What The Hell America!

After a decade at the helm, Charlie Sennott is leaving the GroundTruth Project, the nonprofit journalism organization he founded in 2014 that also launched Report for America and Report for the World.

Sennott, a 2006 Nieman Fellow, will take the GroundTruth Project name and newsletter to launch GroundTruth Media Partners LLC, a for-profit organization with his own reporting and consulting. Report for America and Report for the World will be housed under the yet-to-be-renamed nonprofit led by CEO Rob Zeaske. Sennott had stepped down from the CEO role in 2022 to focus on GroundTruth Project’s editorial efforts. A few GroundTruth Project employees were laid off earlier this year as part of the restructuring, Zeaske said, and may be rehired under Sennott’s new endeavor.

From the announcement:

We’ve developed a pioneering formula that helps newsrooms match our national funding with their local sustainability initiatives. This straightforward business model has allowed the organization to create exceptional and impactful programs that consistently demonstrate excellence through a competitive selection process, high rates of retention for reporters and partner newsrooms, and high levels of satisfaction from program participants.

In order to sustain this momentum, The GroundTruth Project CEO Rob Zeaske is today announcing important changes to continue positioning the organization as a global leader in supporting local news. The organization will further focus on its programmatic work and will begin to sunset the award-winning editorial work we have done under the banner of The GroundTruth Project. This transition will allow us to strengthen our flagship programs, distinguish our Report for America and Report for the World brands and deepen our impact.

Report for America has placed more than 600 journalists in local newsrooms since its inception, and in December, the Knight Foundation gave it $20 million to expand.

Under Sennott, the GroundTruth Project hosted and funded several fellowships for domestic and international reporting. In 2017, Sennott and Steven Waldman co-founded Report for America to place journalists in local newsrooms.

In 2022, Sennott and Kevin Grant launched Report for the World, a similar initiative to get local reporters into local newsrooms in countries like Brazil, India, and Nigeria.

“We’re in a really challenging landscape for journalism,” Sennott told me on Wednesday. “It’s the right time to pour everything into focusing on programs — to make sure we are not just supporting them financially, but that we’re making them the best that they can be, to support the next generation [of journalists] in the field and to serve local communities. That’s the urgent work of the time we are in, and I think this [move] is a recognition of that.”

“As we think about the state of local news, we see a vibrant set of new opportunities amidst all the challenges and pressures,” Zeaske said about the split. “We also see models that are starting to show promise that we want to be there for. For us as an organization to lean into a next generation of journalists and newsrooms that we believe are going to be this next decade’s path to success is really exciting. That’s where we want to spend time. How are we helping provide support? How are we helping to provide a herd that has some safety, support, and a cohort mentality for newsrooms that are trying to grow and meet a next generation of audiences where they are?”

Before The GroundTruth Project, Sennott co-founded GlobalPost, a for-profit U.S. news site focused on reporting international news. GlobalPost was acquired by WGBH in 2015 and acquired again by Sennott’s cofounder, Philip S. Balboni, in 2022. Today, GlobalPost is a subscription newsletter for international news and analysis.

Sennott said that after launching both for-profit and nonprofit news organizations, he wants to see what new opportunities exist on the for-profit side.

“What I’m realizing is the nonprofit world is saturated,” he said. “There’s so much great work being done by nonprofits and journalism, and it’s so needed. It would be very hard to start a new nonprofit now in journalism, because there are many doing so many great things. But where there is a lot of energy and innovation and opportunity is if you shift the model back to an LLC…and find a business model that can make you sustainable is something that also really interests me. I feel like I’ve come full circle on that.”