THE 19TH INTRODUCES A NEWSROOM OF ONE’S OWN

AUSTIN ⸺ Settling into her kitchen table “office,” Emily Ramshaw found herself caught between the wanting arms of her 4-year-old daughter and her husband’s coronavirus-induced groans echoing down the hall as she dialed on to her next call.

The animated noise of her kid’s cartoons played idly in the background. Outside, the mild Texas winter felt like a balmy spring day to a Lone Star visitor, but Ramshaw grew up in Dallas.

Inside, the daughter of two Washington news correspondents spent that February afternoon contemplating the practicality of her dream. The looming threat of a pandemic grazed national headlines, still a figment of the foreign world, but the prospect of investors felt ever more pressing.

She needed donors.

“I was underwater trying to fundraise for this venture,” Ramshaw confessed to Megan Markle months later in an interview. “My colleagues and I stopped and thought, maybe we can’t do this now.”

The vision for a forthcoming publication weighed down on the conscience of the former editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. She knew its purpose: a nonprofit, (initially) non-partisan — the paper would later rebrand as independent — publication dedicated to the intersection of gender, policy and race.

She also knew she ran the risk of failure. Add a confounding variable (global pandemic), and the gravity of her dilemma compounded upon itself. Ramshaw’s persistence precedes her — look at her direct messages on Instagram. 

Her challenge lay in adjusting that ambition. During those formative months stuck in quarantine, this vision evolved into Ramshaw’s second child. With each call, each donor inched their dream forward—dollar by dollar.

Ramshaw and her team emailed, phoned and visited investors nationwide, pitching their product.

By March 2020, after raising roughly five million in capital, The 19th launched. Softly.

An homage to the 1920 constitutional amendment, the media outlet defines itself as an independent publication focused on gender, politics and policy.

“We're hoping to help rewrite the national narrative in a way that centers the lived experiences of people who have been left at the margins for far too long,” Ramshaw said.

These disparities were overtly apparent amid Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016. At the time, media coverage regarding the former Secretary of State’s likeability sparked “enormous rage” within Ramshaw, who had recently become a mother.

She couldn't contain her discontent in the thick of postpartum depression and soiled diapers. 

“I thought, what we need is a new national newsroom by and for women that throws those questions out the window and covers women deeply with empathy and respect,” she told the Duchess of Sussex.

This idea stuck with her as she tackled raising a newborn with a full-time profession, though her conviction waned. It took another three years for her to approach Texas Tribune colleague Amanda Zamora with her plan.

The proposal surprised the latter, a native Texan who escaped to the east coast after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Journalism.

Until 2016, the Chief Audience Officer refused to come back to her home state until she fielded an offer Ramshaw wouldn’t let her refuse. “[Emily] made it clear that if she were going to do it, she would do it with me,” Zamora said.

Together, the two set out to build a nonprofit newsroom akin to The Tribune with an initially feminine twist. The publication now approaches news from a more gender-inclusive lens, going so far as to create an LGBTQ+ reporting branch.

Zamora, often mistaken for white, stressed the importance of covering underrepresented communities unaccustomed to seeing themselves in the news.

“It couldn’t just be a project that served women and, by extension, white women,” she emphasized. “I didn’t want to create another media platform that spoke to a monolithic audience.”

Growing up, the budding Latina rarely saw her nuanced culture and identity rightfully portrayed by the media. Her family, Zamora explained, represented a microcosm of the divisions within the Latinx electorate — one that’d been oversimplified and overshadowed by mainstream media. The 19th sought to rewrite the narrative through their stories, staff and (even) their logo, a nod to the 19th amendment’s unfinished business. 

Before partnering with Zamora, Ramshaw understood the importance of founding a newsroom that covered its subjects with honesty and empathy. The asterisk took this initiative further, representing the ongoing story of those who’ve been overlooked by our democracy, such as the millions of women excluded from the 19th Amendment.

As word spread, Zamora found a community of professionals nationwide eager to work alongside them. The opportunity to work for Ramshaw and Zamora, one employee gushed, was too valuable to pass up.

“I was going to learn so much from them [Ramshaw and Zamora] and whomever they were going to hire,” said the publication’s Newsletter Editor, Annelise McGough. Community Manager Sereena Henderson echoed these sentiments, noting how she was both familiar and fascinated with the duo’s work at The Tribune.

“I was very familiar — and fascinated — with Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora and their work at The Texas Tribune. I knew instantly that I wanted to be a part of what they were creating at The 19th,” she said. “I knew that working at The 19th would be the perfect opportunity to take what I had learned at the state level and apply that knowledge and passion to serving underrepresented communities throughout the country.” 

The 19th’s startup phase in the spring of 2020 welcomed the first published pieces from their newsroom on The Washington Post website.

The alliance allowed the team a buffer period to build anticipation before their official launch in August without having to debut everything all at once. They felt confident and hopeful, even though the road to sustainability and success lingered in the fading distance.

Virginia Woolf once said that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write. Given the not-so-glamorous work-from-home norm, the staff sought comfort in their private rooms.

Money, though, required all-hands-on-deck initiatives. Every nonprofit intends to become sustainable, and sustainability requires a steady, ongoing income from donors and investors that is neither given nor guaranteed.

Fundraising bridges this gap. Amid an industry of corporate giants like The Washington Post and The New York Times, the concept of nonprofit news may seem lopsided.

This industry’s built upon legacy media. However, there’s a growing industry dialogue among professionals that any journalist would be remiss to ignore. Nonprofit news may be the new normal, and the pandemic only catalyzed this trend.

​

In fact, in 2020, nonprofit news media witnessed its fastest growth since the financial crisis. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, some distinct features set these newsrooms apart. In their 2021 edition of “The State of Nonprofit News,” INN listed editorial focus, sustainability, collaboration, trust and transparency as reasoning for the trend.

The Institute also found that as the newsrooms grew, so did revenue. Two-thirds of the newsrooms surveyed witnessed individual-giving growth.

Three-fifths of them noticed gains in grant funding members primarily drive the 19th’s revenuers, a community Henderson noted is “critical” to their success.

Donors make up an exclusive membership that feels more like a Reddit fan club than a list of subscribers, and The 19th ensures they feel unique and seen.

Their staff showers members with benefits and benevolent titles, sporting customized swag bags and handwritten thank-you cards.

Community Manager Henderson is the direct link between the newsroom and the community by leading the membership program, focusing on member cultivation and organizing seasonal membership drives.

“With the support of the audience team, I help our editorial team connect with our readers and potential sources through crowdsourcing, reader callouts and other forms of targeted outreach,” she said. “ I work to provide frequent opportunities for our readers to engage with us, share their stories and participate in our events and other online conversations.”

These practices illustrate their mission: open dialogue and civil discourse, emphasizing kindness and empathy. 

Sizable fundraising grants and investments supplement these donations, helping the business reach its initial $5 million. These capital organizations, also known as grantmakers, range from Kathryn Murdoch’s Quadrivium to Supermajority.

The organizations often dictate how and where they spend the money, but (amid non-profits) they hold no influence over the publication’s coverage.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, contributed $350,000 to support the range of young women’s education.

“The Gates Foundation was established to believe that every person deserves a chance to live a healthy and productive life,” the foundation’s spokesperson Josie McSpadden said. “This grant supports reporting on the connection between gender and education. One example would be raising visibility and public dialogue around promising pathways for women and girls, where they are traditionally underrepresented.”

Other investors, such as former Texas Senator Max Sherman, gave fewer specifics about their contributions.

The 86-year-old invested in the newsroom before meeting Ramshaw, though he knows her parents closely. It took one lunch with her father for the well-known philanthropist to write the check.

For Sherman, The 19th offers a unique opportunity to view subjects through the soul of a woman.

“All of a sudden, you've got an organization of women, who are looking at the issues of life and covering them very professionally, factually, but bring an understanding that there is also a soul to that. It's not a man’s soul. It’s a woman’s soul, people’s soul,” he told me over a Sunday afternoon Zoom meeting. “I think that's what we've missed for a long time.” 

Sherman’s words echo that of Virginia Woolf almost a century ago. In her novel, A Room of One’s Own, the author writes  how “women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

Woolf said this phenomenon could only disappear when a woman had a room of her own to write, where she could say anything without feeling the pressures of the outside world.

Unencumbered by corporate standards and expectations, The 19th pursues its pieces within a newsroom of its own. Fewer restrictions and greater conscientiousness give way to that element of the soul both Sherman and Woolf described.

Through their stories and staff, they reflect diversity — racially, socioeconomically and ideologically. They elevate the voices of those around them.

This approach gives general assignment reporters such as Mariel Padilla the flexibility to explore new beats, whether women in the military or healthcare workers in senior housing.

“[Nonprofit newsrooms] don’t have to keep up with the daily grind of the news cycle, and that drew me to journalism in the first place,” she said. 

Easing this pressure off reporters and stepping aside from the rigorous 24-hour news cycle allows creative flow. It encourages storytelling. Reporters can invest their time and energy into a story, giving them the space to write with intention or, as Sherman would put it, soul.

Once the piece is complete, it costs nothing to read. No paywalls. No ads. Just an uninterrupted moment between you and the writer.

This relationship — one of authenticity, honesty and care — between the newsroom and its audience may be the secret sauce to their recipe.

Not only do the staff hold themselves to high standards in a time when audiences question the media's validity altogether, but they also work to nurture and develop a connection with their audience continually.

Sherman’s eyes lit up when he described how this kind of journalism holds the key to rebuilding America.

“We’ve become disassociated; we’ve been scattered. It will take much genius, and I think The 19th has the potential, not just to be the one covering Washington. There are many stories, and they can recapture some of the high qualities of journalism.”

While Ramshaw and her team may not save the country just yet, they’re paving the way for change. The 19th approach redefines an industry held back by homogeny and heritage.

It challenges the status quo, and in time, Zamora hopes it will become a household name. For her part, Ramshaw takes the future day by day. There’s a dream in mind, of course.

She’s Emily Ramshaw. But, for now, she’s freeing herself of expectations: “I hope in five years for The 19th to be *the* national news destination for many women and queer people, for our coverage to be consumed across our platforms, but also across many national and regional news organizations, and for our brand and live events to be a household name for those committed, like we are, to gender equity.”