The Open Media Foundation (OMF) is an innovative media and technology nonprofit organization dedicated to putting the power of the media in the hands of the people, enabling everyone to engage in their community and bring about the change they wish to see in the world.
SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT
Advancing Equity 2023, 2022
2023 Advancing Equity Award: $15,000 to continue strengthening Open Media Foundation's Career Engine service, which supports Colorado newsrooms in finding and hiring diverse jobseekers for journalism job opportunities, with a goal of posting and filling 52 media job openings in 2023
2023 Advancing Equity Update: OMF consistently delivers over 50 applicants per job posting hosted on their Career Engine service - but have seen a decrease in overall newsroom hiring this year. In response to changes in Colorado Workforce Development Council training program availability, OMF staff has sought training from the League of Women Voters/Colorado Press Association Earn your Press Pass training program.
2022 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to support a dedicated project manager to enhance services offered by Open Media's Career Engine, to offer recruitment and retention expertise to Colorado newsrooms
2022 Advancing Equity Impact: In Colorado, over 90% of media organizations surveyed reported a desire to hire more diverse candidates—yet also reported a struggle to find diverse applicants for their job openings. Early on, we learned that there was no magic bullet to receiving more diverse applicants. One of the best practices across industries is to use costly services to post jobs as widely as possible, generate greater numbers of applicants, and even though the percentage of diverse applicants may still be small, the sheer number of diverse applicants will be higher. This requires filtering through a larger number of applicants than most employers have capacity for.
At the same time, we have evaluated the diversity of applicants coming from over 40 job boards to ensure employers know which boards have the best ROI in terms of attracting qualified applicants of color.
This has paid-off by helping over 40 employers in the Colorado Media & Journalism industry hire employees averaging twice as many POC as the national averages. Similarly, employees hired through our service are also twice as often female as the male/female average reported by RTDNA and ASNE.
A majority of the organizations we surveyed stated that our data collection and organization services would be “very useful” for their hiring process. We also learned most organizations would like their staff to better reflect diversity and the demographics of Colorado and would like for their sources to better reflect the demographics of Colorado. The value of our program has been made clear by employers now beginning to pay for our service, which we hope to add some long-term sustainability for the program.