Food And Environment Reporting Network

Programs: See schedule oin 2017, we produced 32 stories, including three international stories, on subjects ranging from the man known as "the codfather," who exploited loopholes in the new england's catch-share system our first piece to be optioned for film production, to whether cuba's new farming model can provide true food security for that island nation. We added several important new partners, including highline (huffington post's longform channel), gravy, the award-winning podcast by the southern foodways alliance, the lens, a new orleans-based outlet devoted to in-depth, public-interest reporting, national geographic, the new republic, vogue, grist, the weather channel and more. Fern's reporting garnered several awards in 2017. We won the spj norcal excellence in journalism award, in the "features and longform storytelling (radio/audio)" category, for lisa morehouse's story, "75 years later, japanese americans recall incarceration, forced farm labor," which was produced in partnership with kqed's california report. And richard manning's deep dive into the influence of agribusiness in iowa politics, published in harper's magazine, won an international association of culinary professionals award for "writing that makes a difference. ""napa's water war with big wine" won a california news publishers association better newspapers contest award for environmental reporting. The piece "a look into the growing industrial wine industry in northern california and the fight for water rights" was written by stett holbrook and co-produced by fern and the bohemian. In 2017, fern's social-media presence continued to expand its reach and influence. We are active on three social media platforms, twitter, facebook and instagram and are starting to use linkedin to a limited extent. Our full-time audience engagement editor supervises activity on these platforms, including the judicious use of paid promotion (a. K. A. "boosts") in order to reach beyond our followers (and in the case of facebook, to reach a significant number of our followers). We also work closely with our publication partners' social media staff, who are contractually obligated to promote our collaborations as well as to "tag" us within the individual platforms in which they operate. Paid social media promotion has been a very effective, low-cost way to broaden the reach of individual stories and increase fern's brand awareness. Our social audience is approximately 40,000 users and total impressions for our posts and tweets is approximately 3 million per year. Our website, while not designed to be a destination site, reaches 160,000 unique users a year, and we have an email newsletter audience of 5,500 people. It's worth noting that our expectation is that our work finds its audience primarily through our publication partners. In addition, over the past year, our ability to place stories with major media organizations, such as national geographic and vogue, has increased our reach significantly. Organizations at their scale reach a native audience in the millions through their publications, and additional millions through their own social media accounts. This brings our work out of the silo of food and environment reporting, and engages much broader audiences. For earned media throughout 2017, fern has built an impressive list, both for our stories and for awareness of the organization itself. Our stories and reporters have been featured in interviews with wnyc's the takeaway, kcrw's good food, npr's all things considered, whyy's the pulse, new england news collaborative, heritage radio network, gastropod, wisconsin public radio's the kathleen dunn show, nieman storyboard and more. Fern stories have been mentioned by popular sites such as longform, digg, newser, and vox. Influential groups like slowfood, uc food observer, stone barns, and food tank have been vocal about fern's work. And influencers such as marion nestle, mark bittman, michael pollan, and tom colicchio continue to boost fern's profile via their social media and personal blogs. Meanwhile, both the american press institute and nieman lab cited fern in pieces they did on the success, and importance, of collaborative journalism. And our editor-in-chief was part of a panel on media at the 2017 institute for nonprofit news conference. We continue to produce fern's friday feed newsletter, a. K. A. #fff, a weekly must-read list of stories in our areas of interest published by other outlets. Some selections are at the top of the news while others are prescient or in-depth features that we think our readers should know about. We send this newsletter weekly to a subscriber base of 3,100 as a way to enhance engagement with an audience that is mostly distinct from our social-media audience. This initiative is designed to establish fern as a source for curation and guidance in navigating food media, and not only a producer of original journalism. This added touch of engagement has also helped us to discern which topics resonate most with our audience. We continued to expand our food and agriculture policy news service, fern's ag insider. For a small annual fee, subscribers gain access to reporting, including a full archive on our website, with a subject-tag organization. The email newsletter, now including only summaries of the full stories, remains free. We have a modest but growing number of individual and corporate subscribers and a growing number of academic institutional subscribers, including stanford university, new york university, harvard law school and the university of california, berkeley. In 2017 we added tufts and yale to our institutional subscribers. In addition, agriculture. Com (one of the foremost news outlets for commodity farmers), successful farmer magazine, npr's the salt and mother jones currently syndicate selected ag insider articles. We see fern's ag insider, particularly institutional and corporate sales, as a significant area for earned revenue growth. At the end of the year, we produced and published our latest print collection, the dirt 2017 six of our favorite stories from the past year. Our range of impact is rising. We continue to emphasize a variety of partners and audiences. Some are small but highly focused, such as ensia, which caters to environmental policymakers, advocates and media, or the lens, which is new orleans' first independent, nonprofit news site. Others are broad and mainstream, like eatingwell, national geographic and vogue. We believe we succeeded in alerting millions of "new to the issues" readers and priming them for reform. February saw the release of "revenge of the lunch lady: how an unassuming bureaucrat outsmarted jamie oliver and pulled off an honest-to-god miracle in one of america's unhealthiest cities," by jane black, published with the huffington post highline. This story really struck a nerve, garnering shout-outs from a host of influential folks, including tom colicchio, kimbal musk, michael pollan, jonathan bloom, the new york times' ian urbina, and questlove. Black was interviewed on wisconsin public radio's the kathleen dunn show, on cheddar, a business-news show that broadcasts from the nyse, and on the huffington post. The piece was cited in a number of places, including food politics, marion nestle's influential site, newser, and longform, and had a total social reach of 22 million. "the deliciously fish case of the codfather: new england's fishing industry is in deep trouble, thanks in no small part to one mogul's seriously shady business," by ben goldfarb, was published with mother jones. It reads like a movie script, and in fact has been optioned for film production. Beyond the interest from hollywood, goldfarb was all over the media. He was interviewed by hartford's wncr (which feeds stations throughout new england), heritage public radio, kcrw, and nieman storyboard and mother jones' the bite podcast. It also was included on longform, and got a lot of love on social media, with a total reach of 1. 2 million. "reclaiming native ground: can louisiana's tribes restore their traditional diets as waters rise? " by barry yeoman, was published by the lens, and broadcast on the podcast gravy. We liked this piece from the start, but were surprised by how much response it got from the wider media worldweekend morning edition, and wnyc's the takeaway, plus a social reach of nearly 7,000 readers. Yeoman also participated in a panel discussion in new orleans about the story which was arranged by the lens. Beyond that, though, this was our first fully multimedia piece, with the podcast, online story, photography and infographic elements. It is part of our ongoing effort to diversify the ways that fern stories reach multiple audiences. "75 years later, japanese-americans recall incarceration, forced farm labor farmers in japanese internment camps during wwii," by lisa morehouse, aired on more than two dozen radio stations

see schedule ofern's ag insider is a daily food and agriculture policy paid subscription news service. It includes original reporting, analysis, and a daily survey of breaking news in the areas of federal and state food and agriculture policy as well as related corporate developments. The product is aimed at an audience of policymakers, advocates, journalists, and food industry representatives. Fern's ag insider paid subscription features include:-a, dedicated, paywalled ag insider mini-site on the fern website-original, in-depth reporting and analysis-articles tagged and viewable by subject-a searchable archive of all ag insider reporting