Fort Worth Star-Telegram bolsters reporting, journalism with help from these nonprofits
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is increasing its local reporting firepower, with help from several of the city’s best-known philanthropic organizations.
The Star-Telegram is adding five reporting positions under its new Crossroads Lab program. The lab is funded with contributions from the community and designed to fill gaps in reporting that have developed due to the financial disruption faced by the newspaper industry.
Four of the reporter positions will be filled by new hires, and the other position involves extending the employment of a reporter who has been in Fort Worth for about a year under a philanthropic funding arrangement, said Steve Coffman, Star-Telegram president and editor.
The expansion under the Crossroads Lab program is made possible by grants totaling $434,000 from the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, The Morris Foundation and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. All three organizations have deep ties to the Fort Worth community and decades-old traditions of gift-giving and grant-writing.
The name of the Crossroads Lab stems from the Star-Telegram’s efforts to improve its news coverage of Fort Worth and Tarrant County as they recover from COVID-19 and continue to grow.
“The idea that took shape is that Fort Worth faces not just a singular fork in the road, but a series of crossroads, where there are challenges to be met, opportunities to be taken advantage of and, ultimately, victories to be celebrated,” Coffman said. “The Star-Telegram wants to be a strong voice in that process, and these partnerships will help ensure that.”
The news industry itself is at a crossroads, as it continues to deal with declines in advertising revenue, as more consumers turn to digital sources for their news rather than traditional printed products. The Crossroads Lab makes it possible for the Star-Telegram to provide news coverage in areas that might otherwise go uncovered, while also raising awareness and engagement in the community around topics important to funding partners, Coffman said.
Adding jobs to newsrooms through philanthropy
The idea behind using charitable donations to fund journalism isn’t new. Many publications such as the Texas Tribune, an Austin-based online publication that focuses on state government issues, have built their business models mostly on philanthropic contributions. Another publication, the Fort Worth Report, began in April as a fully nonprofit enterprise, with an emphasis on civic affairs.
Other news organizations have joined the Star-Telegram in adopting a hybrid model — keeping their for-profit business intact, while complementing it with nonprofit donations for specific, limited purposes. For example, the Fresno Bee — which like the Star-Telegram is owned by McClatchy — has teamed up with a California community foundation to fund several newsroom positions to expand education coverage.
The Crossroads Lab model makes it possible for local nonprofit organizations to have maximum impact with their investment, Coffman said, because the Star-Telegram already has an audience developed in print and online. It also has a recognized brand that has been a prominent part of the community for more than a century, Coffman said.
“When you invest with us, your money is going right into the content that is read by tens of thousands of people every day,” Coffman said.
In Fort Worth, the donations for the Crossroads Lab are made through 501(c)3 funds at the North Texas Community Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners, a national organization.
Typically, a grant contract is drafted to spell out what subjects the reporter will pursue, and may provide even a rough estimate of how many stories the reporter will produce during the term. However, the nonprofit organizations do not have an influence on the reporter’s day-to-day duties. Those tasks are overseen by newsroom leadership, which maintains control over the editorial content.
Persistent local news coverage
Fort Worth’s Crossroads Lab began with a grant from the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, which was founded by one of the city’s pioneering oil men and cattle traders. The foundation has agreed to fund an education reporter position and related expenditures for two years, for a total of $170,000.
(The reporter hired with that funding, Silas Allen, has been at the Star-Telegram for about a year, and recently was renewed for another year.)
The foundation believes that a local newspaper should provide detailed coverage of education issues, even if those stories don’t always attract a large readership, said Pete Geren, foundation president and chief executive officer.
“Newspapers have to make hard decisions on where to devote their resources, and there are some issues — and public education is one — that warrant persistent coverage, so that our community is going to be sufficiently well-informed and make good decisions in that area,” Geren said.
“The existing model for much of today’s media doesn’t provide the coverage in those areas, but those areas are critically important for a democracy to work,” he said.
Since 1962, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation has provided more than $523 million in grants, according to foundation records.
Another well-known organization, The Morris Foundation, has committed to fund three reporting positions covering social services, health and wellness and early childhood education. That funding totals $180,000 for one year.
The organization was founded in 1986 by Linda and Jack Morris — who became an investor after inventing a process for creating polyurethane carpet padding. The Morris Foundation supports about 100 programs annually and has made $95 million in distributions since its inception.
“We wanted to just make sure we were continuing to have non-biased well-reported stories about issues in Fort Worth,” said Elizabeth Brands, Morris Foundation head of education giving. “Jack and Linda Morris set up The Morris Foundation to ensure children and families in Fort Worth lived happy and productive and joyful lives. Making sure local institutions are sustainable is a priority for The Morris Foundation.”
The Rainwater Charitable Foundation, which was founded in 1991 by investment banker and Bass family portfolio manager Richard Rainwater, has committed to fund a reporter position and related expenses for $84,000 for one year. That reporter will specialize in covering issues of racial equity. The foundation donated a premium to make stories produced by the reporter free to all readers.
“We thought this was a great way to get meaningful news coverage to more people, regardless of their ability to pay,” said Jeremy Smith, foundation executive director.
“We shared the concern that there are fewer reporters and fewer stories, especially about what’s happening in our community,” Smith said. “It feels like a vicious cycle that newsrooms shrink a little bit more, year after year.”
When its founder died in 2015, the Rainwater foundation had given away more than $380 million for causes related to education, at-risk children and neurological research — and the organization continues to make gifts in those areas.
Renewing the grants
Once all five Crossroads Lab reporters are aboard, the Star-Telegram will have a significant amount of its reporters being paid for all or in part by nonprofit donations.
In addition to the five Crossroads Lab positions, two other Star-Telegram reporters — Arlington beat writer Kailey Broussard and environmental reporter Haley Samsel — are part of the nationwide Report For America program. That program, which was started by the nonprofit organization GroundTruth Project, pays roughly half the salaries for the first year for more than 200 reporters nationwide, to help newsrooms fill in the gaps where coverage has declined because of shrinking revenue.
For the Crossroads Lab, the grants are for one year at a time, although the nonprofit organizations say they are open to the idea of renewals.
“We hope it will be ongoing,” Rainwater’s Smith said. “We just intend to see how it goes.”
Coffman said the Star-Telegram continues to seek funding partners, either through foundations or individual givers, to grow the Crossroads Lab. He noted there are opportunities to expand coverage in areas such as local government, higher education, business, the arts and more. He invited interested parties to contact him a scoffman@star-telegram.com or 817-390-7704.
This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
