Andy Lack to invest $7M in nonprofit journalism
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Andy Lack, former chair of NBC News and MSNBC and co-founder and executive chair of Deep South Today, a network of local nonprofit newsrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi, is committing $7 million to support nonprofit journalism, he told Axios in an interview.
Why it matters: The new funds, in addition to the $5 million that Lack says he invested over the past decade, amount to one of the largest contributions to nonprofit local journalism made by a single individual in recent memory.
- Lack is from New York, but his grandparents were born and raised in Mississippi, which has inspired his investment in local news in the region.
Catch up quick: Lack, a former Axios board member, started his career as a journalist at CBS News before transitioning to corporate news management. He held top executive roles at Bloomberg Media Group and Sony Music Entertainment, in addition to NBC News.
- Lack co-founded Deep South Today more than a decade ago as a nonprofit parent to independent, nonpartisan newsrooms that serve local communities. Today, there are roughly five dozen journalists who work across those sites.
- Today, the organization supports four outlets: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mississippi Today, Verite News in New Orleans, The Current in southern Louisiana and The Garrison Project.
- In addition to Deep South Today, Lack has also helped fund the Emmy-nominated program "Breaking the Deadlock" on PBS.
Zoom in: Around $3 million of the new funds will be used to expand investigative reporting and digital video journalism.
- Some of the money will go toward Deep South Today Studios, a video and visual storytelling unit that serves all of Deep South Today's digital news brands.
- The rest will support the launch of a new Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center, a regional initiative created in collaboration with the New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship.
- The center will support full-time investigative journalists, data reporters and fellows from the Times and embed them within Deep South Today's newsrooms. Reporting from the center will be co-published by Deep South Today and the New York Times and made available to other local news organizations.
- Investigative journalism is a priority because of its impact in local communities, Lack said. Video journalism is an area where Lack has passion and experience. The cost of video production has gone down significantly, making it easier for local newsrooms to experiment, Lack noted.
Context: The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship is spearheaded by the Times' former executive editor Dean Baquet. Baquet's brother Terry Baquet is the founder and editor-in-chief of Verite News.
Zoom out: More local newsrooms are shifting to nonprofit models to accept philanthropic donations.
- Around 48% of the Institute for Nonprofit News' members are local news organizations, up from about 20% in 2017.
- Lack said he wanted to invest in local nonprofit journalism because the model allows newsrooms to raise funds from foundations that can support time- and resource-intensive investigative reporting.
What's next: Roughly $4 million of the new $7 million investment has yet to be allocated.
- Those funds will go toward creating new newsrooms in key southern markets, as well as evaluating additional nonprofit journalism initiatives that focus on independent, public-interest reporting.
- Lack said he plans to expand Deep South Today's footprint to Arkansas later this year.
