I was part of an early wave of journalists who led community engagement efforts in their newsrooms. I also explored the role of product in journalism and how to apply product thinking to our work.

I co-wrote a paper on defining impact for journalism, and helped launch a WordPress plug-in and, later in my career, developed other processes to track and better measure journalistic impact.

I launched a user-driven reporting tool, Education IQ, and wrote about what it means to fully fund education. I also helped produce a project, and designed its comments section, on the words we use to talk about race and racism.

Dismayed by the lack of resources for launching a local news startup, I helped lead an association for independent news entrepreneurs and spent nearly 5 years fundraising more than $20 million from philanthropic and corporate partnerships– with at least half going directly to members– and launched programs to support their professional development. Here’s what I learned from the experience.

Frustrated by the journalism industry’s obsession with using the word “sustainable” to refer to a successful news business, I led our team to propose our own hypothesis and metrics of sustainability, which informed our Sustainability Audit and, ultimately, the sustainability criteria for reviewing grants through Press Forward, a $500M national effort to revitalize local news.

While working for a local news support organization, I called for more coordination among those who support newsrooms. Later, I co-wrote a report for Democracy Fund calling for a more measurable, structured methodology for field building to mature the local news support segment of the local news field, and the field as a whole. The report will be published in early 2025.