S. Mitra Kalita on what it takes to sustain a community media network

So I'd say the biggest lesson is not just the CEO's role in driving revenue and innovating a business model, especially in media, but also that I've had to become a salesperson — in ways that, honestly, I'm kind of amazed with myself, given some of the challenges our industry is going through, and some of the hurdles put in the way specifically of companies focused on inclusion, and the reality of the funding landscape.

What did it take to get URL Media off the ground?

It was 2020. I launched Epicenter, my local news outlet, while I was still working at CNN — just as a COVID-era newsletter, for people in our neighborhood to communicate with each other on what they needed. I had this experience in 2020, between May and August, which is when the racial justice protests were at their peak in the U.S., but of course we were also in the throes of the pandemic. I launched this as a community newsletter — a very local, organic initiative. And the dichotomy of what I was going through — working at CNN, the biggest of the big, and launching something that was almost intentionally small, small enough that you knew the people on the initial email list, small enough that you could ask questions like does this store have yeast, is this store practicing social distancing — that juxtaposition made me realize there had to be another path and model. 

At CNN, I could be number one on the internet every day. I could game algorithms and work with the platforms for my content to be number one. I had no such access in a local news outlet, and yet the questions people were asking in the pandemic — about funerals, social distancing, getting a ventilator at a hospital — were such localized questions that CNN, even as the biggest of the big, was not equipped to answer. That disconnect made me ask: is there another space that actually values the trust community media have with local communities, but enables them to punch above their weight when it comes to performance on the internet? At the time this was the decline of Facebook and social media as a big traffic referral, so this idea of direct traffic really became valuable. We launched URL Media just as the country was going through its umpteenth racial reckoning, but as someone who spent their whole career in diversity, everyone said this time was different. And it was different. 

So first I launched Epicenter, and then, frustrated with the realities of doing business on the internet as a small fish, we launched URL Media to serve many more community media outlets.

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Can you tell me a little bit about what you look for in a partner? I know the core model is to serve Black and Brown communities, but what else — what's the criteria?

One of the things I'm proudest of in evaluating partners is that local news need not be parochial news. Many of our partners are localized, but they also represent expanses of communities and diaspora — ways we localize content that goes beyond geography. An example might be the Haitian Times — a national, even global outlet, and yet if you need to understand what's happening with TPS or the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio or Rockland County, this is an outlet that arguably super-serves those communities more than potentially local news outlets there would. We're up to 54 news outlets in our network, and about a half dozen creators. 

We're largely in business to support the sustainability of the local news outlets. A basic question is: do you take advertising? Have you taken advertising? How have those deals performed? What's your audience reach? Do you have a strategy where content serves a localized community but has the propensity to go viral or find its people? Do you have full-time staff? Can you execute advertising? Do you have full-time reporting and journalism being committed? Who are you serving — is it largely Black and Brown communities, but also, are you defined by access, are you defined by being in service to communities?

What are some of the challenges you help partners solve, and has it changed in this administration, where there's been a lot of DEI pushback and sponsors cutting funding and advertising toward DEI-focused initiatives and outlets?

We are seeing threats to community media that feel really intentional and not accidental, and I think we need to call that out. Our diversified revenue model, and that of so many of our partners, has taken a lot of hits in a few areas. One is the post-2020 environment: a company might have had a DEI division, but it was increasingly being funded or tasked with marketing and advertising in ways it hadn't been before. We're seeing that money has dried up — a lot of corporate support looking for multicultural and diverse audiences has just shrunk or disappeared. 

The second is the talent pool. I'm the daughter of immigrants — my parents told me to get the most important job in every newsroom I ever worked in. I did not work in diversity. At CNN, I ran the breaking news team. At the LA Times, I was the managing editor. At the Wall Street Journal, I was a page-one writer. At Quartz, I was the executive editor. As the child of immigrants, there was no question but that you seek the biggest, best job you can get, and most of the time that meant a very mainstream job. So what I chose for most of my career was to use the lens of diversity to fix the system from within. After 2020, I, like a lot of professionals, saw a moment and seized it — suddenly you had a system saying, "actually, we're ready to fix ourselves." A lot of professionals who were doing the core part of the business got put into quote-unquote DEI jobs. That sector has been hollowed out. We're seeing a crisis of professionals of color who were pushed into these roles, or lured by the promise of change, and very quickly abandoned by the pendulum swing on DEI. 

The second crisis is government cuts. For community media, government advertising is a lifeline. In New York City, under the [Eric] Adams administration, advertising to community media took an 84% hit. There's also federal funding, especially around health or equity initiatives, channeled through local outlets — PSA campaigns, job fairs, that kind of thing — and that sector has been decimated. There's also what's happened to the Black middle class as a result of federal job cuts. We make the case that we're not charity, we represent markets — but the spending power of our markets has been badly compromised. And last year, as a result of the tariff situation, a number of consumer products companies we also rely on for advertising just froze spending. It felt like a perfect storm for the media landscape, and specifically for community media that intentionally serves people of color.

How have you been able to navigate that? And when it comes to grant funding, like the one you just secured earlier this year with the Knight Foundation, how accessible are options like that for media outlets?

Philanthropy — I have to hand it to philanthropy. We've been supported by philanthropy throughout our journey, but over the last two years funders have really stepped up and said, "we have to show support for the most trusted media in service of our communities." Knight Foundation, Ford, Democracy Fund, MacArthur, just to name a few, have stepped up support. The Knight Foundation was already funding us, but $5 million over three years gives us the gift of runway at a time when the model was severely disrupted by factors beyond our control. 

The other piece I'm really proud of is leaning into events — convenings, live journalism, holding an event underwritten by sponsors and recirculating those dollars as paid media to other URL partners. It's not the numbers we used to see from the government — philanthropy and these strategies can't fully replace the government advertising we've lost — but I think it's at least a move toward sustainability. We're doing a convening at Martha's Vineyard in August. 

And some of our outlets have really become innovators in the AI space in ways I think big media need to pay attention to. Epicenter, for example — we've faced severe government cuts, gone from a full-time staff of six to four, but we've leaned into newsletter production, video creation, translation work, and copy-editing tools powered by generative AI, with a human in the loop at every stage, for much more efficient production. I can confidently say we would not have survived the last two years without moving in that direction. We just ran a vibe-coding seminar for journalists, and we're looking at whether these are tools we should be teaching to other newsrooms.

Could individual people donate to the cause as well?

Yes. URL Media has a nonprofit entity called URL Collective. One area I'm really proud of is that we've offered access to capital to help publishers stay in business so yes, 100%, people can donate there. We also run a loan fund with NCRC, a community bank, so publishers can get low-interest loans between $50,000 and $100,000 to juice their revenue-generation efforts. We offer emergency grants — an advertiser or contract just got cut, you need to make payroll in two weeks, let us know what you need — and we've been able to move between $10,000 and $20,000 to partners in dire straits just to help them make it. So much of being a successful business is staying in business, and our ability to help people stay in business is a real part of our value add.

We’re also offering reporting grants. So URL Collective is funding Epicenter, Amsterdam News, WURD, and we have a travel creator accompanying the Underground Railroad Consortium in New York as they go on a Harriet Tubman tour. Those are stories where we’re such believers. If we don’t cover Black tourism and travel, who will? 

Anything else you wanted to mention about URL — any upcoming projects, or what you're looking forward to in the months ahead?

The creator network is really exciting. We're seeing such energy around partnering with creators, and many of them see the value of being part of a larger infrastructure as they build out their own — in some cases that's as technical as a lawyer to review a contract or secure liability insurance. It might mean partnering on stories about the current immigration crisis. That range is the reality of the needs of journalists of color who are still trying to do right by their communities and the information needs we're seeing right now.