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While not the first time Pritchard has called for cross-platform measurement and an overhaul of what he described as an inequitable and inefficient media ecosystem, this week's speech is notable for having a clearer vision of what a new system might look like, and for laying out what some of the steps may be for getting there.

As the top marketer at one of the worlds largest advertisers, Pritchard has taken a leadership role on advocating for brand marketers and their needs. In this week's keynote address, Pritchard decried legacy media models that were created for a different era, such as traditional broadcast upfronts. Instead, he doubled down on programmatic media, which he said creates a more balanced marketplace for marketers and eliminates complexity that prevents investment in smaller media companies.

Even when faced with a pandemic, an economic downturn, social unrest and climate change verging on crisis, Pritchard called on marketers to stop accepting legacy media models and instead build a new system that is altogether more equitable, responsive and practical for the digital age.

"There may never be a better time for us to lead constructive disruption and transform media," Pritchard said.

Key to the transformation Pritchard envisions is brand marketers taking back some control from media providers, who have the upper hand in what he called an "antiquated system for broadcast TV buying" because of their access to more information.

"For marketers, this system makes little sense, yet every year, we march to the upfronts and rush to buy as much as possible as soon as possible to get the best bulk deal,'" Pritchard said.

Pritchard's remarks follow a broader movement across parts of the advertising industry to revamp the TV upfronts during a year when the system has been upset by the pandemic's impact on the ability to produce new programming or hold in-person events.

A level playing field would be one in which marketers could plan and negotiate buying when it best suits them, with real-time flexibility to adjust to market conditions and a balanced exchange of information, per Pritchard's remarks. Indeed, in an interview granted before the speech, Pritchard said P&G would not be going back to the annual upfronts. Instead, the company will look to negotiate directly with media providers.

"Our agencies help us and have an important role as contributing partners, but we are in the lead," Pritchard said.

That transparent and level playing field must also extend into the digital world, where media is bought through auction. Still, information asymmetry exists when it comes to audience data and cross-platform measurement. Comparing digital media buying to the movie "Groundhog Day" because the same promises are made over and over and over again, Pritchard declared it was time for the industry to commit to developing a validated, scalable cross-media measurement pilot by by next year.

One way P&G is taking control of is media investments is with programmatic. Ninety-percent of P&G's media spending is digital, and more than 80% is programmatic, Pritchard said. In the U.S., programmatic is close to the companys largest media investment and experiencing double-digit growth.

"P&G preferred [media] providers are those with programmatic capability," Pritchard said. "It levels the playing field among thousands of media companies."

The new media supply chain also must include gender, racial and ethnic equality at every link in the chain, per Pritchard. Marketers have to commit to fair representation both within their organizations and among their preferred providers, including agencies, media companies, and production crews. In addition, marketers can help dismantle systemic inequalities within the media supply chain by working directly with minority-owned and operated media companies, he noted. Such investment helps close income and wage gaps, leading to more overall purchasing power and market growth, "which is good for society and good for business," Pritchard said.

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Pritchard: P&G is taking control in the media supply chain and so can other marketers - Marketing Dive

The Sell Sider is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.

Todays column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an audience and data strategyconsultant.

Digital advertising is becoming subtly and silently polarized. Not in the angry, conflicted way currently witnessed in politics, but a bifurcation in the road ahead is clearly taking shape.

On one side is a group with a worldview that identifies the ad slot rather than the content as the end product that should be monetized. From an audience perspective, they take a hunting for identity and addressability approach that views the user as a means to an end, rather than what should be the dominant focus. Everything whether its stitching IDs together or collecting emails happens in the background with little or no user engagement.

On the other side are the media owners who realize that audiences have been ignored for too long. They envision a holistic engagement strategy, aimed at regaining the trust of their audiences and all the mutual benefits that come with that, which can maximize their assets and strengthen and differentiate their business models. In contrast to their colleagues, its the building identity in collaboration with the audience approach.

I believe that the latter can turn media owners fortunes around.

Citizens knowledge of personal data and how it is used online will only increase. The role of media in this discovery process is paramount, and already many media brands editorial teams are informing their audiences about privacy-related dangers and pitfalls.

By embracing a path to education and transparency, media owners can rebuild that long-lost trust and differentiate themselves. A knowledgeable audience will be able to discern a trustworthy entity deserving of their consent and personal data from those that should be denied. It would create a solid barrier to entry against murky competitors and parasitic entities.

This approach is not just about an aspirational and philosophical love for the user. It also includes a very pragmatic move toward identity, addressability, a strong data strategy and, ultimately, monetization.

I call it the funnel of trust.

Top of the funnel: consent and communication

Consent is the enabler of any data, audience and monetization strategy. A few months ago I described consent as the real new oil. Focusing on it naturally forces media brands to embrace the whole audience, horizontally.

Media owners dialogue with their audiences should be fine-tuned to reduce ad blocking, with the understanding that ad blocking will not disappear on its own. But by establishing a real conversation with the audience and with concrete initiatives, such as focusing on creating a better user experience a lot of inventory and revenue can be recovered, as well as much more data.

Repairing trust is harder than building it in the first place and maintaining an always-on conversation with audiences requires a two-way communication channel.

Thats why a data and consent management dashboard should be top of mind and the core around which the audience and media brand meet.

A dashboard could let users see in real time, 24/7, what data is held about them. Users should be able to amend it, contribute to it or delete it, and it should include a consent toggle.

I have been around long enough to visualize the terrified looks of the usual suspects when they think about allowing users to withdraw consent. But this is the very tool that can help an ambitious and honest media brand recover and communicate to lost users, giving audiences the peace of mind that they can change settings and control their own data.

Moving down the funnel

This is the stage where a virtuous cycle kicks in and media owners can move down the funnel of trust to the registration phase.

A trusting audience and an open communication channel will facilitate a conversation with users about the benefits of registering. Every step of the audience strategy requires a multidisciplinary collaboration and synchronization across the company, from editorial to legal, from the marketing team to the advertising unit.

It is vital that a value exchange is the foundation of every interaction. Why should users register and create a profile? Whether its to manage their own data, access exclusive content or to personalize the experience, the benefits should be compelling.

But being registered is not enough. To maximize the advantage of a known user base, individuals must be logged in. Again, it is only through a relationship based on dialogue and concrete benefits that this can happen. What are your users reasons to stay logged-in all the time?

The promised land

For users to be fully engaged, knowledgeable and taking advantage of the tools and capabilities for managing their data, the next level of collaboration and interaction in the funnel would be to enrich their own profiles. That includes providing additional data, responding to surveys or participating in ad-hoc initiatives. When the trust and dialogue are at their peak and the value flows in both directions, it will be much easier to improve a media owners knowledge about its audience in a way that no legal tracking could ever achieve.

The advantages are many and cover the whole monetization strategy. While these examples were tailored with advertising in mind, to show how identity and addressability can be improved or rebuilt by embracing the audience, rather than hunting for it, there are other areas that would benefit: subscriptions, memberships, product improvements and new launches.

I have the feeling that, in the bifurcation of the road ahead for media owners, one of the two options will be a blind alley, just protracting their suffering and uncertainty.

Embracing the funnel of trust would maximize their assets and build the strongest foundation for monetization.

Follow Alessandro De Zanche (@adzandads)and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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The Funnel Of Trust Is The Best Path To Media Monetization - AdExchanger

When the coronavirus death toll in the United States passed 200,000 on Tuesday, matching projections made by White House experts this spring, many of the right-wing media personalities who had mocked the estimates as overblown were quiet.

The death toll, tracked by Johns Hopkins University and a New York Times database, is most likely an undercount, many public health experts believe. At least 266,000 more people have died in the United States during the pandemic than would have been the case during a typical year.

Mark Levin, the host of a syndicated radio show and a Fox News program, declared on Twitter on Wednesday that THE U.S. DID NOT SURPASS 200,000 COVID-19 DEATHS. As evidence, he cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that 94 percent of the reported deaths involved underlying health problems and that 6 percent of the people who died had no illness or medical condition other than Covid-19.

Mr. Levin was one of several popular radio hosts who have used the C.D.C. statistic to make a case that the pandemic death toll was inflated, a false claim that was also promoted by a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and amplified by President Trump in a post that Twitter removed last month.

Health experts have repeatedly debunked that interpretation of the data. Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the countrys leading infectious disease expert, tried to clear up any misconceptions during an appearance on Good Morning America.

The point that the C.D.C. was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else, but just Covid, Dr. Fauci said. That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didnt die of Covid-19 they did.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control released an explanation Sept. 3 noting that the cause of death as listed on a death certificate includes an immediate cause, intermediate causes, underlying causes and contributing conditions. The department used an example to demonstrate how a person would be excluded from the C.D.C.s 6 percent figure: if an immediate cause of death was acute respiratory distress syndrome, with pneumonia as the intermediate cause, Covid-19 as the underlying cause and asthma and diabetes as contributing causes.

While certain people such as older adults are more likely to have more contributing factors, if the person doesnt contract Covid-19, then those factors dont start the cascade of events that lead to death, the department said in a statement.

The U.S. leads all other countries in Covid-19 deaths. The grim statistics are in line with a projection made in March by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, who estimated that the virus could kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans.

In April, Rush Limbaugh, Bill OReilly, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and several other conservative media figures latched onto an estimate made by Dr. Fauci that month, when he said that, because of social distancing efforts and lockdown restrictions, the ultimate number of deaths could be more like 60,000.

The conservative author Candace Owens, who has 2.6 million Twitter followers, said the 60,000 figure was proof that the media was always lying, and the virus was never as fatal as the experts that are chronically wrong about everything, prophesied, as CNN noted in an article on commentators who used the revised estimate to cast doubt on science-based projections.

President Trump has frequently discussed the virus in dismissive terms. At a rally this week, he repeated the misleading claim that young people faced very little risk, although thousands of people under 65 and many others who previously seemed in good health have fallen sick.

It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, Mr. Trump said. If they have other problems, thats what it really affects. In some states thousands of people nobody young, below the age of 18. Like, nobody. They have a strong immune system. Who knows?

He added, Its an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools!

Read this article:
Right-Wing Media Stars Mislead on Covid-19 Death Toll - The New York Times

LSEs Professor Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat explain why hate and disinformation campaigns against Muslims in India have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some commentators naively assumed that a life-threatening pandemic would bring citizens together, and be enough to suspend if not completely stop the now endemic barrage of disinformation targeted at Indian Muslims. However, COVID-19 has simply added a new dimension to the hate speech and disinformation circulated about Muslim communities in India.

The BJP, RSS and Sangh Parivar campaign of producing hate and inciting violence against Muslims in India runs as a well-oiled machine that has internal complexity and leaves the ruling party with plenty of scope for plausible deniability when their supporters resort to murder. The steps in this manufacture and circulation of violent disinformation often involve both mainstream and social media. Notorious journalists and anchors known to support the BJP Government and the Hindutva cause raise apparently legitimate doubts: in this case, the faux troubling questions centred around the intentions of a Muslim gathering in Delhi, the Tablighi Jamaat held prior to the announcement of lockdown, even when there was legitimate never any basis to such reports. At the same time, dispersed IT-cells and supporters of Hindutva groups and the ruling party on WhatsApp and other social media flood their various groups and online spaces with a parallel set of misinformation and disinformation-laden memes, questions, images, GIFs and speeches from politicians. This further casts aspersions on individual Muslims and suspicion on the Muslim communitys loyalty as citizens and human beings, accusing them of being Covid super-spreaders, and implicating them in a supposedly dastardly plot to infect Hindus by spitting on food, and infiltrating respectable middle class spaces through their jobs as sales-people, cooks, chauffeurs or watchmen.

In March 2020, within days, such networks of disinformation had led to entrenched rumours that Muslims were intentionally infecting Hindus through a range of behaviours. As a result, several spaces residential settlements and hospitals for instance illegally and unconstitutionally denied entry and service to some Muslims, resulting in further unnecessary deaths. In a parallel move, and implicitly supporting the BJP MLAs and supporters who were pushing the initial disinformation, the government of India banned 2,550 individuals from entering India for a period of ten years all of them foreign Tablighi Jamaat followers.

Meanwhile a more public and systemic disinformation campaign emanates from mainstream institutions. For instance, a civil society institution composed of ex-judges with ties to diaspora Hindutva groups, recently submitted a report that claimed to identify the instigators of the Delhi pogrom that took place in February 2020 and left 39 Muslims dead at the hands of Hindu far right mobs. This report which consists almost entirely of ideological fabrications, recasts Muslim dissidents protesting against discriminatory citizenship laws as urban naxals and anti-nationals. Even before such accusations had been made public, the Home Ministry had used the disarray caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to imprison Muslim democracy activists, and to take even moderately critical journalists from Kashmir and elsewhere into custody or slap them with false charges. So, why does all of this clearly authoritarian and anti-democratic misrepresentation and action against mainly Muslim citizens continue with virtually no protest from a majority of the Indian public? There are several reasons.

First, the nave notion that reporting or uncovering the truth and the facts will mitigate violence and undermine prejudice needs to be banished. Our research into hate speech and misinformation on WhatsApp suggests that upper and middle caste Hindu social media groups with an investment in the ideology of Hindu supremacy knowingly produce and share disinformation targeted against Muslims.

Second, less ideologically and politically embedded individuals within these groups share disinformation under the guise of more positive citizenship imaginaries: civic duty, protecting ones religion or ones community, national security, promoting good health and hygiene, promoting national unity and so on or do so to retain their position as key informants to the group without thought to the damage of sharing false information. Such deep-seated imaginaries disavow the violence perpetrated by the very people passing on the disinformation, project that violence onto the targeted communities, and legitimise anti-Muslim discrimination across India and the diaspora.

Rather than only countering disinformation with empirical facts or presenting the dangers of spreading hate amidst a pandemic, it is imperative for anti-racists, researchers and ethical journalists to look at the political history of Indian disinformation and to ask whose political interests are served by the sophisticated and systematic sharing of mediated and community-transmitted disinformation against Indian Muslims?

In India (and the diaspora), Hindu society is currently and has historically been controlled by a select few organisations and dominant caste individuals. The process of maintaining control through hegemony is required since a minority cannot control a majority by force alone. Muslims, as one of the largest distinct non-Hindu social groups in India, have consistently been cast as the threatening other by Hindu-chauvinist politics, literature and media. The Muslim as an enemy outsider has come to constitute the tie that binds disparate groups with competing social interests together into a mythical Hindu-ness. In the early years of the 20th century, such a production of Hinduism (via the Muslim) was transparent in the writings of early Hindutva functionaries and leaders.

Over the last four decades, incremental social reforms and uneven capitalist development has necessitated a more sophisticated approach to building the idea of a Hindu nation. The old broadcasting technologies of writing, radio and television are inadequate to account for proliferation of identities. In many states of India, intermediary caste groups have become extremely influential Lingayats and Vokkaligas in Karnataka, Kammas and Reddys in Andhra Pradesh, Marathas in Maharashtra, Jats in Haryana and so on. Social media platforms and applications powered by global digital networks have begun to be put to use in significant ways for political goals in contemporary societies. The basic architecture of othering Muslims to constitute Hinduness and Hindu nationalism remains a historical fact. The affordances of platforms and devices, as well as new possibilities of differentiated mass distribution, present enormous potential to produce the idea of India as a Hindu nation with an internal enemy community in new ways. The fabricated association of Muslims with the spread of Covid-19 is a prime example.

In different locations, depending on the class and caste composition in a given society, the same vicious anti-Muslim imaginaries are incubated either as a health and hygiene problem, a religious provocation, a national security threat or danger to other communities through extreme fecundity and population growth. Disinformation distribution networks are built like inverse pyramids where local actors (often younger males with some basic computer skills looking for entrepreneurial opportunities) receive money from shadowy firms or NGOs (with very loose and hard to trace links to the BJP party), are able to inflect broad imaginaries with local contexts. Other groups engage in disinformation not only for money but also as a way to get noticed as a rising political personality.

This design ensures that anti-Muslim disinformation is tremendously flexible, local and persuasive to those who are already looking for confirmation of their hatred and deep-seated prejudice. Mirroring white rightwing Islamophobia, common features of disinformation in India today include the use of extreme emotions and images. Disinformation frequently hinges on the use of shocking images that seek to elicit a strong emotion in the user, compelling him or her to share it with others. The active attachment of the idea of sharing of information against the Muslim other as a form of civic duty and national security further enhance the likelihood of misinformations journey from a systemic propaganda towards less ideologically embedded sections of a community.

Another tactic used is the embedding of disinformation in a constant flow of banal messaging from trusted elders or community leaders, which ensures that users are habituated both to receiving and to sharing content without much intellectual pause or critique. Receiving and forwarding messages in a particular group or across groups is a mark of sociality and acceptance in those groups. In fact, belonging to a group without being seen to share comes to be seen and understood as suspicious: a performance of (Hindu/caste) group loyalty is thus a facet in the spread of malevolent misinformation and disinformation.

Given that discrimination, violence and disinformation against Muslims is an extensive historical and political problem in India and the diaspora just as violence and misinformation against social groups such as Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus is a problem in neighbouring Pakistan, strategies for countering it need both short and long-term solutions. Short term solutions involve a far stronger commitment from mainstream media organisations, governments and social media companies on ideas about civil and human rights and the right to life rather than the current and narrow emphasis on free speech as defined by those in powerful positions, as well as a recognition of the multiple forms taken by Islamophobic rhetoric. Long-term solutions include the building of a culture of anti-racism, historical awareness and critical media literacy from childhood upwards, involving widespread open discussions about linkages between technologies of representation and political power, as well as pointing towards the benefits for all of a society with less violence and more equity and solidarity.

This post was originally published on the Students Against Hindutva Ideology blog and is reposted with thanks. This article represents the views of the authors, and not the position of the Media@LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Featured image: Photo by Reiner Knudsen on Unsplash

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Disinformation against Indian Muslims during the COVID-19 pandemic - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

First and foremost, the City Paper is deeply appreciative of the support our donors and sponsors have provided, even during this challenging time for the entire community. Thank you. We do not take your support for granted.

Yesterday, I finally signed the City Papers Application for Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Obtaining tax-exempt status is the holy grail for most nonprofit organizations, and, if granted, it will allow us to solicit much-needed grants in order to fulfill our mission, participate in local, nonprofit initiatives, and for our supporters: retroactively transform your donations into tax-deductible contributions.

The application is a behemoth, and the I.R.S. is notorious for being strict with this document. It includes all of our financial information, conflicts of interest, business plan, and more. The average time frame for approval once an application is filed is 8-9 months. We retained the local law firmPoznak Dyer Kanar Schefsky Thompson PLC for the filing, and were very appreciate of their guidance, counsel, and support. Once approved, in the same spirit and manner we treat all of our important documents and financial information, we will make the entire application, which clocks in at over 50 pages, available to the public.

Since our launch, even though the City Paper is a Michigan Domestic Nonprofit Corporation, we have operated at the federal level as a for-profit corporation. Essentially, we have all of the obligations of a corporation and enjoy none of the benefits of a nonprofit. Yesterdays application seeks to change that. We chose to launch and operate before filing because we know that our mission is critical to the health of the community, and we knew of the complexities and long time-frame involved in the application process.

We have made tremendous progress in making our community aware of the differences between a community-owned nonprofit news organization dedicated to fulfilling a mission and for-profit, conglomerate-owned organizations primarily dedicated to shareholders.

Even around the country, as our rare, mission-first model begins to replicate and spread, nonprofit news organizations are beginning to change the media landscape for the better. ProPublica, another nonprofit news organization, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalisms most prestigious honor, along with the Anchorage Daily News, for a riveting series that revealed a third of Alaskas villages had no police protection, took authorities to task for decades of neglect, and spurred an influx of money and legislative changes.

The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest newspaper in Utah, actually transformed from a traditional for-profit media entity into a nonprofit news organization, creating a model (as well as inspiration) for other news organizations to follow. Nonprofit news organizations are the future of news as well as the solution to the decades-long decline and bleeding of traditional, for-profit media entities. Mega-mergers, buyouts, furloughs, position consolidations, new payment schemes, and cutting costs all the way to the bottom can only last so long. The drive to chase the almighty dollar at the expense of a decline in the quality of local journalism takes its toll.

This isnt to say that the reporters and editors at our local, for-profit news sources care more about shareholder value than they do about high-quality journalism. In fact, its probably the opposite, they are our neighbors and community members. However: the higher you climb the ladder, the more those priorities flip, and at the top brass level, its all about shareholder value.

When things are going well, the difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit news organizations is negligible. But when things arent going well thats when citizens and readers begin to see the true difference between those sets of priorities. No well-meaning local editor of a for-profit, conglomerate-owned newspaper will have any say over New York or San Francisco during tough times. Media consolidation leads to a loss of local control, and readers want important decisions about their local news sources made on Main Street, not Wall Street.

Local control and the nonprofit model, however, do come with enormous challenges. And we remain committed to facing those challenges head-on. Even with our limited resources, we continue to control the local news narrative. You are seeing more and more local news stories not just from us on the things we believe readers care about: in-depth local coverage of people and policies in government, education, business and the arts.

Since its launch, the City Paper has built key relationships and has grown into a niche publication favored by engaged citizens as Midlands authoritative source on area public policy issues. Earlier this year, we led the community conversation on the tragic and ongoing opioid epidemic in Midland. In a full print edition Special Report, we interviewed dozens of victim families, and learned and shared their stories; and talked to medical and public policy officials about what needs to happen to make an impact toward a solution. In May, after the historic flood of the Tittabawassee River and the failure of the Edenville and Sanford dams, we published another full print edition (as well as an online feature) Special Report entitled Weve lost everything.

COVID-19, just like with many other organizations, threw a wrench into City Paper operations earlier this year. Starting in March, the City Paper stopped conducting in-person meetings, and the staff started working from home. Our board of directors did not meet from January to July during the pandemic, canceling two meetings. We also briefly paused the production and delivery of our print edition in order to facilitate social distancing and due to the closures of most of our newsstand locations, continuing to deliver our news report on our mobile, Web, and social media platforms.

As far as news coverage, we have striven to cover the pandemic in a responsible manner. For us, that means breaking news on things such as the first confirmed case in Midland, but staying away from horse race and fear-driven daily updates on confirmed cases or deaths. As always, our news report is driven by the people and policies which impact our community most, carefully balanced by our current resources.

In January, we partnered with M.B.A. students from Northwood Universitys DeVos Graduate School of Management on strategy and market analysis. The class, MBA 654 Competitive Strategy & Marketing Practicum, was taught by Dr. Matthew OConnor (who also served on the City Papers board of directors).

Students selected various local companies and organizations to partner with on marketing and strategy and the City Paper was honored to be one of the selected organizations. From the programs flyer: Your business receives valuable research through the project, and student consultants reinforce their understanding of business fundamentals while applying cutting-edge management practices to strategic and marketing issues and opportunities.

The four talented graduate students who worked with us Christian Barry, Mark Thomas, Marissa Dudek, and Brenden Campbell submitted their final report and recommendations for the City Paper earlier this year. The document is a detailed examination of the City Papers current practices, proposed processes, market research survey results, detailed recommendations, and more. The City Paper remains deeply appreciative of the partnership with Northwood and for the students steadfast dedication and hard work.

The market research that our Northwood University partners conducted revealed some interesting thoughts from our readers. The City Paper is fiercely nonpartisan. But Ive often said, the folks usually most concerned about how partisan we are tend to be the most partisan themselves. Some of our reader comments did not disappoint.

High quality slightly leaning Democratic, said one reader, followed by another comment: Alternative to Midland Daily News, but with a bend to the right.

I suppose if the left thinks youre right and the right thinks youre left, youre doing just fine.

Along with filing our application for tax-exemption, the City Paper also adopted a new Conflict of Interest Policy to ensure we adhere to the highest ethical standards when it comes to nonprofit organizations. To that end, each Director will sign an annual Disclosure of Financial Interests, which the City Paper will make public. We are committed to remaining the most transparent, ethical, and accountable media organization in the area. Weve also reduced the number of our Directors to seven to increase our nimbleness and better reflect our current size. At our annual meeting this year, we welcomed A.J. Hoffman to our Board of Directors. Mr. Hoffman is the co-host of the Small Market Podcast, a local podcast on sports. He graduated from Central Michigan University with a degree in journalism.

Our staff also used some of the added down-time during the peak months of the pandemic to work on new strategies for the City Paper which will guide us in our work toward improving the community. We focused on four major areas: increasing and diversifying our readership, focusing on how to best serve and recognize our donors, placing an emphasis on technology, and growing our operating revenue ambitiously. Part of that plan, on the editorial side, is to place more emphasis on what we believe to be the long-term future of news in general: mobile and audio platforms.

We have also redesigned our print edition, which is a monthly digest of the news found on our other media platforms. We tailored the new print edition toward the reader base and audience which, over the last year or so, weve developed with our journalism. That audience is engaged in our community, influential, well-educated and affluent. While its tempting to think of the City Paper solely through our print newspaper, we have to do a better job of emphasizing that our print edition is just one way we deliver our journalism and fulfill our mission.

Most of the world is still stuck in a print-centric line-of-thinking when it comes to news organizations. Introductions to the City Paper are often met with questions such as So are you a weekly? or Whats your circulation? Those are print-centric ways of thinking of our organization, which instead should be thought of as a public charity first, and a news organization which uses all forms of media audio, mobile and Web, and yes, print in order to fulfill our mission.

We will soon be releasing our 2019 financials and tax filings. As Im sure you know, the City Paper is deeply committed to transparency. We believe our readers deserve to know who gives us money. We fulfill this obligation with our Donor Wall in print and on the Web which also allows our donors to take pride in helping to make our community a better place. I am very proud to announce that, in 2019, 100 percent of dollars from donors and sponsors were used on mission-fulfilling activities. CharityWatch, a noted charity watchdog, rates nonprofits that spend at least 75 percent of their income on mission work as efficient. Our unique model includes a diversified revenue stream so that our administrative and overhead costs are covered by our advertising revenue.

Finally, one of the most important aspects of our editorial strategy is to embrace and adapt the technologies which enable us to tell our stories more effectively. We must reject that Luddite apprehensions and juvenoia that doomed the Old Media dinosaurs when it comes to new media platforms and opportunities. We are extremely excited to announce that the City Paper will have a mobile app for both Apple and Android devices which we aim to have available for our readers in the coming days. The apps will allow our users and readers to read the City Paper, but most importantly, they will give our readers the chance to receive news alerts on the areas of coverage most important to them: local government, education, business, or the arts.

Triton Legal PLC, a criminal defense law firm based in Bay City, stepped up to help sponsor our new mobile app. Their support helped significantly to defray the cost of developing, testing, building, and submitting our apps. We are very grateful for their support and were proud that they are a Community Partner with the City Paper.

The City Paper should produce journalism so compelling and valuable to readers that theyre inspired to support us financially. Only 30 people do today. We believe this is the ultimate measure of an engaged audience, so we must focus our efforts on moving more readers from their initial experience with our organization and our journalism into experiences that bring them closer to a Modern Explorers membership.

Please know that even a small donation of $10 helps us tremendously. You can make a difference and help to improve your community today. Please consider donating to the City Paper if you can afford it.

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We look to other successful nonprofit news organizations, such as The Texas Tribune, Voice of OC and Voice of San Diego, and even N.P.R. We dont seek to replicate their models, mostly because that would be inappropriate considering the size of the news market here in Midland, however we do seek to use their ideas and even their language in a scaled-down, tailored fashion designed to serve our community.

As we get used to a more socially distant world, we are also implementing a plan to consistently publish more content. During the peak of the pandemic, we decided to use our limited resources on developing the tools which will allow us to fulfill our mission more effectively. Now that were at the end stages of those plans, its time to devote more of our resources toward our journalism. We aim to do that by making smarter choices about what we cover and when we cover it, establishing more writing opportunities for community members, and trying to establish sponsor-led explanatory and investigative reporting that draws in readers and serves our community. And we will seek deeper connections with our donors and readers, pursuing the market penetration already seen by the Daily News, and by way of enhanced editorial coverage, new media partnerships and live events, once the world returns back to normal.

Michael Westendorf is Executive Editor & CEO of Chemical City Paper.

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The Future of Nonprofit News in Midland Chemical City Paper - Chemical City Paper