Among the many economic changes brought on by the explosion of the internet during the first decades of the current century was the implosion of the advertising-driven business model that for decades supported most newspapers and publications. The decimation of advertising revenues — just remember those once-numerous pages of classified, auto and washing machine ads — led to newsroom collapses or sharp staff reductions at newspapers across the country. Even as much of the news-consuming public has come to accept the notion of paying for digital content, newspapers and magazines still struggle to generate the income they need to research, report and produce articles and other content.
Fortunately, philanthropy for journalism and nonfiction media has indeed increased during recent years to help ensure that society has reliable sources of information about what’s going on in the world. For a deep dive into philanthropy for journalism, read our report, “Giving for Journalism and Public Media,” an installment of Inside Philanthropy’s State of American Philanthropy series of white papers.
Among the topics of importance covered by journalists, science reporting poses unique challenges. It’s all too easy to write or report inaccurately about science, or to report the facts accurately but still miss the real point. Everyone, for example, has struggled in recent years to understand things like the risk of contracting COVID, the details of COVID treatments and medicines, or why an average of one degree of global warming matters so very much to the fate of the world. Meanwhile, science journalism in mainstream news outlets plummeted in recent decades as budgets contracted.
Here are a few ways funders and donors are backing the field.
Topic-specific media funding
Philanthropic funding is flowing to science journalism through a few pipelines. For one, we’ve seen a surge in funding for topic-specific journalism in alignment with the interests of donors and foundations. Yes, this has raised some concerns about editorial independence, but it has also expanded opportunities for journalism about topics that might otherwise be pushed to the margins as a result of shrinking budgets of news organizations.
For example, we’ve seen major philanthropic funding to expand the science reporting capabilities of existing news organizations with regard to climate change. Earlier this year, we reported on an $8 million, three-year grant to the Associated Press to expand its reporting on climate change. Funding came from five large foundations — the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
The Gates Foundation, a major funder of science, climate and health research, has reportedly given $250 million (or more) to grantees in media, including major national and global outlets like NBC and the BBC. It’s tough to say how much of that giving has gone to science, climate or health journalism, but one result of that substantial giving is the criticism that such support has engendered more friendly, less-objective coverage of the Gates Foundation. It’s a fair point, but even under an ad-supported business model of news, editors had to remain on guard against influence from the money.
Our white paper on the topic, mentioned above, picked up on this theme, as well, and listed funders providing topic-specific journalism support in fields like religion (Lilly Endowment), education (Lumina Foundation), health (the California Wellness Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Association of Health Care Journalists, and Helmsley Trust), and the environment and science (Earth Journalism Network, Walton Family Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Fund for Environmental Journalism).
Other science funders, like the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, devote resources to public understanding of science through a variety of popular media. Sloan funds science communications through popular radio programs like Science Friday and Radiolab, television and film projects like PBS documentaries, books about science and technology, and other media projects.
Additionally, there are efforts within philanthropy to recognize good science reporting. For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), along with the Kavli Foundation — itself a high-profile funder of science research — provide the annual AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. These awards, given to individuals, range from $3,500 to $5,000 and recognize exceptional work in science journalism.
Training and education
But for science journalism, the needs go beyond just money for salaries. The complex and academic nature of the subjects involved often demand extra grounding and education on the part of the journalists themselves. It can be difficult to report on these subjects accurately without solid, college-level training in the sciences or a level of experience that offers comparable understanding of how the scientific process works.
Kavli operates its Open Notebook Science Journalism Master Classes, free courses designed to help science journalists improve their skills. Other supportive and educational efforts come from various national and international science and journalism associations, such as the National Association of Science Writers, the Association of Healthcare Journalists, and the World Federation of Science Journalists, which derive some of their funding from philanthropy.
A number of fellowships are available for science journalists and writers, coming from a mix of philanthropic and educational outfits across the spectrum of science and health topics. Some, like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Science Journalism Fellowship, provide shorter workshops or other programs lasting a week to a couple of months to help writers learn about a specific subject or area of science. The Metcalf Institute at the University of Rhode Island, for example, which offers training in environmental journalism, provides environmental writing fellowships to traditionally underrepresented minority journalists. MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program offers a few fellowships, including year-long residencies designed to give science journalists the opportunity to dig into particular subjects and topics.
The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism supports mid-career print and audio journalists through a $10,000 annual fellowship designed to report about food systems and policies, including agriculture and nutrition, the food industry, food science, and related issues.
Intermediaries
Vincent Stehle, executive director of Media Impact Funders, tracks the world of media and philanthropy. He cited the expanding role of intermediary organizations through which philanthropic dollars flow to science journalism and journalists. “There’s a significant function of the intermediaries that helps to translate the scientific knowledge in research or academia to the average person,” he said. “That’s a really important function in media, in science, health and the environment, all scientific topics.”
One such intermediary, says Stehle, is Climate Central, a nonprofit comprising scientists and communicators who create stories and visual media that convey the effects of climate change to a general audience. They collaborate with journalists, including meteorologists, to provide an accurate picture of climate change science to the public.
Climate Central solicits donations from the public to support their programs, but many large philanthropies and other funders also contribute to keep the nonprofit running. For example, Climate Central’s Sea Level Rise program has received backing from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, the George H. and Estelle M. Sands Foundation, the JPB Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, National Science Foundation, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Robert G. and Ellen S. Gutenstein Family Foundation, Summit Foundation, Sustainable Markets Foundation, Tiger Baron Foundation and V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation. Between 2015 and 2020, MacArthur Foundation contributed $6 million to Climate Central.
SciLine is another intermediary nonprofit that steers philanthropy into science journalism. The organization performs a number of services, notably matching journalists with scientists who can explain not just the facts but their context, which provides the real meaning and implications of science news and information. The organization says it has about 20,000 experts in the U.S. and Canada available to help journalists.
As with Climate Central, a number of philanthropic organizations with traditional science-funding orientations have supported SciLine, including Quadrivium Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, MAC3 Impact Philanthropies, Daniel Pinkel, Rita Allen Foundation, Schmidt Family Foundation, Google News Initiative, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Zakaria Family Foundation, and Leo Model Foundation.
Science has always been an important thread in modern society, but with all the forces changing the world and people’s lives so rapidly, it’s safe to say that more people than ever want clear, dependable and illuminating science reporting.
“Whether it’s due to everyone’s experience of the pandemic, or the increasing frequency and prevalence of climate impacts on our lives, the urgency of understanding is increasing,” Stehle said. “And I think the engagement around philanthropy, to direct resources at providing greater understanding and insight, is really driving a lot of interest in journalism and communications.”