Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere

💵 Small dollars make a big impact

By Erica Perel

Late last spring, Ethiopique publisher Henok Mengistu experienced a gap between funding tranches and was wondering how to keep the publication’s freelancer network engaged through the municipal election cycle in the D.C. metro area. Fifteen hundred miles away in Austin, TX, Nancy Flores of Austin Vida had learned she lost grant funding for a personal essay event that was to serve as a pilot project for events in her community.

Both received Immediate Needs Fund grants from Tiny News Collective, which bridged Henok’s funding gap and allowed Nancy to continue the planned event. The effect for Ethiopique: the funds helped produce voter guides that increased engagement 78%. And for Austin Vida: The pilot event directly led to the acquisition of a $100,000 external grant, a 20x return on the initial TNC investment.

The two publishers share the impact of that funding in the case studies section of TNC’s new report on the first year of our regranting program.

In late 2024, Tiny News Collective received a grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that earmarked $750,000 over three years for our members. We moved quickly to build systems and processes to get that money out the door in an equitable, fair and compliant manner. In 2025, we provided $200,000 in funds to 41 outlets between the Immediate Needs Fund and the Spark Fund for professional development.

Late last year, as those first efforts came to a close and we started thinking about 2026 regranting, we hired an external researcher, Jessica Mahone, to evaluate our regranting program.

Jessica reviewed our data, surveyed grantees and conducted 1:1 interviews with a selection of grantees. She provided us with recommendations for the future, as well as a suggested framework for how we might track the impact of our regranting going forward. Among the highlights:

• Grantees generally said the grants helped solve their problems: 80% of Spark Fund recipients gained a new skill, and 57% said that skill significantly advanced their organization’s sustainability or growth goals. 88% of Immediate Needs Fund grantees said the funding stabilized the situation described in the report.
• Grantees found the applications to be of an appropriate complexity to the amount of the grant. 
• While everyone wanted their money as quickly as possible, 78% of Immediate Needs Fund recipients found the timeline of applications and payment to be appropriate.
• Grantees reported that the Immediate Needs Fund averted crises by preventing personal debt for founders and stabilizing freelance payroll during temporary revenue shocks. 

We hope you’ll read Jessica’s full report, including six case studies from newsrooms that received the funding. I also shared some additional insights our small team learned after a year of regranting. Energized by these results and lessons, we look forward to our 2026 regranting program.

🗣️TNC Around Town: Elaine Díaz Rodríguez is speaking at the ONA conference in Chicago on a panel this morning called, “Getting Your New Project off the Ground,” and Amy L. Kovac-Ashley will attend the International Journalism Festival in Perugia April 15-18. Erica Perel will speak on a panel discussing news collectives and cooperatives with member The 51st at the Local News Researchers Workshop in Washington, D.C., April 16-17.

TNC News

Doug Keller joins TNC as our first development director

Tiny News Collective is excited to announce the hiring of our first development director, Doug Keller. He will work with the leadership team at TNC to diversify revenue sources, build authentic partnerships, secure funding for new initiatives and ensure that we grow sustainably for the long haul. 

Doug is a nonprofit leader and fundraiser with 15+ years of experience building and supporting mission-driven organizations focused on amplifying community voices and advancing equity. Most recently, Doug worked as YouthTruth partnerships lead at the Center for Effective Philanthropy, partnering with school districts across the country to center student perspectives in educational decision-making.

“Having spent my career in the nonprofit sector founding and growing organizations that uplift community voices, I've seen firsthand how local journalism is a cornerstone of healthy communities, and of our democracy,” Doug said. “I'm excited to get to work resourcing the visionary founders doing this essential work, and growing the community of support in their corner for years to come.”

Welcome to the team, Doug! 💖

Read more about Doug here.

Print makes a comeback: Community zines are part of TNC founders’ product mix

Online news startups have a conundrum: Some people prefer print products, but printing newspapers can be cost prohibitive. One solution has been a throwback to that DIY, scrappy print zine, a format that has a long history from revolutionary pamphlets to punk rock in the late 70s. At least six Tiny News Collective members have been publishing zines to help promote their brand, distribute stories and, well, because they’re fun.

“Zines are inherently DIY: not glossy, handmade, a little rough. If those adjectives also fit your brand, don’t be afraid to fully lean into the weirdness of making a zine,” said Soleil Ho, co-founder of COYOTE Media, which created a zine with a comic about starting a mutual aid swap as part of a fundraising perk. Other TNC members with zines include Newsberg, Stumptown Savings, Tenderloin Voice, Southpoint Access and the art rebellion.

And thanks to their connections through Tiny News Collective, many of the founders helped each other by sharing zine templates, advice and marketing strategies. 

If you’re thinking of starting a zine, read the whole story here.

5 Questions with The Edge’s Whitney McKnight

For our latest feature, we caught up with Whitney McKnight (pictured above), founder and editor of The Edge, a hyperlocal online news outlet based in Berea, Kentucky, that covers most of Madison County. Since founding The Edge in 2024, Whitney has covered land use issues and threats to agriculture that are of community concern. The Edge has garnered deep-rooted community support, engaging and activating county residents to learn more and share their input with local leaders.

“Since launching, I’ve been doing everything myself, from reporting to managing and operating the business of The Edge,” Whitney said. “This year, I aim to find funding for a second reporter to help expand coverage. I will assign them the Richmond beat. It's unusual to have two cities in one county, but we do, and there is a lot happening land-use-wise.”

Read the whole feature here.

Founder Shoutouts

🏆 Awards and grants 💰

We love to see awards, grants and fellowships among our members. Here are highlights from the past month:

🏅 Mat-Su Sentinel won the Hearken Champion of Curiosity: Persistent Engagement for Democracy award for its “Flip the Script” election connection event.

🌟 Oxford Free Press received the Hooper Award for the Newspaper of the Year and placed in seven other awards in the Division B category during the Ohio News Media Association and Collegiate Fellowship Day.

💸  Black by God | The West Virginian received a $50,000 grant, plus one-on-one coaching from Press Forward Central Appalachia. In year two, BBG might access up to $50,000 in “additional flexible, repayable funding tailored to their needs.”

⚕️ Tucson Spotlight was named as a recipient of the Addressing Health Disparities Fellowship from Solutions Journalism Network. “A solutions approach allows us to give a powerful voice to those local leaders and residents who are actively battling these disparities,” said Caitlin Schmidt, co-founder of Tucson Spotlight.

✨Landmark moments

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

🤑 The 51st raised more than $375,000 so it could more than triple its reporting capacity by converting a part-time editor to full-time, hiring a longtime freelance reporter and hiring a third reporter (with the goal of hiring someone laid off from the Washington Post).

🚀 Bottom Up Media, which produces and accelerates creator-driven journalism, launched its website as a home for the work of Rahim Jessani, who says it will also be “an accelerator so experts, journalists and thought leaders can reach the next generation of audiences.” 

🎂Happy Birthday to TNC members Ethiopique (4th!), Black Belt News Network (3rd!) and Stumptown Savings (1st!). Follow the links to learn more about what they’ve accomplished. 🎊

💖 The Institute for Nonprofit News announced its new members, including TNC member The Latino Newsletter. URL Media announced that it was adding Black by God | The West Virginian as a new member, joining Ethiopique and TNC alumni 2 Puntos Platform in the network.

🎓 RJI fellows and TNC members Claudio Amaro (pictured above) and Cara Kuhlman presented their finished projects, with recently launched websites: Claudia’s CoveringImmigration.com and Cara’s JournalismTours.com. They will be resources for years to come for the field!

📰 Students at Keith High School in Orrville, Ala., have published the first student newspaper in the school’s history as part of a new journalism class launched earlier this year through a partnership with the Black Belt News Network.

⚡ Connect Puerto Rico started running energy-related job listings to “see where hiring — and investment — are showing up on the ground.

📹 The Latino Newsletter launched a Spring 2026 Funder Briefing video on YouTube, and put out a call for paid freelance writers.

🗣️ 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:

🎙️ The Latino Newsletter produced a special episode of its podcast, “No More Pedestals,” with host Michelle Zacarias and founder Julio Ricardo Varela discussing the New York Times report on the sexual abuse allegations against César Chávez.

💪🏼Whitney McKnight of The Edge spoke on an online panel for Sunlight Research Desk entitled, “Building a Small Newsroom People Trust.”

🏫 Tahera Rahmani of the Philly-Afghan Info Hub gave a talk to a Temple University class about their efforts to meet recent Afghan refugees' needs for information and connection.

🛒 Bryan R. Vance of Stumptown Savings got a double dose of coverage, appearing on the Small Press, Big Ideas podcast, and also getting featured in the Willamette Week newspaper. “I know this isn’t fancy. This isn’t the same as investigating corruption at City Hall,” Bryan told the newspaper. “But this impacts everyone. We all have to eat.”

❤️‍🩹 Victor Hugo Febres of Esta es la Cosa produced this video (in Spanish) to share why the news outlet went through a pause in production at the beginning of this year. In it, he reflects on migrant trauma, memory, state violence, democracy, authoritarianism, and the echoes between the United States and Venezuela.

💥 Stories with impact

🚰 Kaheāwai Media covered the monthly public meeting of the Commission on Water Resource Management in Oahu, but also included in-depth background on the commission and its conflicts and history.

🔍 Investigate LA ran its second part of a story about the City of Industry discussing data center sites months before a Planning Commission vote. 

📈 Connect Puerto Rico dug deeper into the causes of the island’s rising electric bills, which go beyond the current crisis and war in the Middle East.

🏷️ Stumptown Savings looked at grocery prices over the past seven months, finding that mid-tier grocers’ prices were up nearly 8% while bargain grocers’ prices were down 3.3%.

🧪Reo Eveleth writes an in-depth story for COYOTE Media about the new sex testing policy for women at the Olympics. “I’ve spent over 10 years obsessed with so-called ‘gender verification’ tests. Proponents claim they have history and science on their side. They don’t,” Reo writes.

Resources

LPC Playbook Webinar: Immigration Response with Cicero Independiente  
A conversation with journalists from Cicero Independiente about their response to the Midway Blitz in Chicago. Discover how their newsroom covered the event, supported migrant communities, and managed the challenges of reporting on fast-moving enforcement actions. This session, on April 2 at 3 p.m. ET, will present practical strategies for responding when communities face threats from ICE. 

Fund for Investigative Journalism Spring Grants
The FIJ provides grants and other support for reporters to produce high-quality, unbiased, nonpartisan investigative stories that have an impact. Grants are up to $10,000 for investigative projects, plus seed grants up to $2,500 for early reporting. Apply by April 27.

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.

Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism from The Carter Center
Nine U.S.-based fellows and one non-U.S.-based fellow will be selected in July based on their proposed mental health projects. Projects can be proposed in multiple formats — digital, audio, video, print — and applicants are encouraged to think creatively within the topic area. Apply by April 3.

McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism
The fellowship provides experienced journalists with grants up to $15,000 and the editorial support needed to produce deeply reported enterprise and investigative stories with a strong economic, financial or business angle. Apply by April 13.

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 and Erica Perel, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley