I am pleased to announce that Scott Klein, who has played a key role in the development of several prominent news startups, will be joining Newspack as its first Entrepreneur in Residence.
The position, funded with support from the Knight Foundation, is designed to help newsrooms around the country cover the U.S. elections by deploying great tools, building collaborative networks and sharing critical election resources.
Klein comes to Newspack from THE CITY, a digital news startup in New York City, where he has served as Chief Product Officer since 2022. He was previously a Deputy Managing Editor at ProPublica, where over 14 years he was instrumental in building out their digital publishing platform.
As an Entrepreneur in Residence, Klein will assess the election-year needs of local and national news organizations, identify partners that can help address those needs and advise the Knight Foundation on funding required to bring those groups together.
“We find ourselves once again in a critically important election cycle,” Klein said. “And our industry has a responsibility to cover it well — by listening to and serving their communities — even as we face financial headwinds.”
To support that work, Knight will be investing in three election-related outcomes in 2024, designed to increase the odds that people:
- Make informed decisions on how to exercise their right to vote.
- Have confidence in the election process and results.
- Recognize the role local publishers perform in disseminating quality information.
“One of the best ways for philanthropy to move at the speed of news involves supporting the right people doing essential work in the right places,” said Marc Lavallee, Director of Journalism Technology Product and Strategy at the Knight Foundation. “Scott Klein and Newspack are a prime example of this approach, and are uniquely positioned to provide meaningful assistance to publishers before, during and after this year’s elections.”
Klein’s work will extend well beyond Newspack, but it serves as a logical home, with a community of over 1,500 editors, publishers and producers in our Slack workspace who can advise on editorial needs. It also provides an efficient way to distribute some of the tools and other resources that Klein will be responsible for marshaling as part of this effort, with nearly 300 news organizations on the platform.
“I’m thrilled to join the team at Automattic and to join their efforts to build a sustainable platform for the future of news. I see in Newspack something I’ve never seen in more than 25 years of experience: A network of hundreds of innovative newsrooms all using the same tech stack,” Klein said. “The opportunities for editorial and product collaborations between the Newspack publishers are unprecedented. The election work will, I hope, simply be a proof-of-concept for a generation of great collaborations ahead.”
Klein starts in the role today and will soon share how news organizations and others can participate in this effort.
