Earlier this fall, Democracy Fund released a report titled Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Journalism: What Funders Can Do along with two innovative tools to help the field navigate the issues; the Journalism DEI tracker and the Journalism DEI Wheel —all of which were produced by Michelle Polyak and Katie Donnelly, with editorial support from Jessica Clark.
The report is a follow-up to our 2018 report Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Journalism: Trends in National Grantmaking. In the recent research, we identified three key insights:
- DEI-focused organizations receive a small slice of journalism funding
- Funders are focused on big players
- Foundations are the lifeline for DEI-focused organizations.
The Journalism DEI Tracker is a regularly-updated online database that identifies organizations, news outlets and projects, and educational institutions working to support inclusion in journalism across the country. It also collects related resources.
The Journalism DEI Wheel is meant to help funders in particular inform their grantmaking by seeing the bigger picture, and click through foruseful examples and resources for further illumination. Funders can explore the spokes of the Journalism DEI Wheel to see how DEI in journalism is currently being addressed across key areas:
- education and training;
- organizational culture;
- news coverage;
- engagement;
- distribution;
- innovation;
- evaluation;
- the larger journalism industry,
- and funding.
Let us know how you’ve been using the tools by tweeting at us: @DotCoStudio!