Bridging the Gap in New Mexico: The Local News Fund’s Rashad Mahmood and Mark Glaser (LNM Episode 18)

Aug 24, 2023 | 0 comments

LNM 18 - NM Local News Fund

New Mexico is one of a number of state-level bright spots in local news, thanks in large part to the efforts of our guests. Rashad Mahmood and Mark Glaser shed light on the New Mexico Local News Fund's initiatives to bridge gaps in local journalism. From fostering young talent to securing state funding, they explore the Fund's impact on communities and the future of news in New Mexico.

Episode chapters:
(02:07) – How the New Mexico Local News Fund Started
(07:15) – The Local News Fund’s mission and programs
(14:43) – State funding of the Fund
(21:07) – Supporting young journalists, especially journalists of color and those in rural areas
(26:04) – Funding as a crucial component of diversifying newsrooms
(29:30) – Class diversity in newsrooms
(31:53) – Impacts on newsrooms and communities
(41:10) – Accelerators and building sustainability with programs
(46:45) – Collaborating with non-journalists
(50:22) – Rapid-fire questions

Listen to the episode here:

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Bios:

Rashad MahmoodRashad Mahmood works to support local journalism in New Mexico as the Executive Director of the New Mexico Local News Fund. His focus is on local news equity, ensuring that people and communities all over the state have access to the news and information they need. Before coming to New Mexico a decade ago, he worked in international development in Washington DC, Egypt and Iraq. He has worked in print, online and radio journalism. In New Mexico he worked for the youth media organization Generation Justice and KUNM 89.9 FM Radio.”

 

 

Mark GlaserMark Glaser is the Director of Business and Program Development for the New Mexico Local News Fund. He also supports communications at Knight Foundation, evaluations at Dot Connector Studio, and was the founder and executive editor of MediaShift.org. He runs a consultancy called Wind Power Media.

 

 

 

Full transcript:

(recorded via Riverside.fm; transcript automated via Castmagic.io, virtually unedited)

Rashad Mahmood [00:00:00]:

The young people at the public universities in New Mexico are just by nature, representative of the population. And so we've had a really great group of young journalists go through that. I think about 80% of them are still working in journalism in New Mexico today, which is a testament to the you know, we it was a theory when we first got started. We're like, well, we think if we can get them started, get them in that circle of trust, that they'll be able to find jobs and stay here. And it's proven true. Over 75% of them are young people of color as well, from incredibly diverse backgrounds. And after the first year where we just sort of as a pilot, stayed in the Albuquerque area, after that, we've had incredible success placing them all over the state. 

Tim Regan-Porter [00:00:50]: 

Welcome to the Local News Matters podcast, where we explore pathways to stronger journalism, better businesses, and healthier communities. I'm Tim Regan-Porter, CEO of the Colorado Press Association. In each episode, I sit down with guests from newsrooms and others in the local news ecosystem to highlight the innovative work of local newsrooms and those that support them, as well as the crucial questions they face. 

This episode I talk to Rashad Mahmood and Mark Glaser of the New Mexico Local News Fund. New Mexico is one of a growing number of areas in the U.S. taking innovative and collaborative approaches to addressing the challenges of local news, of supplying reliable information to whole communities. The Local News Fund has had a real impact on those local communities in New Mexico  and has succeeded in attracting and keeping a young, diverse group of journalists in the field. They’ve also attracted funding from the state legislature, something we’re starting to see pop-up around the country. 

If you like this episode and what we're doing more generally, never miss an episode by signing up for our newsletter at lnmpod.com.  

And now I bring you Rashad and Mark of the New Mexico Local News Fund. 

How the New Mexico Local News Fund Started 

All right. Welcome, Mark and Rashad. Thanks for joining me. So tell me a little bit about how the Local News Fund got started in New Mexico. 

Mahmood [00:02:07]: 

Sure, I can start with that. So I am not the original founder of the New Mexico Local News Fund. We were founded by my former colleague Sarah Gustavus, who is a longtime journalist, mostly with a public media background here in New Mexico. And in 2018, the Democracy Fund, which is to this day our biggest funder, was looking around the country at ecosystems where they could invest and really make transformational change. Different funders obviously have different philosophies. And the Democracy Fund's philosophy is that rather than picking a specific institution or city well, potentially city, but that they want to have an impact on a broader media ecosystem to make sure that all the people being served by that ecosystem have access to the local news and information that they need. And so Sarah got into some pretty in depth discussions with the Democracy Fund. They commissioned analysis of the local news ecosystem here in New Mexico, and that convinced them that it's worth starting something new and working to change the ecosystem here for the better. So Sarah's the one that really got it started. We have a local funder, the Thornburg Foundation, that still supports us to this day. And so it was really those two funders. It was the Democracy Fund, the Thornburg Foundation, and then Sarah, with her in depth local knowledge of the media ecosystem here, that got it going.  

Tim Regan-Porter:  

So when did you come on board? 

Mahmood: 

So I was employee number two, as they say, as if we were a giant tech startup. I joined in mid 2019. So Sarah, bless her heart, had initially thought she could do everything all by herself while holding down a full time day job, and realized that for the magnitude of work that she wanted to do and that the New Mexico Local News Fund wanted to do required more staff. And so her next focus was bringing on someone experienced with development and specifically journalism fundraising. As you know, grant writing for media related projects is just very different than standard grant writing. Right. The deliverables, the impacts are they're quantifiable, but it's very different than, let's say you're asking for food for a homeless shelter, right? It's like, I will house 20 people. With this funding, we can say we will help a certain number of stories to be produced, and we certainly hope that those will have dramatic impacts on people's lives and on policy. But you can't promise the same sort of outcomes. And so it takes a certain experience and nuance to do really great grant writing, I think, for media. And I had, in my previous job at KUNM Public Radio, the local NPR station here, based here in Albuquerque, that had been part of my job, as well as doing some community engagement. And so we had a great conversation. She was actually looking for other people. She was like, Rashad, do you have any recommendations? I know you're so good at this. You would know what are the right skills. And I was like, well, I might be interested. And so, yeah, we took it from there, and eventually we became co directors. And then Sarah decided to move out of New Mexico. And so then I became the sole director.  

Tim Regan-Porter: 

And Mark, how did you come on. 

Mark Glaser [00:06:00]: 

I had been running MediaShift for a number of years as an independent business. I was burned out, tired, also burned out on living in the Bay Area. And so when I started doing consulting work, I had met Sarah at a conference. I actually just heard about the Local news Fund right when I was deciding to move to Santa Fe. And it just sounded like a perfect opportunity and mix of the things I had done at a national level media shift, and trying to actually work and support things on the ground in local news, and not just up in the sky thinking about the whole picture, but actually what's going down on the ground level. So it was exciting to connect with them. And then I saw Sarah at a conference, I think it might have been a Knight Media Forum, and she know, came up to me and said, hey, would you be interested in running a grant program? And I thought, Well, I've been a part of grant programs. I've never run one, but it sounded great. And I was just moving to Santa Fe, literally summer 2020, beginning of the pandemic. And right when I moved here, I started work supporting the Local News Fund and supporting the accelerator program. 

The Local News Fund’s mission and programs

Regan-Porter  [00:07:15]: 

And I guess we should really dig into what is the Local News Fund, what's your mission and how do your programs work? 

Mahmood [00:07:21]: 

Sure. So when Sarah first got the project started, her first priority was really doing some pretty in depth analysis of, first of all, what is the local news ecosystem in New Mexico like? But almost more importantly, what are the needs and where are the gaps and where are areas where we should really invest now that we had some resources? And so she organized that in a few different ways. She worked with a local nonprofit to do a series of town hall community discussions around the state, really trying to especially get outside of the Albuquerque Santa Fe area and understand the news needs of people there. That was super helpful. She also organized a series of discussions with people in the media, journalists, faculty at universities related to journalism, journalism students, and then sort of taking all those assessments, she synthesized a report and what are the real needs that we needed to address with the Local News Fund? The big things that came out of that process were I mean, obviously every newsroom said they need more resources, more reporters, more ability to do the important work of local journalism that they didn't have access to. In addition to that, a few other things were a little more surprising. One was that young people, especially people just getting careers started in New Mexico, felt like there weren't a lot of entry level opportunities. And we've seen that wax and wane a little bit over the years. But especially at that time, there were just a lot of incumbent journalists know, been there a long time, there weren't a lot of entry level positions open. And New Mexico is a pretty amazing place that a lot of people have really strong, deep rooted ties to. And especially a lot of these young people wanted to stay here, wanted to give back to the state that gave them so much growing up here, but they just couldn't. There was just no way to get started in journalism. They had to go to Arizona or Texas or Colorado or New York or La or somewhere like that, right? And then once they were there, it was pretty rare. I wouldn't say rare, but it's hard to come back once you've started your career elsewhere.  

So we end up creating a fellowship program that would help people get their first job out of college, place them in a newsroom and sort of kill two birds with one stone, right? We would help those careers get started. We would also provide staff, provide a reporter, essentially, to, you know, Report for America had been established a few years before, and we thought about doing a shared fellowship model like that. But we realized that, especially in New Mexico, if we really want the smallest rural newsrooms to benefit from this program and be able to participate, we needed to fully fund it. So that's the way we designed it was as a fully funded fellowship program. Nine months. And we've retained that structure to this day. We've done five years of that program, and it's been incredibly successful. In general, journalists in New Mexico are more diverse than on average for the United States, obviously. But journalism is in no way as diverse in New Mexico as the people of New Mexico. And this fellowship program has done a lot to address that because the young people at public universities in New Mexico are just by nature representative of the population.  

And so we've had a really great group of young journalists go through that. I think about 80% of them are still working in journalism in New Mexico today, which is a testament to the it was a theory when we first got started. We're like, well, we think if we can get them started, get them in that circle of trust, that they'll be able to find jobs and stay here. And it's proven true. Over 75% of them are young people of color as well, from incredibly diverse backgrounds. And after the first year where we just sort of as a pilot, stayed in the Albuquerque area, after that, we've had incredible success placing them all over the state. Rural communities, urban communities, different mediums, broadcast TV, newspapers, online outlets, community radio. Well, public radio. We haven't placed a fellow yet in community radio, but maybe we'll get there. There's been a number of add-on effects from that program that we didn't envision even initially. So the way it's structured is we give a grant to the journalism department at the University of New Mexico who run the program. And it's been an incredible source of strength for that program, obviously, because they can provide this pathway into jobs for their graduates. It's also strengthened their relationship within the university and really raised the department's profile, which has been great. It's also created connections between industry and the university, which is always an important sort of two way pathway of communication which wasn't always there before.  

And overall, just the feedback. We had 30 newsrooms apply to host fellows, or nearly that number, I think, this last year. And we only had originally we had four slots. So just to show the demand for this program that people are seeing, fortunately, we were able to get some funding from the state legislature this year. Mark really led up that effort to expand it to seven Fellows. And then there's also an internship program which got added a couple of years ago, and we were able to expand that as well.  

Regan-Porter [00:13:11]:  Let's come back to the state funding.  Let's flesh out how it works a little bit more. So how does the fellowship work versus the internship? So who's eligible for the fellowship? How long is it, et cetera? 

Mahmood [00:13:23] 

Sure, the fellowship. It's a nine-month program still. It starts in the summer after people graduate. Right now, any graduating public university student in New Mexico is eligible to apply for the fellowship. So even though it's administered out of the University of New Mexico, which is in Albuquerque, graduates from New Mexico State University, Eastern New Mexico University, community colleges anywhere are eligible. So far, we have only had students from UNM and NMSU participate, but we're really hoping with some targeted outreach, we'll be able to expand that in future years. And they run essentially a matchmaking program. So basically the students apply, the newsrooms that want to host someone apply, and then the top students get to rank their placements, basically, because we're asking a lot of them in many instances, they have to move to a community they've never lived in before. They may need to find housing, et cetera. 

Glaser [00:14:28]: 

Right. 

Mahmood [00:14:28]: 

So with the level of resources that we have to make things work, we have to give the students some flexibility. But overall, it's worked out really well. And, yeah, it's been a smooth process so far.  

State funding of the Fund 

Regan-Porter [00:14:43] And Mark, talk to us a little bit about the fundraising aspect of that. And let's start with the state funding. That came about the same time, as I recall, as Berkeley got the grant from California. Was yours before, after, or right alongside? 

Glaser [00:14:58]: 

So what happened is we had been running the fellowship program for a few years, and in the midst of us just starting to think about how we could get some funding from the state government, we began talking to folks out in California. Rashad did a presentation for them about our fellowship. I think they were trying a whole different approach to their legislature. They were thinking about there's been a lot of different approaches state by state. Some people are trying to do tax breaks for people who subscribe to local news. Other people are just thinking there's a whole bunch of different ways people are trying to get support for local news, both in the state and national level. But they like the idea of what we're doing with our fellowship program. They found someone, I believe it was before we got our funding, but they found a particular state rep who put in $25 million for the program, which didn't exist yet. So they were literally able to build something from scratch, get 140 fellows, pay them a big chunk of money over two years. So they really blew our minds, honestly, to see that they could do something that big. And then we were basically going to our state legislature and saying, can we have $250,000, please? So it was a little different scale, but for us, it meant a lot to go and talk to them and get the amount of support that we had. We started with just I contacted my state senator, my representative, and just said, hey, I'm your constituent. I work in local news. There's a crisis going on. We need help. And so my state senator, Peter Worth, who also happens to be the Senate majority leader, got in touch and said, let's talk about this. We had a Zoom call with him, and right away, he understood it. He said, yeah, I get it. This is a problem. What can we do about it? And we're, you know, New Jersey, they're giving out grants to, you know, here there's a bunch of different approaches. Let's think about what works best. And in thinking about that, we realized that this fellowship program would be a good fit. A, because it's run through University of New Mexico, which already is getting funded from the state. Could we just be a line item in their budget? Wouldn't that be easy? And B, this is a fellowship program where people are getting jobs eventually, and it's basically economic development, workforce development. Who doesn't like that in a state legislature? So that's what we decided to do, was go for support for that program. And Peter Worth, Senator Worth was kind of the sponsor of that. We went through the whole process. I went over to the Roundhouse, which is our state capitol in Santa Fe, met all the different quirky characters there. Met with state senators and kind of followed the progress of this bill. And eventually it became and we did have a hearing that I went to, and professor from UNM, Michael Markott, also attended and answered questions of the senators. And we were like, I don't know exactly what they're going to be asking us about, but they were incredibly engaged. They got it. They wanted to do more on media literacy. They wanted to do more around high school journalism. I mean, they were really raring to go. It was kind of surprising to us. And Rashad was on that, was at that meeting via Zoom. But anyway, they ended up unanimously supporting it, Republicans, Democrats, and in the end, it ended up getting $125,000 of funding through this junior bill process, where Senator Worth basically put the money into the program. It went through the whole process. It passed the legislature, and then it came to the governor. And the governor basically has the ability to go through this junior bill and just line item veto whatever she doesn't like. And so we were just kind of having our fingers and toes crossed that like, I hope the governor really likes this. And in the end she did not cross it out. So it ended up passing. 

Mahmood [00:19:14]: 

And so that'll take you you started off with four fellows. What's this going to take you up to? 

Glaser [00:19:21]: 

Yeah, and that basically gets us up to seven fellows and eight interns starting this summer. And we just did a boot camp for them. And one of the big things we were pushing with this bill was we really want to place fellows in underserved areas of the state and rural areas of the state where they're really needed. And so we were able to place, I think, fellows and interns in some pretty rural areas. So it worked out really well. 

Mahmood [00:19:50]: 

Just to add on to that, Mark, just two notes. One, I think our inspiration really came from the Civic Information Consortium in New Jersey, which was the first group to really get some state funding for local know, we saw their success and we were like, why can't we try that here in New Mexico? So shout out to them. And also Free Press was a really great help initially in providing some coaching and walking us through the process that they used to help get that funding in New Jersey. So that was super helpful talking with someone that had been through the legislative process before. And then I also want to mention that the money ended up getting assigned to the Department of Workforce Solutions, which is a state agency here. And so any sort of appropriation of that type needs a home, basically. And their secretary was gracious enough to immediately see the importance and value of an initiative like this. And the funding was housed under their auspices, essentially. 

Glaser [00:20:53]: 

And the exciting part is that now Washington State has just passed a fellowship support and I believe Oregon might be doing that too. So it's pretty exciting to see this idea kind of take off and get replicated in other places. 

Supporting young journalists, especially journalists of color and those in rural areas  

Regan-Porter [00:21:07]: 

Absolutely. And the need in rural areas, it's been increasingly discussed, particularly since 2016 and then 2020 with COVID I still don't think there's nearly enough action and funding, certainly not to the commiserate with the need. When I came out to Colorado Press Association, I was really not that tied in with community newspapers. I knew metro dailies largely and they get a lot of the industry press, they have a lot of reach individually. But these community newspapers are just everywhere in rural America and they're holding on actually in many ways better than some of the metro dailies. But it's a struggle a lot of times. It's a family owned paper. It is one, two or three people trying to cover everything. It doesn't help with the political, know, enemy of the people type of thing. And so the needs are gargantuan and so I really appreciate what you're doing there. Talk to me a little bit about, one of the things I know Report for America has been intentional about is supporting their fellows going into these rural areas. Sometimes they're isolated if they're a journalist of color, sometimes they might be the only journalist of color in the newsroom. And the goal is to hopefully not only have them do great work for the community, but to stay in journalism. So how do you address that in the program? How do you work with the university and the newsrooms to make sure this is a good program for the fellows and interns now as well?  

Mahmood [00:22:45] 

Sure, there's a few. Obviously there's been a learning process as we've run this program over the years, but I want to really shout out the team at the University of New Mexico that runs it. They do a great job addressing all those issues that you mentioned. After the first year they realized that they really needed a boot camp to really get people ready to be working in newsrooms and so they launched that just of their own initiative and that's been incredibly successful. It's this week long intensive where the fellow and their supervisor at the newsroom that they're going to work with are there together. Well, not necessarily for the whole week, but at least for part of the boot camp, they're there together. So they start building that working relationship, and at the same time, it's a great transition from maybe the academic view of journalism that people have had. Getting them ready for what? Editor. Reporter relationships are like advice on community relations. Talking about going into communities that may be very different from the places where they grew up or lived or whatever. And then during the fellowship there are regular check ins between university staff and the fellows to head off any problems, make sure that build a sense of community. Because some of the young people are all by themselves, right? They may not know friends or family in the communities where they're working. And so having those group calls of all the fellows, I think is sort of a helpful source of social bonding and cohesion. And we take pretty detailed feedback from the fellows about the experience and their thoughts. And so far, really it's been overwhelmingly positive both from the host newsroom perspective and from the fellows. I had a chance to talk to one of the fellows that was placed in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is a rural sort of oil focused town in southeastern New Mexico. And she was a young woman of color and said at first there was a sense of adjustment and definitely feeling like maybe she was out of place in this community. But she said by the time she left, she says it almost felt like a second home. She really felt like she was part of the community and appreciated, even if maybe not everyone in the community appreciated her highlighting some of the stories she worked on. But no, she came out feeling like she had a special bond with Carlsbad, even though she may politically and personally disagree with a lot of the people there. And she hopes that people there grew by getting to know her as well. Right. So I would say know, we don't shy away from those challenges. We try to structure the program so that it addresses them head on and fellows are ready, but I'd say we're succeeding. 

Glaser [00:25:40]: 

And the host newsrooms have to basically provide someone to say they're going to be a mentor for the fellow so that they're not just left out on their own. It's just like another person there. They have to put that time in because, as you know, the mentoring aspect of being a young journalist has got kind of gone by the wayside, and it's something that's really needed. So we needed to make sure that that existed. 

Funding as a crucial component of diversifying newsrooms 

Regan-Porter [00:26:04]: 

Absolutely. And I do worry about that. In the era of work from home, a lot of our community papers are still going in, but even some of the chains are very mixed in how they're working. And we have a hybrid office at the association, so I understand the appeal of that to employees, but without that daily interaction with people more experienced than you, I think we lose a lot. So we need to be very intentional about how we structure work now. And Mark, maybe talk a little bit about the diversity angle that Rashad was mentioning. Funding is so crucial to that. When I started the Center for Collaborative Journalism, where you and I met, there were two programs that the Knight Foundation funded. I mean, there were lots of programs that give us a very generous funding, but there were two specific programs, part of that that made such a huge difference in the diversity of the student body and importantly, the diversity of students going into the field, which doesn't always happen with journalism programs. One was we had a high school summer camp, and because of funding from Knight, we were able to give a lot of generous scholarships for students to come and stay on campus. And then we had a well, we called it a fellowship program. It was essentially an internship program, but we were able to place students not just in the local newsroom there, but at major national publications. And that was very successful in getting a diversity of students in there because, as you know, students who don't have means cannot afford to go live in Manhattan and do an internship at a fancy, one of the larger institutions there. And so they need this kind of funding. We need this kind of funding to diversify. So can you just elaborate on that a little bit? 

Glaser [00:27:52]: 

Yeah, it's similar I feel like in what we're doing with the fellowship program, in that making sure that they have pay, that they need to get started and to go into these communities and have the support they need, means that you can have different kinds of people can get into this program. I think when you think about fellowships, journalism fellowships writ large and internship programs, it's usually, well, these are people who have means. They can afford to do a free internship or they can do a free this or that. But I think first the idea of let's actually pay people to do the internship, let's pay them to do the fellowship, let's make it a fair pay, just changes the dynamic and makes it so that anybody is eligible. And for us, diversity, it's funny because this is something that comes up a lot in our fundraising, is that a lot of Funders Knight and many others obviously want to support diversity. And for us, it's almost like built into our state. So it's a little weird for us to even talk about diversity because it's just you walk out the door and there's diversity. So not necessarily in the leadership of a lot of local newsrooms, but in the population and in these schools. They're so very diverse already. So it doesn't take a whole lot for us to provide that. It's just give an opportunity and people will jump at it. But you're right. I mean, it is important. It has become a good function and it really has changed dynamics in a lot of these places. 

Class diversity in newsrooms 

Regan-Porter [00:29:30]: 

And Rashad, you mentioned not only diversity of ethnicity and race, but also background. And just last week we hosted about a dozen fellows that the State Department had arranged. These were lawyers and department heads from mostly Central and South America. And one of the things we ended up talking a good bit about, they were very interested in journalism in the states, and we ended up talking a lot about class, diversity, and how the lack of that really impacts our coverage. The prime example, a couple weeks ago, Ezra Klein had on his podcast the Founder for Code for America, and she's just written a book highlighting really the need to look beyond policy and look at implementation. And that's something that we are journalists tend not to be as tied into, I think partly because of class. So we don't see the long lines that people who are receiving government benefits go through and all the hassles they have and the dysfunction. And so I think class is something we don't talk enough about as a field. But can you elaborate? You referenced diversity of background, so can you elaborate on that?  

Mahmood [00:30:38]: 

Yeah, as part of the application, we do ask fellows a bit about their economic background and just from conversations with them, I know several have specifically told me without this fellowship program, they probably would have just started like a job in. Retail or working as a server or something like that right out of college because they needed, with their economic situation, they needed a job that would pay right away. They couldn't wait around to do an untapped internship and hope that someday that turned into a job. In journalism we also use very specific language. We try to say that this is for recent graduates, not that it's specifically for young people because especially in New Mexico we have a lot of older students that have maybe served in the military and then gone back to college or just got started with their education later in life. And so most of the fellows are younger, sort of on the traditional college trajectory, but we've had a few that are older and I'm excited about that. I think that's important that we keep visibility on that population.  

Impacts on newsrooms and communities  

Regan-Porter [00:31:53]: 

And what are you hearing from newsrooms and communities on the impact of the program? 

Mahmood [00:31:59]: 

It's just always so positive. The application numbers for the program I think, speak for themselves. When we first launched it, we had to convince newsrooms essentially to participate. They were like, what is this thing? Who are you? And then literally every year we've had more and more newsrooms apply to host fellows. I get calls from repeat newsrooms that are like, I know we just had a fellow last year. Is there any chance we could get another one? This like, well, you know, the UNM factors that into the decision making process, it's unlikely you're going to get one two years in a row. And so it's really been overwhelmingly positive. I think it's hard to say how much is New Mexico specific about that because we have such a sort of a tight knit group in the journalism community in New Mexico here that I think people really wants everyone else to succeed. It's not a very cutthroat place where people are limited. I mean, people are vying for limited resources but I think everyone realizes that and people tend to work together really quite well. And so there's just overall a very collaborative, supportive mindset around journalism in New Mexico. When we first got started, in addition to I mentioned out of those assessments some of the needs that were identified journalists already back in well, it sounds like it's so long ago, but it's not that long ago identified that collaboration was a potentially really powerful tool for enhancing resources, especially in a rural state, right. If there's free access to content from other news organizations or other forms of content sharing, then that frees up local community media to really focus on their communities and they can always run statewide coverage from other sources if it's available. And so because that was identified as a need, we started with a round of journalism direct collaboration grants. Essentially that would be for either a news organization and another organization news organization or a news organization and a community organization to work together those were generally smaller dollar grants. I believe it's been a few years. I believe they capped out at around $12,000 for the collaboration. It was really great at creating, supporting some new experiments and helping people get out of their shell a little bit and trying things they hadn't tried before. The most successful by far was there was a collaboration between KUNM, the local NPR station, new Mexico PBS, the local PBS station, and the Santa Fe Reporter, which is an alt weekly based in Santa Fe. And they initially came together to do reporting on the legislative session. We have a part time legislature in New Mexico. It meets either 30 or 60 days, depending on the year it alternates. They wanted to band together and share content, create a podcast that would cover what's going on in the legislature to inform people. And fortunately, this was in 2020 at the beginning of the grant was made at the end of 2019. It was implemented at the beginning of 2020. And then when COVID hit, they reassessed and were like, well, what's really important, and it's covering COVID. And so they created a daily COVID podcast that was a collaboration of all three news organizations that was incredibly powerful and just such a valuable news resource for the people of New Mexico, I'm quite confident to say wouldn't. Have existed without that grant creating that framework for collaboration already, so that when they had to pivot, they could just do it on a dime and get started. Obviously there was learning involved, and I'm making it sound easier than it was. They put in a ton of work to get that moving. Full credit to them, and a lot of the others were more one off collaborations. And so that sort of helped us shape our strategy around collaboration moving forward. And so we decided to focus more on long term partnerships and collaborations rather than sort of those scattered grants that we did at first. And again out of that assessment, southern New Mexico was really a huge priority area for us. It was clear from all the conversations that that's where the biggest news deserts were, even where there were news organizations, they were the least well resourced. And because of a quirk of geography, most of southern New Mexico is actually in the El Paso broadcast media market. And so people aren't even getting New Mexico based TV, and in some cases well and radio, right? I mean, obviously there's more flexibility in radio, but really TV is the issue because here in New Mexico still, and I'm assuming many other places, TV news is still the number one most consumed source of local news. And so it's a problem if you're not getting it. And so we talked with stakeholders in southern New Mexico what would be most helpful, and they said what they really needed and was super important to the communities they served was legislative coverage because it's incredibly expensive from southern New Mexico. Send someone up to the capitol up in Santa Fe. If they have to know, they're going to have to spend the night. It's like a five and a half hour drive. Even the largest paper in southern New Mexico is the Las Cruces Sun News, which is a Gannett paper. And obviously at that time, and even more so today, they were strapped for resources and so they just weren't able to send someone. And then if no one's asking those questions, how will this bill impact Southern New Mexico, let alone some of the smaller communities that we were working with? Legislators are just free to ignore it. And it's not like that was coming out of nowhere. That was a longtime complaint from anyone you talked to in Southern New Mexico. They would say, do you feel well represented and well heard in San Jose? And the instant answer would be no, maybe with some more colorful language added on. And so it was a really great project. We funded a shared reporter who worked with sort of a steering committee of newsrooms, and then that content was available for free. And they sort of took turns shaping the editorial direction, saying like, okay, well, I'd really love a story on this topic that impacts my community. And then the next week someone would say, oh, well, what's going on with these issues that impact my community? And it just ran really smoothly and really well, and it was super valued by the people that got to consume that reporting, as well as the news organizations themselves. And so that led us to thinking about how can we do something like this on a more longer term basis? 

And so we ended up applying for a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, which has a big program focused on collaboration and starting local news collaborations. And we got it. And so for the last two years, we've been working on a Southern New Mexico collaborative journalism project, which has been really great. The first year, the focus was on COVID-19 recovery. And with that program. I guess my general philosophy on these types of programs and grants is that you should think about funding in reporter- sized pieces, basically. Because if you're a small newsroom, even if someone gives you $10,000, I guess if you can hire a freelancer to take some of the load, then it allows you to do more. But otherwise your staff are full time. They're already doing all the work that they can. I guess you can maybe buy equipment or travel more or things like that, but someone doesn't magically gain more than 40 hours a week when you give them a grant, right? So because of the nature of the journalism ecosystem in southern New Mexico, we focus a lot of our grant funding on a shared reporter, Reyes Mata, who has been doing an amazing job shared editing. It's not like we were asking the participating newsrooms to take on more editing work than was already on their plate. We have a community engagement coordinator as part of that project who's been doing great work, like providing sort of two way feedback, right. Going to community meetings, providing that feedback to the newsrooms in the collaborative, and then also vice versa, going to community meetings and raising the profile of the work that the newsrooms are doing. And so we're in the process right now of looking for more funding for that, as always. But I've been really excited about that program.  

Accelerators and building sustainability with programs 

Regan-Porter [00:41:10]: 

I'm curious, when you're talking with newsrooms and, Mark, when you're talking with funders, are you starting to delve into sustainability? It's great to get a fellow, but if you can find a way to keep them, that's one advantage of Report for America's funding model. The downside is it can be hard to get, but once you get them, you've got some community fundraising built in. So what's your thought about sustainability for all of these programs? 

Glaser [00:41:36]: 

Yeah, so the other program that we launched when I first came here, the grant program I was asked to do is this local news accelerator program. And so the way that works is we have newsrooms of all kinds applying. We give them some grant money, but we also focus on their business and on sustainability. It started during the pandemic where we just wanted to get them money, and now as time has gone by, we're really focusing more and more on their business. Part of it to say, we're going to give you money. This will obviously help you a little bit, but how can we actually help you help yourselves? How can we make it so that what you're starting during this accelerator program is going to last beyond that? You're either going to maybe start a new line of revenue, start a new project, or extend something that you already have that's working. So they might hire someone to help them with grants, or they might hire someone to help them with sales, or they might come up with a new product to launch. And so we leave that open to them. And what we do is we have Cohort meetings once a month on Zoom. We talk about different topics of interest to them. We bring in outside speakers. We have an inside speaker from among the cohort, and then I have them set up goals and deadlines, and then over the six month program say, okay, you were going to hire someone. What's going on with that? Oh, yeah, we put in an ad and we've done so and so, and this is where we are. And sometimes they have to pivot and change to something else. But I think this sharing first, having someone bugging them and saying, hey, you set up this deadline. Some of them shy away from it a little, but a lot of them say, thank you for just being there to bug me about it because it really helped me stay on track. They just needed that voice in their ear saying like, hey, what's going on? What's the situation? And so we've served dozens of newsrooms, all kinds. Again, the smaller rural newsrooms have got the most out of that program. We help them. Not only do we help them directly as much as we can, we recommend consultants to help them out. We recommend, hey, there's a grant program, check this out. We recommend other accelerators. And so we're really about how can we help them become sustainable in the long term and not be dependent necessarily on us. And then this year, Rashad can talk about this more. But we're starting an incubator program for startups. Know we can help all the existing newsrooms as much as we can, but we all know there are areas that are just not being covered very well at all. It could be a neighborhood in Albuquerque or Santa Fe. It could be a town that has nothing in it, or a newspaper that's a ghost newspaper. So we're just starting that this year. But we're very much thinking about sustainability. 

Regan-Porter  [00:44:47]: 

Yeah. Rashad, tell me a little bit about the accelerator and what's going on.  

Mahmood [00:45:00]: I mean, Mark covered the basic idea, right, which is that we've done a lot of work supporting existing local news organizations, but we really felt like it was time to try to help start some new things in communities that needed it. And so we're partnering with the Tiny Knees Collective, who's going to provide platform support and backend support with some of the tools that they have available for someone that's not familiar. They're an online incubator that works nationally where you can apply to start a brand new local media startup with them. They provide fiscal sponsorship and accounting and all kinds of amazing back end services, as well as a web platform for the local news organization to get started. And then we're going to provide the on the ground community engagement support, expertise, knowledge to try to hit it from both ends, basically. And so, yeah, I'm really excited right now. Applications are open. I'm not sure exactly when this will be published, but they may be closed by the time you hear this. But if they're not and you're in New Mexico and you want to start a new local news initiative, please get in touch with us. And so, yeah, no, we're just really excited about it. The ideal, the dream candidate would be someone that lives in a small community in New Mexico that the local paper is closed, or maybe it never had one, or hasn't had one in a number of years, and that you don't have to be a journalist, right? We just are looking for people that are committed to the news and information needs in their community and solving them. And so we may get journalists apply and then we'll need to work with them on the business side, we may get business people apply and we'll need to work with them. On the journalism side, we're happy to do whatever works with whatever works for them.  

Collaborating with non-journalists 

Regan-Porter [00:46:45]:   That's exciting to see because I think to solve our news and information needs, it's an all of the above approach we have to have. We need our legacy institutions to survive, we need startups to form, people working across all different forms of media. So that's very exciting and I'm intrigued by the last part. You said you don't need to be a journalist, and earlier you mentioned partnering with community orgs as well. And I think that's also one of the things we're going to have to do to meet news and information needs. We're not going to diversify fast enough, we're not going to grow fast enough, we're never going to replace what we've lost in terms of number of journalists. So we have to think more creatively about collaborations, about working with people who don't have journalism degrees, who aren't professional journalists, but they have information the community needs to know and community organizations who fill that role as well. Can you talk a little bit about some of the collaborations? What have you seen happening with community orgs that is interesting? 

Mahmood [00:47:44]: 

There have been a few of the collaborations that we initially funded involve community organizations. We're particularly lucky in New Mexico to have a really great youth media ecosystem here. We haven't done a lot of direct work with them, but here in Albuquerque we have Generation Justice, which is based at the local NPR station. I actually worked with them for a year. They're great. And then in Santa Fe Searchlight, New Mexico partnered with a youth media organization up there. And so those are just two examples, but for example, our Southern New Mexico collaborative I think is the best example of journalism community organization partnerships so far. As part of the collaborative, we have community organizations as members and it's incredibly valuable having their input, especially when you have a topic like COVID-19 recovery, right, which is so directly impacting people having those. We've had people from the library system join those collaborative meetings. Yeah. So the Empowerment Congress is a great example of a community organization because they provided information to the news organizations, but then most importantly, they also go the other way, right. They can tell the people in the community that they work with like, hey, this collaborative exists. It's a great source of information. It builds trust between the community and local media, which frankly has been an issue for a long time here in New Mexico and lots of other places, right. I think for a number of years people viewed the press almost antagonistically, right. Especially when they have a very deficit focused mindset, right. They go into a community, they just say, oh, everything is terrible, things in this community are terrible, crime is rampant. Yes, those problems exist. But if you're not bringing a solution to journalism lens. If you're not talking about the people that are working to solve those problems and change things, if you're not talking about the structures and systems that are shaping those conditions, then it erodes trust in journalism. And I think for a long time for many communities that was their standard view of media and I do think things are better with legacy mainstream media as well as obviously a lot better with a lot of the startups that we've seen in recent years.  

Rapid-fire questions 

Regan-Porter [00:50:22]: 

And then now I want to move to rapid fire questions. So the questions will be rapid but your answers don't have to be. So for each of you, compared to a year ago, are you more or less optimistic about the future of local news? 

Glaser [00:50:35]: 

I'm going to say more optimistic. I mean, I just keep getting more and more optimistic. And the reason being, even though at the national level, at the corporate level, at the hedge fund level, there's tons of things that are ugly and bad. When you look at the local level and you think about the nonprofits that are growing these small outlets that are trying to be more community know, things like the National Trust for Local News and what they did in Colorado, which is really exciting, buying a chain of newspapers and turning it into a public benefit corporation. We're inspired by that. We're trying to do things like that too. So I feel more and more optimistic. I mean the fact that there are all these journalism funders getting together to try to raise a billion dollars to help local news, I mean that wasn't happening before, what we're seeing in state governments, I mean the list goes on and on and that's just in our little bubble. I feel like outside of us, no one knows these things but there's a lot of positive stuff and I wish for every story that talked about layoffs there was a story about, hey, look at this new idea that's forming here and look at this collaboration. 

Mahmood [00:51:45]: 

I would say the think, you know, what surprised me is the vitality of interest in ownership and starting up new publications here in New Mexico. Yeah, we're just seeing a lot more investment in local news in New Mexico than I might have expected a few years ago. So that's been great to see. 

Regan-Porter [00:52:04]: 

And I'll just add the local news fund there, what's going on in COLab, Lenfest and everything in Philadelphia, Chicago and all the different projects going on there, there are so many little pockets of innovation and change for the better that's that's another reason I think to be optimistic. 

Glaser [00:52:24]: 

It's really true. It is something happening a lot of times from the ground up, which is exciting too. But you're right, seeing these kinds of new things pop up, whether it's support organization or whether it's a new news organization or a new funder getting interested, it is kind of an exciting time. 

Regan-Porter [00:52:45]: 

AI, does that fill you with hope or dread when it comes to journalism, or a little of both? 

Mahmood [00:52:51]: 

I'm filled with hope about AI. Well, I guess both I would say. But overall I really think there's a lot of potential productivity enhancements that are going to come about from using it and that'll be perhaps of most benefit to smaller outfits like serving rural communities, right. The amount of man hours involved in attending a local city council meeting, trying to write a coherent summary of what was discussed and getting that out the door, it's a lot. And if you can use AI tools to do the brute force work of the raw summary and then using your local knowledge and expertise to really highlight what are the politically salient issues that were discussed, what is the bigger significance, the local meaning behind that? I think there's a ton of potential. I think basically anything that enhances journalist productivity is going to be most impactful at the margins, right, at those smaller outlets. The question is, will they have the training and resources to fully take advantage of those? And so as tools become it's kind of the wild west right now, but I'm sure in the next year or two we're going to see more standardization in terms of making it easier to use and sort of set tools that one could subscribe to, rather than just pasting a bunch of text into chat GBT and being like, hey, summarize this for me. Or something like that, right? And so I'm pretty optimistic. Obviously on the misinformation side, there's huge potentials for abuse, but I see that much more likely to impact the national journalism scene rather than the hyper local areas that we're really focused on. I mean, I highly doubt someone's going to be creating spoof articles about what did the Deming City Council say last week? It's like, oh no, that article is fake. I guess it's possible there's some malicious actor out there that's like, I'm going to erode, trust in the Deming headlight, but I certainly hope not. 

Glaser [00:55:07]: 

Yeah, I agree. I feel like with all these tools that come out, this has been going on for even longer than this kind of hype cycle around. Are robots going to be writing our articles? And obviously like, Reuters and others have been using AI to write the most basic stories about stock movements and about sports. They see these sports stories written completely based on the box score or whatever and I think that's fine. I think it's really can you help the reporters do the work that they really need to do the really in depth stuff? The only question is when you get the level know, we've already seen these kind of pink slime sites pop up where politicians have tried to pretend like they have a news organization. We have the New Mexico Sun is one here. And so my only worry is that. Can you create a million of these types of sites using AI? I mean, the quality is so poor right now, it doesn't seem possible, obviously, down the line that could change. But with everything new and with everything technology, I feel like you have the innovation and the disruption that everyone's trying to do, and then you need to have people actually watchdogging and making sure that the stuff is kept in place and not damaging us. 

Regan-Porter [00:56:31]: 

Do you have a favorite piece of advice you've been given? Career advice? Advice you'd give to students? Life advice, whatever comes to mind.  

Mahmood: 

I think for me, one thing that Sarah actually said to me, which I've taken to heart, is that when you're bringing people know, think very carefully about who needs to be in the room, who is most beneficial to have in the room, and that it's okay to sometimes work with subsets of a larger group, right? Like, don't feel guilty that you're only working with a group of journalists on this one project, or you're only working with a group of community organizations or people from the community, and that group dynamics are super important and sort of under considered. I think a lot of the time we think, oh, let's just bring everyone together and it'll be great. But how people interact with each other is different depending on who's in the room, right? And so when any work I do bringing people together, I try to think very intentionally about who are the right people that need to be in the room. And so shout out to Sarah for that advice. 

Glaser [00:57:45]: 

And building off that, I would say trying to really build on the wisdom of that group of know, the wisdom of the crowds, whether it's an audience or whether it's a convening of know. We started out using the Project Echo model in what we were doing with the accelerator program, where it's basically all teach, all learn. And so the idea is, when you have a cohort meeting and you have speakers, it's not just the speakers imparting their wisdom to the group people, it's the speakers actually even learning from the other people in the room, and everyone basically having a chance to teach and learn. So I really like that model, not only in these cohort meetings, but in all kinds of meetings and convenings. And there's nothing that I can't stand more than going to, let's say, a conference or a gathering where people are just kind of talking to you the whole time, and you're looking around at all these really smart people and you're like, I want to know what you think about that. Or I want to know what you think about that. And we're actually planning to have our first convening. And I think that's a piece of what we want to bring to that is trying to figure out what is the wisdom of this group of people? How can we kind of capture everyone's intelligence in one place. 

Regan-Porter  [00:59:00]: 

Is there a piece of advice that drives you crazy in its wrongness? Someplace where you're kind of a contrarian to conventional wisdom? 

Mahmood: 

I think for me, I sort of already mentioned it's, that talking about those like 5-, 10-, 15-thousand dollar grants that people sometimes give to news organizations. Philosophically. I just think in general, they almost I mean, obviously money is good, but if you're a funder and you're saying to a local news organization, here's a chunk of money. I want you to do this special project that is different from what you're already doing, and I'm not giving you enough money to hire a whole other person to do it. I just think that's a mistake and that the news organization is going to feel obligated to apply because who's going to say no to money? But then they're going to contort themselves into a pretzel trying to satisfy the needs of the funder. So I would just say to any funders listening, thank you for your support of the local news fund. And we'll take support in any size because we're pretty flexible. But if you're supporting a newsroom and you're giving them a smaller amount of money, please do it as general operating support and let them use the funding the way they see fit and in support of their mission, not your mission. And if you are going to make a bigger ask, then provide a full journalist's worth of support. 

Regan-Porter: Anything comes to mind for you, Mark? 

Glaser [01:00:33]: 

I mean, one thing that comes to mind is almost my own mindset and that of many others, which is that legacy media is going down into the tubes and everything should be digital first. Everything should be about innovation and doing everything like that. And I think when you actually see the reality in a lot of places, you realize that, yes, people do depend on print to get their news. They depend on radio, TV and other ways to get their news. And so I think being a lot more agnostic about it and saying, yes, it is important to get your digital act together, to have your website and to have a way of reaching people. One thing I've kind of thrown out is this idea that, yeah, everything has to be digital first. Everything has to be on the cutting edge because in reality it comes down to each community and where they are and trying to meet them, where they are. If they're on Facebook and you need to start a Facebook group for them, great. If they like print and you need to start something in print, that's great too. So I think it's really whatever. I've become a lot more agnostic when it comes to the medium and I think a lot of us media thinkers get stuck in that mindset. And when it comes down to it, who really cares? As long as people get the information, no matter how they get it. 

Regan-Porter [01:01:50]: 

Where is your favorite place to think big? 

Glaser [01:01:53]: 

There's a really gorgeous arroyo, like, right behind my house. And I say going back there and walking my dog each morning and having a walking meditation, I think first I would just clear my mind and not think about anything. And then when I go back there at other times, it's like I do go through the process of thinking about things and thinking bigger. I feel like it's something I personally don't I don't put as much time into that. I wish we had more spaces for that. To be able to think big and envision and really take ourselves away from the day to day, I think it's important. 

Mahmood [01:02:26]: 

Yeah. I mean, similar to Mark, I'm pretty fortunate that we live pretty close to the Rio Grande River in Albuquerque, which cuts right through the heart of Albuquerque. And so I don't do this enough, but I really try to sit outside and either work or not work and just sit outside and take in the trees and the sounds of birds and nature, and it's really great problem with New Mexico. I love New Mexico, but the sweet spot of temperature in Albuquerque is fleeting, shall we say. So it goes from too cold to too hot sometimes in the space of a couple hours. So you got to take advantage when you can.  

Regan-Porter: 

Journalism has its unique challenges. In terms of burnout, mental health, I think it's only gotten worse. The three of us are not in the daily grind in the same way that a daily newsroom is, but we have our own grinds, and we work with people who are dealing with that. Aside from nature, what do you do to sort of restore yourself and maintain your sanity?  

Mahmood: 

Well, I have two small children, so I don't know. Spending time with them, I just feel very rooted. I don't know. It's kind of amazing seeing their growth and their presence in the moment, which obviously it's easy to lose sight of that as a grown up, thinking about all the things we have going on. So for me, at least, I would say that's my answer. I do want to just briefly say that we take the mental health of journalists in New Mexico super seriously. We organized a series of focus group discussions around that when COVID was at its peak, we had a fund, actually, that made available to journalists if they needed to seek help for physical or behavioral or mental health needs that they could apply for funding to get in and see a counselor. And it's something we continue to think about, is how we can best support that. I don't know if you knew, Tim, but we had a journalist that I used to work with at KUNM, Hannah Colton, died by suicide a few years ago. And it was real, true tragedy and I think served really galvanized people around, increased awareness of self care and mental health here in New Mexico. And so it's definitely a really important issue to me. 

Glaser [01:04:54]: 

Yeah, and I would just say taking time off and not overworking is one of the key things I try to do and I'm about to go on a vacation for a couple of weeks and trying not to do work during that vacation is always difficult. But I know that I'll have to do some. But I think just minimizing and having a space without work for all us, for me and for a lot of people really makes a big difference. I think people have become more cognizant about it. I appreciate that there's a lot of complaining about the younger generation doesn't want to work and do XYZ, but I think they have it right. I think we've all had it wrong thinking we need to work that much, especially in a newsroom. And I've heard stories about people having to deal with trauma in a newsroom and the editor just says, well, you're going to have to just kind of toughen up and deal with it, when they really should be getting some help, they should be having a break, they should really look at what they're doing. So I'm glad to see that there are more resources now for that because it is super important and this journalist kind of culture, I guess you could say, of just like you're going to have to just push through it and deal with it. Doesn't make a lot of sense and it doesn't end with a lot of people wanting to stay in journalism either. 

Regan-Porter  [01:06:11]: 

Absolutely. Yeah, I would endorse all of that and I would also add the opposite, which is connect with your why and events where you connect with the community and you get feedback—Knight Media Forums, state conventions where you're with peers and you don't feel so alone. So I think it's both about disconnecting and connecting better 

Mahmood:  

In the work I see as sort of a hub or a connector among journalists in New Mexico. And the accelerator that's been a lot of the positive feedback is that people feel more connected to other journalists and knowing what's going on. We have a slack channel to sort of bring people together, which has been really great. And we've had a few sort of social gatherings. I always say that every time we're like, we should do more, but those are always super well received when we get people together in person. 

Regan-Porter: 

And then the penultimate question before I just ask you where to find you on social media and anywhere else. Stealing from Ezra Klein but broadening it to media in general. So what are three pieces of media that you are particularly into now or that you would just recommend to others? 

Mahmood: 

Well, I want to give a shout out to Downtown Albuquerque News, which is a hyper local publication here that they have a set number of zip codes here that they report on. I live just outside their coverage area. But it's really, I think, a shining example of what a hyper local publication can do and be. They just have an incredible variety of different types of stories but at the same time are pretty comprehensive in their coverage. So shout out to Peter. I also, here in New Mexico, I guess I want to shout out all the online nonprofit news outlets that we have here. They're such a valuable resource for not only just the public generally, but serving a bunch of the local newsrooms here. Rural news outlets can pull that content for free and it's just a great service. So shout out to New Mexico In Depth, Searchlight, Source New Mexico, New Mexico Political Report.They're all doing really valuable service to the people of New Mexico. 

Glaser [01:08:31]: 

I'll go on mean I appreciate definitely local media here. The Santa Fe Reporter, since I moved here, is an alt weekly that's actually thriving. You don't see that in a lot of other places. So I definitely give them a shout out. I also just read this book called American Ghost which is about a woman who's haunting what is now a hotel in Santa Fe with a book club that I'm part of and we're actually going to go on a Ghost tour and go see if we can go talk to her. So that's interesting and trying to think of a good TV show that I've watched lately that I really liked. I've been watching Platonic, which is a show on Apple TV with Seth Rogen that's interesting about a relationship between a guy who's kind of a screw up, like a Seth Rogen and a woman that he was friends with in the old days and they hang out together and do crazy things. So it's kind of nice also in the idea of unplugging and doing something just kind of silly. And it's definitely that. 

Regan-Porter [01:09:33]: 

And final question, just where can people find you plug anything you want to plug? 

Mahmood: Well, you can find our work at nmlocalnews.org. It's a very straightforward URL. We're on Twitter at @nmlocalnews. I'm at @el_rashad and big shout out to our funders, the Democracy Fund, Inasmuch, McCune Foundation, Con Alma Health Foundation, Thornburg Foundation. Obviously without their support we wouldn't exist. So we are super grateful. Oh and the Solutions Journalism Network. 

Glaser [01:10:09]: 

I'm at @mediatwit, on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn, all those things. And I just set up a consulting website called Wind Power Media, windpowermedia.com. 

Regan-Porter [01:10:25]: 

Thank you for listening to the Local News Matters podcast, and thanks to Rashad and Mark for the work you’re doing for newsrooms and communities throughout New Mexico.  

A final thanks to our production partners at Pirate Audio. Pirate Audio believes every community deserves great things to listen to, and they are on a mission to help local newsrooms reach their communities via audio. If you're interested in starting a podcast or need production support for an existing one, let me know and I'd be happy to connect you.  

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