#public-access-news

#public-access-news

John Kaehny has written and successfully lobbied for the passage of state and New York City laws related to government transparency and accountability, including the first open data law in the world in 2012.

"A certain kind of person is opting into spending a lot of time on social media, and they may be people who are more disaffected to start with."

The fact that the Burns Paiute and Bannock Shoshone tribes are still battling our government and politicians for protection of the sagebrush steppe habitat and our native sage grouse isn't spiritually uplifting.

Students are actively shaping their education by addressing critical issues such as integration in elite public high schools and the need for a diverse teaching workforce.

Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.

Press Forward made almost $23 million in grants to 22 organizations aimed at bolstering the infrastructure for local news. The grants were the culmination of a request for proposals process that began accepting applications in November 2024, and elicited 559 proposals.

If you've worked in a technical role in news for long enough, you likely remember when the "show your work" spirit was everywhere. Newsroom nerds shared code on GitHub, swapped tips on social media and unfurled long blogs guiding others on how to get things done. You might also have a vague sense that - like reaction GIFs, demotivational posters, and that guy who sang "Chocolate Rain" - you're seeing less of it these days.

The pandemic changed Defector's course. New York shut down, the economy ground to a halt, and the offers of capital dried up. So the group decided to launch a new website on their own dime, this time structured as a worker-owned cooperative in which the journalists, rather than media executives, made all the decisions. The site became the kind of success that's rare in digital media nowadays, bringing in $3.2 million in revenue from over 40,000 paying subscribers in its first year alone.