Tag Archives: ADAPT

A nonprofit model is emerging for local news

By David McGowan, President and CEO, WJCT Public Media

The recent round of staff buyouts affecting The Florida Times-Union newsroom provided the latest evidence, if any were needed, that the business model of local newspapers is fundamentally broken.

COVID-19 is playing the role of accelerant on a raging fire initially brought on by changing news consumption habits, an over-reliance on advertising and a reluctance or inability to change. The hedge fund and private equity-driven nature of today’s newspaper ownership groups is also a factor, but the consolidation of declining industries usually attracts a certain ruthlessness.

Despite its staff losses, the Times-Union’s newsroom has shown how valuable courageous, enterprising journalism can be to a community. Under the leadership of Editor Mary Kelli Palka, the T-U, a WJCT News partner, has both broken and doggedly pursued stories that have had real and measurable impact. From JEA to Lot J and lots of other stories, the T-U has engaged us all in the civic life of this region in ways large and small that many readers have come to take for granted. It’s also worth remembering that many of these lines of inquiry were not very popular when investigative reporters began them.

But as papers decline, and evidence continues to mount that the crisis in local journalism is having a wide range of negative effects on American public life, new and innovative solutions are being found as local communities rise to meet the challenge. Nonprofit online news services, often working collaboratively with the for-profit newsrooms in their regions, are emerging at a rapid pace.

The Institute for Non-Profit News reports that there are now more than 250 nonprofit newsrooms across the country, and their growth has been steady. Though these newsrooms now employ only a fraction of the more than 28,000 journalism jobs lost from 2008 to 2018, the sector demonstrates increasing levels of impact and sustainability. Importantly, over 40 percent of revenues to the Institute for Non-Profit News members serving local audiences now come from individual supporters.

The growth in local nonprofit digital news comes as the Pew Research Center found that in 2018, roughly 40 percent of adults preferred to get their local news from online sources, with more than three-quarters (77 percent) saying the internet is important in how they receive local news. This squares with WJCT’s own research in 2018, which found that most locals would prefer new local coverage to be offered online. If trends continue at the current pace, online sources are set to become Americans’ top choice for local news, supplanting local TV news broadcasts, within the next year or two.

At WJCT we have been working hard to ensure that we can drive this exciting nonprofit and digital future for local journalism. Not only are we devoting more radio air time to local news than ever — having recently made WJCT News 89.9 into an all-news and talk station — but we’ve also invested in creating a set of online products like ADAPT (adaptflorida.org) that point in the direction we’re headed.

Now, thanks to significant support from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundation (a national foundation with its headquarters in Jacksonville), we’re embarking on an expansion of our newsroom that will enable us to begin to build the kind of reporting resources necessary to cover the region more effectively while meeting audiences in new ways.

We approach this task with both determination and humility, and with the knowledge that no single local news organization can give this community all of the quality journalism it deserves. But as the region’s leading user-supported nonprofit news provider, we embrace the moment and all that it requires of us.

Originally published by the Florida Times-Union

WJCT Launches ADAPT Podcast, New Edition Profiling 6 On Front Line Of Climate Change

Nesheiwat at lectern

State Resilience Officer Julia Nesheiwat speaks at an American Water Resources Association meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach in November of 2019.
BRENDAN RIVERS / ADAPT/WJCT NEWS

The newest edition of ADAPT, published Monday by WJCT Public Media, introduces a six-part podcast and web series profiling people working every day to help communities across the First Coast adapt to climate change and sea level rise.

Podcast guests range from Florida’s first-ever chief resilience officer to an environmental psychologist who teaches people how to talk about climate change more effectively.

Podcast host Brendan Rivers’ conversation with Florida’s Chief Resilience Officer Julia Nesheiwat marks her first one-on-one interview with a reporter since she was appointed in August. Nesheiwat shares the lessons she brings to the position from her time in the military and academia — and the time she created a federal bureau from the ground up.

“It’s too expensive to go at it alone,” she says in the ADAPT podcast. “We really need to collaborate.”

The other podcast guests are:

  • Adam Rosenblatt, a biology professor at the University of North Florida who breaks down the science of climate change and shares details about his advocacy efforts on the local, state and national level. Rosenblatt believes, “Doing more climate science is not going to solve the problem. We need to convince people to take action.”
  • Lauren Watkins, an environmental psychologist who teaches people how to have productive, non-polarizing conversations about environmental issues. She opens up her toolkit for us  — and opens up about the communication challenges in her own family.
  • Richard Leon, Jacksonville’s Urban Forestry Manager, who says, “Half the city thinks I’m a tree butcher. The other half thinks I’m a tree hugger.” He sees trees as critical urban infrastructure and plans to plant as many as possible in the nation’s biggest city.
  • Shane Corbin, City Manager for Atlantic Beach, who discusses the LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) process that the entire city of Atlantic Beach undertook last year.
  • Sean Lahav, a 24-year-old who serves the Northeast Florida Regional Council as a Resiliency Coordinator. His job includes getting “movers and shakers” from the private sector to think about incorporating sea level rise into their plans. “Around the state of Florida, there’s a lot of momentum right now — in Jacksonville and elsewhere,” he said.

ADAPT is a digital-first publication at adaptflorida.org, devoted to researching, reporting, and engaging citizens on the many issues involved in adaptation to sea level rise across Northeast Florida.  All six episodes of the ADAPT podcast series are available at adaptflorida.org and on all major podcast platforms.

In Florida, two-thirds of citizens rarely or never discuss climate change, and 67% say they hear about climate change in the media about once a month or less, according to polling data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication.

“These poll results are disheartening, but as a journalist who covers climate change, I see an opportunity. With this special edition of ADAPT and the podcast, we at WJCT are trying to provide our readers and listeners with the tools they need to confidently and effectively talk about the most pressing issue of our time,” explained ADAPT reporter Brendan Rivers.

The first edition of ADAPT, published in June 2019, included original reporting about the effects of climate change on everything from endangered species to drinking water, coastal economies and the U.S. Navy, as well as curated stories about what’s happening in other places.

To sign up to receive notice of future editions, visit adaptflorida.org/sign-up/.

The public is also invited to talk with climate change experts and hear what they can do, collectively, to deal with rising waters at WJCT’s annual ADAPT Summit at WJCT Studios on June 4, 2020.

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