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See also: Non-profit journalism

Chalkbeat

Chalkbeat is a non-profit news organization committed to reporting education issues rooted in local American communities. The mission is to "inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families by providing deep, local coverage of education policy and practice." It aims to increase influences on one of the essential stories in America: the effort to improve schools that have lacked access to quality education. Chalkbeat has seven bureaus where news is reported regularly: Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York, and Tennessee.  Chalkbeat was founded as GothamSchools in 2008 by Elizabeth Green and Philissa Cramer. It merged with EdNews Colorado, founded by Alan Gottlieb in 2013 and then redesigned and relaunched the website to Chalkbeat one year later. Over the years, Chalkbeat has won patrons, supporters and awards, and had a solid base of financial support. In the process, Chalkbeat worked hard to navigate the ethics of non-profit funding and strived to measure the impacts of its reporting and respond to critics from the public. Chalkbeat's policy shifts and broader trend focused vision is to cover stories that might have fallen to the wayside in other newsrooms, with a grounding in local knowledge and relationships formed through beat coverage. Its goal is to bring its reporting to a broader audience. In New York City, Chalkbeat has conservative competitors such as three daily newspapers and a public radio station with an education-focused blog. Another key online competitor is Capital Education that owned by Politico.

Chalkbeat

Formation	2014
Founder	Elizabeth Green, Philissa Cramer
Founded at	America
Merger of	Gotham Schools, EdNews Colorado
Type	Non-Profit Organization
Region	Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York, and Tennessee
Official language	English
Website	https://chalkbeat.org/

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History

GothamSchools, EdNewsColorado, and the other two soft-launch new venture sites in Memphis and Indianapolis were the predecessors of Chalkbeat that co-founded by Elizabeth Green and Philissa Cramer in 2014 officially. The education news site was first launched in 2008 as GothamSchools, and it merged with EdNewsColorado in January 2013. They were then relaunched jointly as a new national network known as Chalkbeat. Elizabeth Green and Philissa Cramer began with their local New York City education blog in 2008, and both of them had reached a consensus to bring their model to local communities in the U.S. strived to increase news coverage of local school systems. Chalkbeat was initially funded by Open Plans, a technology non-profit founded by Mark Gorton and together with the rest of the Chalkbeat network, Chalkbeat managed to raise $2.2 million in revenue in 2013, most of the funds came from philanthropic funding, and one third were earned revenue from sponsored ads and job boards listings. With more exposures and the website expansion, they attracted more funding from foundational donors and individuals so that they have more tools and resources to staff up.

Even though the original brand, GothamSchools, had a loyal following, but according to the interview with Green, "there is power in numbers. It made sense that we should all have one name." Green and her team decided to merge because they realised the difficulty in building a sustainable business around journalism. And they were struggling to find a way to invest in what they require over the long term. The Chalkbeat bureaus were decided and chosen if the places have a lot of changes or possibilities in their education policy and if local foundation support was presented to help to launch a new site. Right after the sites were merged, Chalkbeat was waiting for federal approval of its non-profit organisation status. At that time, Chalkbeat was still housed under another Colorado non-profit to handle functions such as human resources and served as the recipient of its grant funding. Chalkbeat had received grant fundings $200,000-$400,000 annually from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation respectively and also from local foundations based in the states and cities where the Chalkbeat has sites, which led to criticism from some quarters. Further expansion to more regions of communities was a goal for Chalkbeat, but they were cautious on their expansion pace because they want to do the current sites well.

As in the year 2016, Chalkbeat had approximately 250 thousand visitors per month, and most readers are education insiders. Among their readers, one-quarter work for education non-profits and another quarter are teachers, 10 per cent are researchers or policymakers and parents respectively, according to Green. This reflects Chalkbeat's policy-heavy approach with insiders being part of the target audience. Chalkbeat also wished to outreach to people that care about education inequality but not directly involved in it.

Journalism Website Trend

Recent years, philanthropy has become a more conventional means of funding journalism, nonprofit news website such as Chalkbeat that covers education in seven cities had been benefiting from the practice. Some organisations have made local journalism a priority. In 2018, ProPublica announced that it intended to fund projects on government accountability to expand its local reporting network. Moreover, a blockchain based start-up company, Civil Media aimed to help start 100 journalism outlets by the end of 2018, has provided grants to newsrooms in Chicago, Denver and the Hudson Valley. Furthermore, a $20 million local media transformation fund was announced by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism to expand the Table Stakes project helping to accelerate the digital transformation of major metro newsrooms in the U.S. The Knight Foundation and the Democracy Fund were contributing funding to the American Journalism Project, which aimed to act as a venture philanthropy firm by providing grants and consulting to local news outlets. The venture firm was still at its early stage, and it runs by Elizabeth Green, John Thornton (the founder of The Texas Tribune), and a successful venture capitalist would sit on the board of directors.

Main article: Digital journalism

Elizabeth Green - Co-founder

Elizabeth Green is the co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Chalkbeat that is based in New York City. Green had studied teaching methods in the U.S and Japan for six years. One of her published books, "Building a Better Teacher" launched with New York Times Magazine cover story discusses the principle behind the teaching skills and narrates how complicated teaching could be. She believes that "good teachers are not born, they are made" and teaching itself must be taught and the key is that appropriate techniques are being applied. It addresses policymakers on how to improve the skills of educators and the ability of teachers. The book established Green as a leading voice in education. Green worked for U.S. News & World Report magazine, and she covered New York City schools and wrote on education for the now-defunct New York Sun Newspaper previously. She realised the importance of covering news from pre-school education to higher education with issues existed or potentially exist from school policies to politics on a more local level. This is also why Chalkbeat focused on education problems mainly in the local communities.