A Cooperative Response to the Crisis of Faith in Journalism

As hedge funds hollow out newsrooms and billionaires buy outlets as playthings, trust in US journalism has cratered. "At its heart, this crisis is about power, purpose, and who gets to tell the story," says Soleil Ho, writer and co-founder at Coyote Media.

The Oakland-based publication is organized as a worker-owned media cooperative — offering a structural answer to journalism's credibility problem. Drawing from Coyote's first year covering the Bay Area, Soleil will share what the team has learned about building a publication solely accountable to reporters and readers.

How does cooperative ownership change editorial decisions? Which communities and stories are prioritized? How is all of this working out as a business? "When journalists own their labor, 'objectivity' gives way to honest, robust reporting. When survival depends on reader support rather than ad revenue or venture capital, we chase stories that matter to communities and are more open to creative ways of doing so", Soleil writes.

In the sessions, Soleil will address the practical realities such as governance structures that replace top-down hierarchies, financial models that value journalism as public service, and how worker ownership "attracts talent burned out and traumatized by legacy media's dysfunction".

"The old media world is dying. The new one is struggling to be born," Soleil writes. "Worker cooperatives aren't a perfect solution, but they're proof that journalists refuse to believe in our own expendability — or our readers'."