Jon Funabiki spent the past 11 years at the Ford Foundation funding journalism programs, especially those focusing on diversity and ethics. (The Poynter Institute has been a recipient of Ford grants that Funabiki has approved.) He leaves his post as Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture Unit at the foundation July 1 and joins the faculty of San Francisco State University in late August. A former reporter and editor at The San Diego Union for 17 years prior to joining Ford, Funabiki has seen journalism as an insider—and as an interested outsider. In an e-mail interview with Poynter Online, he outlined what he learned during his tenure with Ford about the news media, what he accomplished, and what he plans to do in the area of community, ethnic and independent news media. What follows is an edited transcript of the e-mail exchange:

In your time at Ford, what did you learn about journalism that you hadn't known before?

Jon Funabiki

I've been surprised by the public's high expectations [for] and deep disappointment [in] the news media. Meaning this: Deep down, most people basically agree with the premise that we need a free and independent press. This is something they absorbed from their high school social studies classes. They have high regard for the idea of journalism. They support the watchdog function. They expect a lot from journalists. I've heard this over and over again in the polls and the roundtables we've supported through the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Associated Press Managing Editors. But people are awfully disappointed by what they see in journalism. They laugh and raise their eyebrows about the teasers for the 5:00 news; they can predict the formulaic responses to breaking news. True, they'll watch the L.A. car chase or the Paris Hilton gossip. It's a guilty pleasure. They know they shouldn't. And they know journalists shouldn't, either.

Ford has invested significant money in diversity and ethics training. How would you assess the state of journalism ethics and covering diverse cultures?

First, journalists are bifurcated on diversity. The enlightened are becoming ever more sophisticated -- I think that's been the payoff from some of the projects we've supported. The unenlightened -- maybe because they're newbies to journalism or maybe because they're just in a rut -- don't have a clue. Second, diversity and globalism have become entwined. America's linkages to the rest of the world have become ever more pervasive and complex. To meet journalism's mission comprehensively and ethically, we'll need to factor that into our civic storytelling. We will need to move farther away from a U.S.-centric approach to "foreign" affairs, expand our notion of who our readers/viewers are, and maybe revisit the old notion of the global village. I'm troubled by the ethnocentric tilt in a lot of news coverage about international affairs and economics at this moment. And finally, given society's fragmentation, we'll need to do more explicit bridge-building among communities, nations, cultures, religions and the like.


What are the goals of Ford's programs supporting foreign-language media and foreign-language polling?

We wanted to "give voice to the voiceless." Try as they might, the mainstream media can't cover immigrant and minority communities as intimately as the ethnic news media can. We also agreed with groups like the Asian American Journalists Association and New America Media that polling only in English is totally inadequate -- and even unethical -- in this day and age. Moreover, by strengthening the ethnic news media, I think we're helping to build civic capacity within these communities. One study that we funded shattered the myth that the ethnic media retard assimilation into the larger community. Quite the contrary, ethnic newspapers and the like stimulate immigrants to become engaged in the larger community by helping them to see the relevance of civic issues.


What was the single most satisfying program under your watch?


This is an unfair question, because I'm personally invested in and proud of just about every aspect of our work in journalism.  Let me try to cluster a couple of themes.  First, we linked diversity, ethics and democracy.  I think the projects we've supported have ratcheted up our notions of diversity to a much higher level of sophistication. For example, the work at Columbia University, the Maynard Institute and at Poynter shows how the personal side of journalists and stories about race/culture can collide -- journalists need to look within themselves before they tackle the story.

By Jen Wallace/Poynter

Our support of the ethnic news media and the concept of multilingual public polling, as pushed by New America Media, shows how badly we've been ignoring immigrant and minority communities in the past. Secondly, we launched a new line of work that linked journalism to justice. By working with the Institute for Justice and Journalism, the Center for Investigative Reporting and others, we've shown that tough reporting can be used to expose injustice and therefore support a more just society. This does not violate ethics and values, but in fact carries on journalism's greatest traditions of muckraking and the drive to take on controversial, yet important, issues.

What can we expect next from Ford?


One trend line that I expect the Foundation to follow, even after I leave, is greater support for strengthening journalism and media systems in the 12 overseas regions where Ford is active. We're supporting some good projects, but our approach so far has been scattered and piecemeal. The Aspen Institute's Communications & Society Program, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Forum for Media Development have helped my colleagues and me to better understand the needs in developing countries. The question will probably be, what's the best approach or strategy?  

What can the philanthropic sector do to help keep journalism strong in these difficult transitional times for the news industry?

One big challenge is to figure out how to put the DNA of journalism back into the commercial sector. The resources of the philanthropic sector are dwarfed by the commercial world. So we can't have much impact unless we're working together. It's been really disappointing to see media companies cut back their training budgets and support for journalism improvement groups so much. It's almost impossible to fight Wall Street pressures. If the media companies don't care about journalism, quality and public service -- if there's no mission alignment -- then why should foundations subsidize, in essence, the companies? There are a zillion other things competing for the attention of foundations.

Tell us about the new job opportunity at your alma mater and what you hope to accomplish with the mandate you've gotten to create a program based on community, ethnic and independent news media?

My work at Ford has gotten me extremely interested in what I might call "little media." Everybody seems preoccupied with big media -- the large newspaper chains, television networks, the Internet goliaths like AOL, etc. But I think there's a lot of exciting stuff going on with things like the ethnic news media, independent magazines, neighborhood radio and some of the niche-oriented, Web-based ventures. Compared to the big guys, they may be little, overlooked and struggling in the marketplace. But my hunch is that they are having a profound impact in shaping identity and a sense of community in an increasingly fragmented society. I think that this is another place where journalism is being reinvented. I don't know yet what we will focus on, so I'm really grateful that San Francisco State University is willing to take this risk.