McClatchy California: The Fresno Bee and The Modesto Bee

Growing beat-focused reporting capacity with local funding

The Fresno Bee, a McClatchy group publication in California's San Joaquin Valley, launched a solutions-focused Education Lab in 2019. This project, modeled after a similar initiative by The Seattle Times, is funded by a dozen philanthropic organizations and major donors from the region with an interest in educational attainment and economic mobility.

By February 2021, The Bee had attracted $737,000 in funding to support the work of several reporters and was continuing to raise funds to cover a third year of operation.

Tim Ritchey, publisher of The Bee, said he explains to potential funders that solutions journalism “can help lead to the impact that we want.” That was “something that made them more interested to invest,” he said.

According to Joe Kieta, The Fresno Bee’s editor-in-chief, the project was built around early-career journalists. “Having solutions journalism as the goal and guideposts through [the project] has certainly helped create better work,” he said. This also got people in the newsroom outside the reporting labs, which also include Fresnoland, interested in reporting with this approach. “I think there has been an improvement in the content as a result,” he said.

“Creating good solutions journalism … has resulted in a success in terms of growing our audience and making [journalism] relevant to the people who live in the central San Joaquin Valley,” said Kieta. The solutions stories have been “hits in terms of page views and interaction with our audience.” Education Lab also held community listening sessions around the solutions content.

Drawing on a model from The Fresno Bee and other McClatchy newsrooms in California, The Modesto Bee launched an Economic Mobility Lab in 2020, with support from local and national funders as well as more than 250 individuals. The lab will focus on solutions journalism and community engagement. It has three reporters and an editor, and centers on underserved communities, education and economic development in Stanislaus County, according to the newspaper’s editor, Brian Clark.

KEY TIP:

Establish a channel to receive funds.

In order to attract funding, McClatchy, a for-profit group, recruited community foundations to act as fiscal sponsors. This allows the publications to receive money from funders who may be able to give money only to nonprofits.

A crucial part of getting funder and donor support is to ensure all the funding generated goes to supporting the reporting project and is not redirected for other purposes.

See the page set up by the Central Valley Community Foundation to attract funds.

Here is a slide from the deck used by The Fresno Bee to pitch the project to funders.