On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen and Dan talk with Rachel White, CEO of the Associated Press Fund for Journalism. Rachel joined the nonprofit AP Fund for Journalism in 2024, after a 10-year run with The Guardian, the one-time print newspaper in the U.K. that has become a global digital powerhouse.
In 2016, White became president of theguardian.org, a nonprofit organization she helped create that raises tax-deductible funds to support The Guardian’s journalism. The AP Foundation has a similar mission but is laser-focused on state and local news outlets all over the U.S. The AP Fund is expanding. Fifty news organizations have just joined, for a total of 100 newsrooms. The foundation aims to increase that number to 150 by the end of 2026. News outlets get help with reach and strategy to achieve financial stability.
Note: We asked White about financial pressures facing the AP following decisions in 2024 by the Gannett and McClatchy newspaper chains to drop their membership in order to save money. And earlier this week, after this podcast was recorded, the AP announced that it would seek buyouts as it pivots away from newspaper journalism to visual journalism, new revenue sources and AI.
Dan has a Quick Take on Local News Day, which is this Thursday, April 9, and billed as “a national day of action connecting communities with trusted local news.”
Ellen’s Quick Take is on an opinion column apocalypse in Fargo, North Dakota. The Fargo Forum, a locally owned news outlet, has forced out three long-running columnists. Why? Take a wild guess. Here’s one headline on a recent column by journalist Jim Shaw: “Our local leaders oppose free and fair elections.” He’s now an ex-columnist.
And a big hat-tip to Alex Ip, a Gen Z publisher and editor at thexylom.com, which explores how communities are influenced and shaped by science. Alex broke the news about Fargo on social media.
A summary of our conversation
We used Otter, an AI-powered tool, to produce a transcript of our conversation, then fed it into Claude and asked it to write a 600-word summary, which was then read by us for accuracy. The results are below. Do you find this useful? Please tell us what you think by using the Contact form linked from the top of our website.