Last week, Spotlight PA published a story about the Oley Valley School Board that probably left some elected officials on that board a little unhappy with how they were portrayed. That’s just fine. The reporting was fair and well researched. That’s the hallmark of Spotlight PA.
Spotlight reporters have shined a light on sketchy behavior at Penn State and the failure of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging to protect older Pennsylvanians from abuse. They also broke open a massive municipal scandal in Dubois. Spotlight has become a “go to” resource for information on statewide elections.
With all of that in mind, the Community Foundation board approved a $500,000 grant over three years to allow Spotlight PA to create a Berks County bureau like the one it created in State College. It’s not the largest grant we’ve ever made, but it is a very large one for us.
So, why?
Simply put, independent journalism is the oxygen that communities breathe. Without journalism in Berks County, we wouldn’t have known about widespread corruption in Reading City Hall under a previous administration or the fraud committed by a Berks County coroner.
Berks County residents depend on a wide range of institutions in government, the nonprofit sector and private enterprise. Without robust reporting, we have no way of knowing how well they are serving us. Without an informed citizenry, ultimately the community will simply stop functioning.
Before we got to this point, we spent years understanding the news industry. We visited many of the major newspapers in the country and studied dozens of new, digitally based experiments. The simple problem confronting local journalism is that traditional advertising revenue can no longer support the cost of reporting.
So, philanthropy is going to have to fill the void left by the old business model. Preserving democracy at the local level demands it. We’re proud that other local and regional funders have stepped up to add their resources to the effort.
Funding journalism requires a community foundation to think differently. We’re used to working with our partners to shape their work. For Spotlight to be effective, it must be completely independent of the Community Foundation. We will have no role in governing the organization, selecting its employees and absolutely no role in determining what stories they cover or how they report on the news.
As a general rule, foundations enter projects like this with an exit strategy in mind. Three-to five-year commitments are generally the rule, with the idea that organizations will find ways to replace our funding. That’s not going to work for local journalism. We envision that we will continue to fund local journalism for a very long time. I liken it to paying the heating bill: Supporting local journalism is a basic cost of operating in a democratically governed community.
We are delighted that Spotlight was willing to work with us. Berks County will be a healthier place as a result. To learn more about Spotlight PA Berks, click here.
