A Quick Reflection on Knight Media Forum

Last week, I had the privilege to attend the annual Knight Media Forum (KMF) in Miami, Florida. Hosted by the Knight Foundation, it is the premier gathering for those working on the future of local news in the United States.

Much of the focus for this year’s summit was on the first moves being made by Press Forward, a collaborative effort my Knight, the MacArthur Foundation, and others to invest $500 million into the American local news ecosystem.

If you want a quick summary of what happened at the Forum, you can watch this 4-minute video from Knight.

A big announcement made at KMF that is relevant to all of us here back home is the announcement of a Press Forward Local Chapter, housed at the Blue Grass Community Foundation.

While Press Forward’s national grant making hasn’t started yet, having a Local Chapter in Lexington may open the possibility of some of this national funding coming to nonprofit news organizations here, including CivicLex, our friends at RadioLex, UnderMain, WUKY, WEKU, and many others.

That said, the main thing that we’re excited about is how a local Press Forward chapter could generate local investments into the ecosystem and help convene collaborative projects. We’ve already dipped our toe into this type of collaboration with the Lexington Herald-Leader, RadioLex, and Key NewsJournal, and the result was nationally recognized. We’re so excited for what’s to come on this front!

I’m grateful for the Blue Grass Community Foundation’s continued advocacy and support for making Lexington a more informed and engaged city.

While at KMF, I was excited to co-host a breakout with Michael Wear, Executive Director of the Center for Christianity and Public Life. We had a robust, collaborative conversation with other practitioners in the room about how local news organizations can more deeply engage communities of faith. I was particularly touched by the calls from many in to the room for both communities of faith and secular organizations to build moral knowledge in their communities alongside scientific and other forms of knowledge. I also recommend you check out Michael’s latest book, the Spirit of our Politics.

You can watch every major session from the Knight Media Forum and learn more here. If you want to learn any more about KMF or what I learned while I was there, please feel free to reach out to me directly, and we can grab a coffee!