Imagination and Effort, Not Inevitability

A parting note from Lizzy Hazeltine, Founding Director

This weekend, I saw the first flash of a purple cone flower by my porch steps. I’ve been gardening long enough to know that blossom wasn’t inevitable. It took the right conditions, the right timing, and no small amount of tending through our ongoing drought.

I’m sharing this as I close out my tenure as Founding Director of the NC Local News Lab Fund because the same is true of this work. It takes imagination, effort, and steady investment. The blooms today are the payoff of coordinated work over the last 9 years.

When the Fund made its first round of grants, the grounding theory was already clear: that strong local news wasn’t about one person or organization or invention, but a thriving ecosystem with many players, roles, and strengths. Simply put, that a healthy news and information ecosystem is greater than the sum of its parts.

That first round invested in 10 organizations. Today, our growing network of grant partners reaches nearly all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, and that theory of change has solidified into a proven model of impact.

That growth wasn’t inevitable. It happened because so many partners in this work chose to believe in a shared vision — and then extended the trust, resources, and effort to make it a reality.

At the time of its launch, two funders in North Carolina were willing to put money behind local news and information. Now, our coalition has grown to more than 18; F. M. Kirby Foundation and the John Rex Endowment are the latest funders to join our pooled fund.

Together, it's the job of funders to fuel the journalists, trusted communicators, and community organizations doing the work every day and building the conditions around them so they can sustain and serve. And together, we have changed the conversation from  “can we save local news?” to “something better’s already being built.”

Local imagination and local effort are already transforming loss into renewal.

That transformation continues. Just this week, the Fund awarded new dollars to public media capacity-building in North Carolina — seeding a collaboration that will fundamentally shift how public media stations work together. We’re investing in a plan made by public media leaders and for their communities.

This work has tremendous momentum, and it will be carried forward by extraordinary leadership. I’ve had the privilege of watching Cierra Brown Hinton translate strategy and vision into results since our days at Scalawag. Across the many places she takes up this work, she roots her imagination and effort in communities, people, and what we need to build what’s possible. Our team is so proud to welcome her as she steps into the role of Fund Director in July. The Fund’s mission is in excellent hands.

It has always been true that our communities need information they can find, trust, and use, and the stakes are only getting higher. We all need locally relevant coverage to understand what the state budget means for our lives (and what it means when it’s delayed more than 1000 days) and to know who’s on our midterm ballot when NC races make national headlines. We all need trusted information about how and where to access food, health care, and services for our families and what policies narrow access. We all need emergency alerts to stay safe, and to not be left in the dark when national news cameras leave after a storm.

North Carolina’s trusted communicators deliver this and more every day, under increasing pressure. They’re counting on our support.

None of what we’ve built was inevitable. Thank you for trusting me to play my role. What comes next will require both imagination and effort, too — and I know this community, team, and Cierra have both.

There’s a place in this work for all of us. Stay in it, bring others along, and don’t stop building what’s possible.

Onward,
Lizzy Hazeltine
Founding Director
North Carolina Local News Lab Fund