Nonprofit newsroom, Signal Cleveland, announced its launch last week, along with a $7.5 million funding round.  Signal Cleveland says it plans to fill the void left by Cleveland's hometown paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, after it essentially dissolved amid the pandemic.  The company's new round of funding comes from a group of local philanthropies and journalism non-profits, including the American Journalism Project.  Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Nonprofit Newsroom Signal Cleveland Announced Launch, $7.5 Million Raise

non profit newsrooms. Signal Cleveland announcing its launch last week along with a $7.5 million funding round. Well, Signal Cleveland says it plans to fill the void left by Cleveland's hometown paper, The Cleveland plain dealer. After a conductive, massive layoffs amid the pandemic and the company's new round of funding comes from a group of local philanthropies in journalism, nonprofits, including the american journalism project. So joining me now is the sea of the american journalism project. Sarabeth Berman Sarah Beth, thanks so much for coming on this show. And what was it about Signal Cleveland that made the american journalism project decided to invest. Thanks so much for having me. The launch of Signal Cleveland is one of the largest launches of its kind in the country and it's part of a new generation of news organizations that are emerging across the country to fill the void of the decline of local news. This effort and signal is really exciting, both because of the amount of local philanthropy that has stepped into finance this new news organization and because of the ambition of this news organization to really build a news organization that is digital that is listening to the needs of the community and is really filling the void that has been left by the decline of local news in Cleveland and is true really across the country. So talk to me more about the stories Sarabeth that we can expect residents in this area can expect and how that engagement works right. I mean the communication, the direct line of communication between the viewers and consumers to make sure that their stories are the ones being told. The team at Signal Cleveland has launched, has has hired a really fantastic team of reporters. They've hired about 15 reporters and they're growing but they've also launched a really interesting program called the documentaries program where they have trained hundreds of community members to show up at public meetings and document what's happening. The decline of local news which has been unfolding all over the country, means that across the country public meetings, City hall school board meetings do not have journalists showing up holding powerful accountable and telling communities about what is happening in their communities and what Signal Cleveland is doing is building a new kind of newsroom that can really deliver that information for Clevelander. So what are the ways specifically Sarah Sarah beth, excuse me that the american journalism project is going to directly help Signal Cleveland with its own operations. We have been working on this project for several years. We started off working with local philanthropists who were really concerned about the state of local news in Cleveland and wanted to understand how they could build something that would fill that void. We spent several months doing market assessments, doing community listening understanding from Cleveland, what they wanted from local news. And then we worked on developing a business plan that we thought could really build a, an organization that could sustain over the long term and could fill the gaps that we had identified. We've worked with these philanthropists to set up a board to um to hire a really phenomenal leadership team that's now leading the organization. And we're supporting the organization to build a diversified business plan and revenue strategy to be able to sustain this news organization over the long term. Despite the really difficult climate that we see for local news all across the country, this news organization is really taking a new revenue approach so that they can sustain themselves over the long term and specifically what that means is this news organization is activating philanthropy because philanthropy understands that to sustain our democracy, we need strong local news. So I'm just curious, obviously distribution is a key part of this, we know that, but resources to tell some of these stories on a local level are important too. So in terms of the resources um Sarah Beth how are you going to ensure that the storytelling is top quality and that people will be tuning in whether it's via newsletter, a text message or even an on air tv radio partnership. This news organization has developed really deep partnerships already with so many of the other outlets that are existing and so they immediately are able to build an audience by partnering with other news organizations and developing um an audience through partnerships and through really reaching out to the community and encouraging them to follow sign up um, and read and their their revenue over the long term will come from readers donating to the news organization, from philanthropy, sustaining the news organization and from business and corporate, the corporate leadership across the community supporting this news organization. Alright Sarabeth Berman, chief executive officer at American Journalism Project. Sarabeth, thank you.