Venture Philanthropy, Local News, and the Murky Promise of Innovation

Abstract

As local news has grown as a research and policy concern, venture philanthropy organizations, like the Google News Initiative, Meta Journalism Project, and American Journalism Project, have forwarded a capacious vision of innovation as offering a broad set of revenue-based solutions to local news’ crises. This article analyzes materials produced by these organizations as a form of metajournalistic discourse to understand how venture philanthropists’ focus on local news and innovation buttresses their authority to intervene in journalistic cultures and articulate visions for the future. Venture philanthropy organizations have claimed a broad and granular authority to define the directions of local journalism’s future, recursively justifying their role as stewards of tech industry largesse by declaring which problems, practices, and innovations are worthy of investment and attention.