🚀 The Big Blast from Tiny News, July 2025
Newsletter Archive

🚀 The Big Blast from Tiny News, July 2025

Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere

👐 How vulnerability and transparency are superpowers for indie publishers

By Amy L. Kovac-Ashley

A growing number of news founders at Tiny News Collective have been practicing what some people call radical transparency. They are sharing not just their wins and accolades but also bringing their communities along when things get hard — when they have to make difficult staffing decisions, why they need more funding to do their work, how difficult it is to be a solopreneur running a news startup, etc. Where some might see this kind of transparency as a weakness, we think it’s a key superpower.

These efforts are part of a movement of pioneering newsrooms such as Defector that regularly share their progress publicly. Since its founding in 2020, Defector has released an annual report that breaks down all financials (down to Taco Bell expenditures included in the 2024 report!), details various strategies and explains plans for the future. This practice is baked into their values: “We promise transparency with each other and with our subscribers,” they say on their About page.

This kind of open, honest communication direct to the community helps build trust and charts a new path. Being real, telling people the unvarnished truth, warts and all, helps break down the wall between news publishers and audiences. We see many examples of how this approach plays out in the TNC community:

The latest fundraising campaign from The 51st is to hire Martin Austermuhle as a full-time reporter and to keep Christina Sturdivant Sani as executive editor beyond one year.

All of these examples prove the point that publishers not only can be vulnerable and transparent — no matter how difficult the situation is — but that those qualities are actually a major superpower for them as independent publishers. This realness is what people respond to because it’s powerful and transformative for people to talk openly about how difficult the work can be. Big brands rarely can do that in an authentic way, but smaller community publishers can. We at TNC model it, embrace it and hope to see others follow the lead of our members.

🗣️TNC around town: For those going to Netroots Nation in New Orleans next month, come say hi to me and Claudia Amaro from Planeta Venus, as we will be talking on a panel there, “Hope on the Frontlines: How Indie, Community Media Is Fighting Back.”

📩
We invite you to forward this newsletter to others in your network and if you were forwarded this newsletter, please subscribe.

TNC News

Announcing TNC’s new membership director: Elaine Díaz Rodríguez

Supporting our Tiny News members is of utmost importance to us, so we are excited to announce our new membership director: Elaine Díaz Rodríguez. Elaine will join the team on August 4 and will support TNC’s 60+ member news startups to help them succeed. Her work will include running the membership experience, including recruitment, application and selection, as well as member training, cohort meetings and services. She will oversee a small team of consultants who provide support and guidance to members and will be a key member of Tiny News Collective’s leadership team.

Elaine is a journalist, nonprofit leader and media strategist with more than a decade of experience building and supporting independent news organizations all over the world. "I’m excited to support the next generation of news founders as they reimagine local journalism in their own communities,” Elaine said.

Read the whole story here.

TNC gives grants to 15 member newsrooms from its Immediate Needs Fund

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

We are thrilled to announce our first grants from the Immediate Needs Fund, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. These grants of $5,000 per outlet (for a total of $75,000 granted) will help members replace lost funding, cover bookkeeping and accounting needs, meet unexpected community information needs, and more.

Tiny News is excited to announce the following newsroom grantees from the Immediate Needs Fund:

Read the whole story here.

5 Questions with Claudia Amaro of Planeta Venus

For our latest “5 Questions with…” feature, we caught up with Claudia Amaro, who started Planeta Venus in 2015 as a radio show based in Wichita, Kansas. It later expanded to a website, newsletter, mobile app and online calendar, with the goal being to “inform, connect and empower” Latinos across Kansas and around the world. Claudia talks about Planeta Venus’s first Latino Awards Dinner last year, as well as its launch of Spanish-language computer classes at a local library. 

“My vision for Planeta Venus is to grow into a regional hub for bilingual information, civic engagement and community resources,” she said. “I want it to be more than a newsroom. I want it to be a trusted ally that helps people navigate life in Kansas with dignity and clarity… Ultimately, I envision a more informed, engaged and healthy Latino community — one where people feel seen, heard and equipped to participate fully in public life.”

Read the whole story here

🏆 Four Tiny News members are 2025 LION Awards finalists

We are pleased when Tiny News Collective members are recognized for their hard work. The latest honor came when LION Publishers announced the finalists for their 2025 LION Sustainability Awards. 

Mat-Su Sentinel and Tucson Spotlight are both finalists for the New LION Business of the Year. Two other members (Eden Prairie Local News and Ethiopique), one alumni organization and one board member are finalists in several other categories.

Read the whole story here.

TNC, INN offer more startup sessions in August

Tiny News Collective, in partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), is offering startup sessions to anyone interested in learning more about creating a news and information outlet. In the sessions, we discuss the audience and business factors to consider and the practical next steps along the journey of becoming a news founder. Attendees also learn more about TNC and INN.

Register here for the sessions. The next one will be on August 5, and attendees will get to meet our new membership director. Please share the link with anyone you know who might be interested in learning about creating an independent news organization. We would love to have them!

Founder shout-outs

Awards and recognition

We love to see our members get the recognition they deserve. This month, there was a lot to celebrate! 🎊

Photo by Brands&People / Unsplash

🏆Eden Prairie Local News is a finalist for two Nonprofit News Awards from INN: the Insight Award for Explanatory Journalism (Micro Division) and INNovator Award (Micro Division).

🏅Oxford Free Press is a finalist for the Nonprofit News Award: Startup of the Year. 

📰Project Optimist won three Page One Awards from the Minnesota SPJ, including taking first place for its website, which uses the TNC theme on Ghost.

🙋🏽‍♀️Nancy Flores of Austin Vida was named one of the 2025 Women of Distinction by the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce (see image above).

✨Lo Sontag of Sprawlism was named as a Next City Vanguard Fellow for 2025.  

👏🏽Mark Calaguas of Tayo was named a fellow in the Michigan Central x Newlab Art + Technology Residency.

Speaking up and speaking out

We love seeing our TNC founders out in the real world, giving talks, getting quoted and showing up in their communities. Here are some highlights:

🗳️Tucson Spotlight teamed up with Arizona Luminaria and the Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona to host a nonpartisan Tucson City Council candidate meet-and-greet on July 8. 

🦁Nancy Flores of Austin Vida, Claudia Amaro of Planeta Venus, Henok Mengistu of Ethiopique and Erica Perel and Amy L. Kovac-Ashley of TNC will be speaking at the Independent News Sustainability Summit by LION Publishers in September.

🗣️Kari Mar of La Conner Community News spoke at the Asian American Journalists Association conference in Seattle about starting a nonprofit news outlet.

🌾Claudia Amaro of Planeta Venus was profiled in the Latino Reporter, which said she is “building a media empire in Kansas.”

💖Jennifer Yourkavitch of The Carrborean was profiled in NC Local’s newsletter

Milestone moments

Here are some milestone moments for our founders this month:

🚀The Los Angeles Center for Investigative Journalism a.k.a. Investigate LA launched its website and published two important investigative pieces.

🐺The Coyote Media Collective hit six figures on its crowdfunding campaign to help it prepare for launch, raising more than $135,000 out of a goal of $150,000. Plus, the team was profiled in the San Francisco Examiner.

🎊The website for Ethiopique brought in more than 91,000 visits by June this year, already doubling visits from all of last year. Plus, Facebook posts hit 3.9 million views with more than 25,000 content interactions.

😎Eden Prairie Local News has a job opening for a CEO/publisher, who will take over for longtime leader Steve Schewe

💰Susan Rinkunas and Garnet Henderson of Autonomy News are now able to pay themselves for the first time.

Resources

RJI community-centered symposium on November 13 and 14
RJI will host a symposium for a cohort of 30 community-centered journalists to share and create thoughtful and actionable ways to serve their communities better. This year’s symposium will be hosted by Mirror Indy in Indianapolis. Attendees will get a free hotel room and a stipend to try a new idea from the symposium. Apply here by October 25.

Immigration enforcement and journalist safety: What newsroom leaders need to know
This briefing paper, developed by the Journalism Protection Initiative at the CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, outlines the key areas of immigration-related risk for news outlets and offers concrete guidance for how newsroom decision makers can prepare.

Journalists: How to get records the criminal justice system doesn’t want you to have
The Marshall Project released this free toolkit to help newsrooms navigate public records requests. It offers a step-by-step guide to knowing what kinds of documents to look for and the best ways to get access to them.

Great journalism conferences this summer and fall
Get out and network at these upcoming conferences: National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) (August 6–10), Indigenous Media Conference (August 13–15), the Independent News Sustainability Summit from LION Publishers (September 3–5),  the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists (NLGJA) (September 4–7) and the Radically Rural Summit (October 7–9).


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 and Erica Perel

Stay informed

Sign up for our monthly newsletter for ongoing updates, announcements, and resources for newsroom entrepreneurs.