Amid Hard Times for Investigative Journalists, Growing Funding for an Oasis of Support
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HUYCK HOUSE at the Carey Institute for Global Good. Photo: Carey Institue
Established in 2015, the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good hosts long-form nonfiction writers, photojournalists, documentary filmmakers and multimedia creators for five- to ten-week residencies at the institute’s 100-acre campus in the upstate New York village of Rensselaerville. By giving fellows the space and support to focus on their work, the program seeks to “equip citizens with the information they need to lead constructive discourse and create sustainable change in our world.”
The institute recently announced $400,000 in increased support from the Logan Family Foundation, a Berkeley-based funder that supports organizations that advance social justice through investigative journalism, arts and culture, and documentary film. The infusion will fund fellowship opportunities for 40 more nonfiction creators working on long-form articles, books and films in the upcoming year.
In comments that will sound familiar to readers attuned to the challenges facing the journalism field, Program Manager Carly Willsie recently told me the institute founded the program “to help preserve serious, deeply reported, long-form journalism threatened by the ongoing collapse of traditional news models—the terrible perfect storm of readers shifting from print to digital in the late 2000s and the resulting loss of ad revenues for newspapers and magazines.”
In an effort to cut costs, newsrooms slashed investigative teams and laid off reporters. “These talented journalists,” Willsie said, “were left to pursue their reporting on their own—primarily in isolation; spending their own savings on travel, research and FOIA requests; and without formal support for practical matters like legal questions or issues of personal/digital security.” Given these obstacles, journalists produced fewer deeply reported work, nonfiction books, and documentaries that “fuel a democracy like ours.”
This trend, regrettably, hasn’t abated. Between January 2017, and April 2018, a third of the nation’s largest newspapers, including the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News, reported layoffs. Last year, various outlets laid off 2,100 employees within a two-week span. Surveying the wreckage, the New Yorker’s Jill Lepore posed a question that has been on the minds of funders ever since the dot-coms began dismantling print newspapers’ ad-centric business model over two decades ago: “Does Journalism Have a Future?”
Enter the Logan Nonfiction Program, which provides fellows with the time, resources and community they need to finish critical works of nonfiction and contribute to an informed, educated and engaged citizenry.
Broad Funder Support
Civic-minded journalism funders quickly embraced the nonfiction program at the Carey Institute for Global Good after its launch in 2015. Later that year, the institute received $200,000 in support thanks to a challenge grant from the Chicago-based Reva and David Logan Foundation that was matched by the Knight Foundation.
In 2016, Reva and David’s son, Jonathan, resigned from the foundation and established the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. Later that year, the new foundation gave the program $1 million. In recognition of the gift, the program was renamed the Logan Nonfiction Program. “There is no other space where journalists have strong support in a nurturing environment for their important work. We are proud to be a part of it,” Logan said at the time.
Commenting on his foundation’s recent commitment, Logan said, “2020 is a critically important election year and the foundation is working to ensure that voters are registered, know where to find credible information about candidates and get to the polls.” The program “plays an important role in this effort by delivering data-driven, fact-based reporting on multiple platforms, including documentary film, print, documentary photography and podcasting.”
The program, which has hosted more than 130 writers, documentary filmmakers, photojournalists and podcasters from 29 countries, has also received support from the Stewart R. Mott Foundation and the Dyson Foundation. In addition to the Jonathan Logan Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the European Journalism Centre provided funding for the program’s 2019 fellowship.
Community, Competition, and Impact
Five years is a long time in the fast-changing world of journalism philanthropy, and I asked Willsie how the program has evolved since its inception. “We’ve learned a lot about how to support writers and documentarians during their stays here,” she told me. “We now offer state-of-the-art documentary editing facilities, and the community and professional development components of the program have grown much more robust since 2015.”
While fellows certainly appreciated the isolation of the institute’s rural campus, they also thrived in its communal setting. “It’s the time together in conversation that makes the biggest impact on their professional lives and their projects,” Willsie said, highlighting the program’s informal and formal networking, workshopping and community events.
The program has also grown increasingly competitive over the years, with more than 240 applications for the fellowship last year. “Many of best fellows learn about us by word of mouth,” she said. The program’s alumni represent 40 countries and include award-winning journalists and filmmakers, among them, Rania Abouzeid, Shane Bauer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Jacqueline Olive, Marcela Turati and Daniel Ellsberg, the author and former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
As the program’s 150+ alumni publish more books and distribute their films, “we will also be focused on understanding the impact of their work on individuals, communities and institutions throughout the globe,” Willsie said, before citing a particularly powerful example: the resignation of Joseph Muscat, prime minister of Malta, in part due to continued investigations by program alumnus Matthew Caruana Galizia into Muscat’s mother’s assassination.
“Isolated and Under-Resourced”
The program’s work underscores what Willsie calls a “dilemma” across a journalism funding landscape that’s been awash in cash since the 2016 election: Despite being the “bedrock of the journalism ecosystem,” freelance investigative journalists remain “isolated and under-resourced.”
Willsie ascribes this challenge to funders’ understandable desire to support programs that tackle “systems-level change in an effort to solve the revenue and distribution crisis that has caused so many communities around the U.S. to become news deserts,” she said. “Without a doubt, these are issues that need to be addressed and the number of incredible nonprofit organizations and newsrooms that have benefited from this type of support is inspiring.”
Funders, Willsie said, want to “come up with a bright and shiny new model that will cure the journalism market’s ills.” While this tendency certainly isn’t limited to journalism funders, it can obscure the fact that “the journalism itself—especially the deep, investigative journalism our world needs more than ever—is produced by courageous individuals who are too often forgotten in favor of the myriad systemic problems our industry faces.”
Indeed, the problems facing freelance investigative journalism are quite different than the kinds facing nonprofit outlets, such as developing a “sustainable business model” or building trust. Countless freelance investigative journalists lack adequate or timely pay, predictable income, and health insurance. Many, as we’ll see, are risking their lives on a daily basis. While Willsie doesn’t diminish the profound challenges facing nonprofit local outlets, she and the program’s namesake would nonetheless “welcome additional donors who want to help out by supporting individual fellowships.”
Supporting At-Risk Journalists
Willsie underscored another key component of the program’s work—its support for “at-risk” journalists. Since 2015, the institute has reserved fellowships for journalists who are in danger or have experienced extreme stress or trauma as a result of their reporting. By prioritizing physical safety, psycho-emotional support, community, and self-awareness, the program enables fellows to work on their craft free from harm’s way.
The institute’s support for at-risk journalism “was an organic development” of the program, Willsie told me. “When you have a fellowship that serves an international cohort of investigative journalists, it’s inevitable that some of those journalists will have experienced varying levels of threat and press freedom violations—including censorship and physical, digital and emotional duress. This is what’s happened here. We were able to formalize our support of journalists under threat with funding from the Open Society Foundations and the European Journalism Center, and continue to welcome a number of journalists at risk from across the globe to our campus every year.”
Applications are currently open for the Logan Nonfiction Program’s fall 2020 class of fellows.
In related coverage, check out my colleague Jon Pattee’s chat with John Weis, the director of development at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and a related piece highlighting at some of the high-profile donors who have supported the CPJ and its work in protecting journalists.
