A Conversation with Karen Rundlet, Incoming CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News

This morning, the Institute for Nonprofit News, which provides education and business support services to its nearly 450 member organizations, named Knight Foundation Senior Director Karen Rundlet its new CEO, replacing Sue Cross, whom I had the opportunity to speak with in October. Rundlet will assume the role at INN on January 8.

Born in Jamaica, Rundlet and her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was in elementary school. “My mom was a religious newspaper reader and she constantly said, ‘This is how we figure out the system; this is how we’re going to understand the United States,’” she told me. “I grew up recognizing news as a path toward opportunity.”

Rundlet went on to work in commercial television in New York and Atlanta before joining the Miami Herald Media Company, where she was a reporter and oversaw the outlet’s digital initiatives. In 2015, she was hired as a program officer at Knight. She became the director of its journalism program area in 2018 and a senior director in early 2023.

In this latter role, Rundlet managed a more than $50 million portfolio of grants, was instrumental in the growth of the end-of-year fundraising campaign NewsMatch, worked with outgoing president Alberto Ibargüen on appointing Nikole Hannah-Jones the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, and helped to organize Press Forward, the new collaborative effort led by the MacArthur Foundation, which aims to move $500 million for local news.

I recently caught up with Rundlet, who lives in Miami with her husband, Alex, and their daughter, to discuss her early career, her take on the state of local news, and what she’s looking forward to in her new role. Here are some excerpts from that discussion, which have been edited for clarity.

You have extensive experience in the for-profit media world. How did you make the transition to philanthropy?

Knight had an outsized presence in Miami at the time. There was a lot of exciting work being done in the arts and growing a technology ecosystem, and I was often reporting on it. I discovered Knight’s journalism work by paying attention to what was going on locally, which led me to understand it nationally.

I was in local news and knew that its business model was not in good shape. I was constantly trying to create products that would bring revenue into the company. I also saw a lot of people get laid off and was concerned about layoffs myself, so when I heard about a job at Knight — and I didn’t quite understand what philanthropy was at the time — I knew it was doing interesting things, so I applied and I got it.

It wasn't like, “Let me make this switch.” It was more, “Here’s an interesting organization that's still connected to journalism, might this be an opportunity for me?”

Between the success of NewsMatch and the launch of Press Forward, local news seems to be having a moment. What’s your take on the field?

Well, Knight, of course, has been beating the drum on this for a very, very long time. Alberto, Jennifer Preston [former Knight VP of Journalism] , [current VP] Jim Brady — they’ve all done a lot of work to make sure it is front and center.

[MacArthur Foundation President] John Palfrey was our former board chair, and what’s important about Press Forward is that he thought, “We can’t do it alone.” Now, they have 22 foundations, including Knight, that have committed a half-billion dollars to local journalism, and they’re looking for more funders. John, [MacArthur Journalism and Media Director] Kathy Im and [MacArthur Vice President, Communications] Kristen Mack have made this an important issue. It’s a multiplier effect.

Separately, during the pandemic, I was home, like everybody else, and virtually attended a sustainability summit for journalism, and I remember there were leaders from local outlets who said, “I started my little newsroom with another person, and I did it with $37,000 in credit card debt.” They’ve since gone on to get major grants and are breaking great investigative stories, and it shows that organizations have found the funding and the audiences. Sahan Journal (Minneapolis), Outlier Media (Detroit), MLK50 (Memphis) — these are outlets that are demonstrating that it can be done. They’re turned the corner.

It sounds almost cliché at this point, but it boils down to establishing a sustainable business model.

It does. Look at public media. It’s philanthropy, but it’s also memberships and sponsorships. It can’t all be about philanthropy, because philanthropy might change its mind and come up with new priorities in a few years.

What are some issues on your radar as you prepare to lead the INN?

NewsMatch has been a very powerful tool that has trained many people and brought general operating dollars to hundreds of newsrooms. But there are also some challenges. There are so many more organizations out there than ever before — how do we fund them all? How many organizations can the market bear?

Leaders in the field, like [Report for America President and cofounder] Steve Waldman and [Lenfest Institute for Journalism Executive Director and CEO] Jim Friedlich, have talked about what it would take to supersize NewsMatch so organizations could receive a larger amount of money, and I think that’s something we definitely have to explore with other funders. I also want to say that INN has made strides in diversifying its membership and its staff, and that’s something that we absolutely want to continue.

The other thing I want to mention is that the end goal is to have informed communities. News avoidance is a very real problem, and we need to make sure that our case is right for our audiences. Journalism has to be of use. Journalism has to be relevant. Journalism has to be beneficial. It can't just be bad news all the time, so we need to think about what we’re offering our audiences — is it helping them in their lives?

This idea of “news avoidance” really hits home given what’s going on in the world.

It's something that those who study audiences can definitely point to. It’s not all a news problem, though. It’s partly a technology problem — it's on our phones, it can assault us in so many ways. We don’t pick it up on the front lawn every morning like we used to. It’s just everywhere, now. But at the same time, I’m optimistic because of what I see across INN’s network. We have to solve the problems that we have the power to solve, and INN members do that.

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