I’ll level with you. When the training wheels came off late in 2024, John and I found ourselves leading OpenNews with funding through October of this year and few prospects. Looking down the line, and feeling completely wrung out after working a dozen years in an industry that doesn’t know how to rest, I thought this might be the end of OpenNews.

After spending our first year as co-directors running on parallel tracks, producing two SRCCONs, stepping into consulting projects, and learning the inner workings of small nonprofit leadership as quickly as possible, John and I still hardly knew each other. Encouraged by our departing co-director, we took a chrysalis period. We had to look inward and reconnect if we were going to lead OpenNews into its next era together.

We tapped the pause button.

We finished up our existing consulting contracts and said no to taking on anything else in 2025. I didn’t know if there would be a SRCCON 2025. It felt risky to slow down, to take a beat, to go into the cocoon. I wondered anxiously: Would anyone even notice if we closed up shop and never came back?

I’ll resist the appeal of a tidy before and after. There is an after, but it comes on the other side of a gooey mess of uncertainty, introspection, and vulnerability. John and I went deep on how we got here and whether or not we really wanted to keep going. The answer wasn’t immediate and obvious, but it came: Yes, let’s go.

We dug into OpenNews’ history and the programs we inherited–what must continue, like community support through Scholarships+, and what could slow down, like Source and Community Calls. In an empty ballroom at NICAR, we sketched metaphors with seeds, sprouts, and roots that reflected contemporary opportunities for growth, possibility and connection. John re-connected with our peers in journalism support for collaboration and camaraderie; I put myself through nonprofit operations bootcamp and learned how to budget and forecast so that we might better understand our runway and whether there was a future to be had at all. I cried into a spreadsheet. But we kept going.

Spoiler alert: SRCCON 2025 happened, and you raved about it. You said things like, “I always feel very welcome and *taken care of* at SRCCON” and “I started day one with an excellent conversation, and that didn’t let up at all for the entire conference.” One sponsor said we could count on their support for SRCCON for as long as we kept doing it. Being with all of you and hearing your feedback reminds us how vital SRCCON is as we face uncertain futures in need of more spaces to confront complex problems together with curiosity, vulnerability and sincerity.

While we were doubting our relevance and answering questions about OpenNews’ purpose in 2025, we gave $25,000 in scholarships, sponsored pickup basketball at NICAR, covered meals for nearly 80 people at peer conferences, and hosted our third SRCCON in two years with more than fifty percent of responses to our call for proposals this year coming from people who had never attended SRCCON before.

Put this one in the yearbook, our basketball team at NICAR 2025.

Then we were awarded $1.2 million from Press Forward to lead and build Emergency Mode for News with Newspack and NC Local. Meanwhile, Democracy Fund bet on the power of our relationship-building programs for newsroom technologists and renewed our funding for three years.* Our team added three part-time roles, including a community manager that we’ll announce next week.

A lot can happen in a chrysalis.

OpenNews turns 15 (!!) in 2026. That’s 15 years of stewarding a community of optimistic doers who take care of one another, challenge one another, respect one another, learn from one another, and have fun doing it. Stay tuned for more about how we’ll celebrate and continue our shared vision for a community of journalists who understand and leverage their power to support one another.

*A note on funding: I wish that renewed funds from Democracy Fund were enough, but we are on the precipice of a funding gap of $85,000 for the coming year. OpenNews operates with a mix of grants, consulting, and community support–that’s where you come in! Help us meet our community-driven match up to $3,000 toward our goal of $15,000.