records of police officers as required by the California Public Records Act. LACIJ also published a story about how the City of Industry’s zoning and energy moves were raising data center concerns.
💪🏽 Bryan M. Vance wrote for Stumptown Savings about how Oregon lawmakers are joining a national fight to ban "surveillance pricing" — AI-driven tech that lets grocery stores change prices in real-time based on your personal data and ZIP code.
Susan Rinkunas of Autonomy News shared on Bluesky this screenshot of a conversation between her and cofounder Garnet Henderson from a year ago as they were just starting to hatch a plan to launch a new publication. About three months after the original message, Autonomy News came into existence. In June of this year, they will celebrate Autonomy’s first anniversary. 🎉
Next Challenge for Media & Journalism from the Glen Nelson Center
It’s the largest competition open to nonprofit and for-profit media startups in the United States. The Next Challenge isn’t just about funding startups, it’s about accelerating ideas that help local communities stay informed, connected and engaged. The Challenge will award $250,000 to early-stage startups. Each division winner will receive a grant of up to $50,000, and a grand prize winner will receive an additional $25,000. Apply by March 10.
SRCCON Call for Participation
SRCCON is a hands-on conference on July 8–9 in Minneapolis, full of conversations and workshops focused on the practical challenges that news technology and data teams encounter every day. If you want to attend, propose a session, or take part in some other way, you can do all of that on this form. The deadline to propose a session or apply for a scholarship is March 8.
Pulitzer Center Grants
Grants are open to all journalists: writers, photographers, radio producers and filmmakers; staff journalists as well as freelancers. They support veteran reporters and also younger applicants who are looking for help to jumpstart their careers. A diversity of voices — gender, ethnicity, background and nationality — is important. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
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: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tiny-news-collective/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/tinynewscollective.bsky.social
The Big Blast Credits
Written by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley
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