LOCAL
Kimberly Marsh
Illustration, The Oklahoma Eagle
A New Nonprofit Tulsa News Organization and The Eagle Join Forces
The Oklahoma Eagle is expanding. The weekly print and digital newspaper will leverage 102 years of news production in Tulsa, Okla. to join with a coalition of Tulsa media, community and philanthropy leaders that have formed the Tulsa Local News Initiative, set to launch in 2025.
The Tulsa Local News Initiative is a new nonprofit news organization and the new publisher of The Oklahoma Eagle, the 10th oldest Black-owned weekly newspaper in the U.S., which published its first edition in the fall of 1922, just 15 months after the deadly 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
With $14 million raised so far, the nonprofit news initiative will be investing in The Oklahoma Eagle to quadruple its staff and make it part of a larger news organization, with an additional broader newsroom team dedicated to serving all of Tulsa. The Eagle will continue to serve Black and other underserved communities in Tulsa, as it has historically, retain its name and remain affiliated with the Goodwin family. Its operations will be part of a joint operating agreement with the Tulsa Local News Initiative. Both newsrooms will be led by Gary Lee, who will serve as executive editor. Lee, a native Tulsan, has extensive national and international news experience with the Washington Post and Time Magazine. He is currently The Oklahoma Eagle’s managing editor.
The coalition of Oklahoma media and philanthropy leaders created the expanded news platform following a yearlong research and community listening effort led by local organizers who surveyed over 300 Tulsans to get a better understanding for how they access local news they can trust. Respondents said they were feeling the effects of growing limitations and reduced staff to report on local news.
Organizer and interviewer Sheyda Brown, deputy director of The Terence Crutcher Foundation, said people were clear that they want to see more stories about how their communities are doing and how they are impacted.
“They don’t want just a one-sided, stereotyped version,” she said. “They really want more comprehensive information so that even if that’s the one news story they’re reading, they’re able to get the full understanding about what the issue is, why it’s that way, and how to be a part of the solution.”
The initiative is governed by a board including James (Jim) Osby Goodwin, publisher/owner of The Oklahoma Eagle, his son, journalist and David M. Goodwin, former Tulsa Mayor Rodger Randle, Tulsa Business Executive Sam Combs, Leadership Tulsa Executive Director Marcia Bruno-Todd, former journalist and Build in Tulsa Managing Director Ashli Sims, philanthropist and veteran journalist Emily Kaiser, and American Journalism Project Chief Investment Officer, Michael Ouimette. Supporting funders in this nonprofit collaboration represent a cross-section of individuals, local foundations and national philanthropic organizations.
“Starting today, we are beginning to look for and hire two dozen reporters and editors who are committed to local news and who want to collaborate with us in this exciting project,” Lee said, adding that he has a commitment to bring local news in Tulsa to the same level as professionalism as metro papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post.
“My vision is to create a journalistic institution that journalists, editors, and writers can come to and build a career telling Tulsa’s local news while ensuring all parts of the city are represented in our stories.” Lee said a search for the organization’s first chief executive officer is underway. All open roles, including newsroom jobs in reporting, editing, production, audience development and more, can be found at localnewsfortulsa.org/jobs.
James Goodwin, whose father purchased the newspaper in 1938, has been a part of the Eagle operation for more than six decades with a mission to represent the interests of the underrepresented.
“Our motto has and still is “we make America better when we aid our people,” Goodwin said. “I believe there’s a place for publications like our own, and we want to have a voice that speaks truth to power and do it in an objective way, while at the same time publicizing points of view that many people do not get to see. I think that the Tulsa Local Newsroom Initiative and the coalition’s support offers that opportunity. We are very happy to join up with this endeavor because we, as a mission-oriented press, see that this is the best way to stay in the race and to best represent people who are not able to have advocates.”
Tulsa Local News Initiative intends to strengthen the community by creating more connections; combat misinformation and disinformation; hold decision makers accountable; represent diverse perspectives; and equip residents with reliable information to make informed decisions and advocate for themselves and their families.
The initiative will also invest in more journalism capacity for three local newsrooms, including The Frontier, an investigative newsroom in Tulsa; KOSU, a public radio station operated by Oklahoma State University; La Semana, a Tulsa-based bilingual Spanish-English newspaper serving Latino communities in the state; and Focus: Black Oklahoma, a radio program on issues relevant to BIPOC, rural, and marginalized communities statewide.
To heighten the visibility of several news outlets to a wider audience, The Tulsa World, Griffin Media’s KOTV Tulsa, Langdon Publishing’s TulsaPeople Magazine, The University of Tulsa and Tulsa Press Club have agreed to collaborate to make the most of journalism resources in the city and beyond.
Local community leaders from different parts of Tulsa will serve on a community advisory committee that will have a direct line into the newsroom. The committee members will keep the news mission grounded in the community’s priorities by providing ongoing feedback on the newsroom’s progress and impact.
Supporting funders represent a cross-section of individuals, local foundations, and national philanthropic organizations, including Burt Holmes, Clark Wiens, Emily Kaiser, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, Mary Lou Lemon Foundation, and the American Journalism Project. Current funders of The Oklahoma Eagle include the Business for Good, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, and Entrepreneur Emmit McHenry.
“Trusted local news is a vital part of strong communities and we need a broad and diverse coalition of supporters to ensure better outcomes and a better future for all residents of Tulsa,” Emily Kaiser said. “The initiative isn’t just replenishing journalism resources but uniting efforts among Tulsa outlets to earn trust from our local communities and to serve residents in the way that is responsive to what they say they need.”
American Journalism Project Chief Investment Officer Michael Ouimette said the nonprofit model for local news not only represents the most viable path forward to finance and sustain freely-available, nonpartisan, objective, local news that the country needs, but that the model where no one person or corporation owns the organization, where the board of directors and the leaderships are transparently listed, where financials are required to be disclosed on an annual basis to the public, best serves readers and best allows readers to have the same information as the reporters do about who is funding the organization and how it’s sustained.
The $14 million investment will provide about 80% of the resources that the project needs over the first couple of years, Ouimette said.
“So, we have an incredible start,” he said. “We have more work to do to welcome more donors, more readers who are interested in contributing $5 a month, $10 a month, corporate sponsors, etc.….we have the resources that we need to launch, and the model of economic sustainability for nonprofit journalism that is really being proven out across the country will make the Tulsa Local News Initiative a strong place for local journalism in Tulsa for many decades to come. We just think it’s so vital that we make that commitment, both to staff and to readers, and that as a nonprofit that belongs to the public, all information is transparently shared, both now and forever.”
For more information about Tulsa Local News Initiative please visit us at https://www.localnewsfortulsa.org/
The American Journalism Project awards grants to local nonprofit news organizations to build their revenue and business operations, partner with communities to launch new organizations, and mentor leaders as they grow and sustain their newsrooms. It advocates for civic journalism as a public good and reimagining its future by building a model to finance and sustain the local news that democracy requires. To learn more about the American Journalism Project, visit theajp.org.
