Michael Murray of Arthur Vining Davis Foundations speaking at the 2025 Press Forward Summit (Photo by Press Forward)

When Press Forward launched, public media sat at the edges of the local journalism conversation, being familiar, trusted and yet poorly understood. Michael Murray, president and CEO of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (AVDF), helped change that, educating the network on how public media actually works behind the scenes, making the case for it as local journalism infrastructure and, in the process, sharpening his own foundation’s strategy through hard-earned lessons and collective learning.

When the Florida-based AVDF joined Press Forward, it brought a more than five-decade history of funding public media. More recently, AVDF has helped broadcast stations with digital transformations, including Jacksonville’s WJCT and its Jacksonville Today website and newsletter.

Murray’s first task at Press Forward was co-leading the public media working group. Interest was minimal at first, but grew rapidly with the federal cuts to public media. The working group went from a sleepy outpost to a nerve center of Press Forward’s response to a national crisis.

Many of Press Forward’s funders, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundations, ultimately supported the Public Media Bridge Fund, which became a central support for stations with more than $60 million raised and $26 million in grants from its first round.

The importance of collaboration

For mid-size foundations such as AVDF, being a part of a coalition such as Press Forward means that they can amplify their impact by co-funding and collaborating, shaping priorities and helping in response to a crisis.

One of those responses was trying to track the impact of the federal funding cuts on local public media stations. Did they cut editorial staff? Has the programming changed? The working group commissioned research. This kind of collective learning helps a midsize foundation like AVDF reduce risk and cost while discovering best practices for future studies.

“The research project emerged because we were in Press Forward with partners from Knight and MacArthur who had much more extensive networks than we did, and jointly we came up with a solution,” Murray said. “In philanthropy, we don’t connect with our peers often enough because we’re just too busy and can get stuck in our lane.

And Press Forward is just a way of pushing you out of that and giving you access to more people and insights and information than you otherwise have.”

After the success of its digital transformation grant to WJCT, the foundation, in partnership with the American Journalism Project, has now developed a new RFP to expand similar grant opportunities to public media stations in additional markets.

For Murray, the value of Press Forward was not just about pooled dollars or emergency response. It was about building shared understanding in a field where complexity often keeps funders siloed and cautious. By creating space for funders to learn from one another, the network helped public media move from the margins of the conversation toward the center. For mid-size foundations such as AVDF, that kind of collective sense-making is key to creating long-term strategy.

Mark Glaser is a communications consultant for Press Forward, Knight Foundation, The Lenfest Institute and Tiny News Collective and was the founder and executive editor of MediaShift.org. He was formerly the director of business and program development for the New Mexico Local News Fund. He runs the Wind Power Media consultancy out of Santa Fe.