Hi! My name is Taylor Meek and I'm the development & project coordinator at Sentient ☺️
What We're Doing:
Sentient is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that publishes stories and solutions to explain factory farms and their effect on climate, animals, public health, politics and more. Founded in 2018, our content is fact-checked and science-driven, with reporting that serves readers interested in the impacts of what they eat on the world around them.
Our team has been hard at work this year getting factory farming issues in front of new audiences. In April, we attended the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Annual Summit, where our Editor-in-Chief's panel discussions put animal agriculture on the agenda for the first time in the conference's 34-year history.
In July, Sentient became the first media outlet to formally join the Public News Service's new Industrial Meat program — where reporters will transform 300 articles about industrial meat into audio snippets. So far, 24 of our articles have been converted into PNS audio snippets with a reach of over 22 million listeners.
Receiving marginal funding would help us sustain our current operations and scale our organization to match the growing significance of reporting on food systems and animal agriculture. It's vital that Sentient leads this discourse to ensure that comprehensive storytelling, including animal suffering, replaces the current dominant narrative, which is riddled with red-herring solutions like "shop local" or regenerative agriculture.
One specific way this marginal funding would help Sentient is by supporting our editorial expansion.
Our editorial activities for the next 24 months include expanding the team by hiring a rural reporter to help with local news coverage and outreach to rural farmers so that these communities can see themselves in the food system change story.
Six in ten Americans say they have more trust in local news than national news to give them information they can use in their daily life. It's critical we get news about factory farming delivered to these audiences in a voice they trust to achieve any impact (find the study here).
The salary range for this position is between $65,000 - $75,000 so some of the marginal funding would go toward this.
In addition to hiring a rural reporter, our ongoing partnership with the Public News Service (PNS) will help us reach those in rural communities through a medium they trust and in a voice they recognize. Each clip PNS produces is distributed to 10,000+ radio stations nationwide for free syndication. PNS' network reaches 50-60 million weekly listeners nationwide, primarily in red states, rural communities, news deserts and other areas with low or no engagement with information on climate change or factory farming. Our partnership gives us unprecedented access to these communities.
We appreciate you taking the time to read this. Thank you! If you'd like to support our work, you can find our donation page via the button below. We're participating in the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) NewsMatch program, so new donations will be matched up to $1,000!
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]
Hi! My name is Taylor Meek and I'm the development & project coordinator at Sentient ☺️
What We're Doing:
Sentient is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that publishes stories and solutions to explain factory farms and their effect on climate, animals, public health, politics and more. Founded in 2018, our content is fact-checked and science-driven, with reporting that serves readers interested in the impacts of what they eat on the world around them.
Our team has been hard at work this year getting factory farming issues in front of new audiences. In April, we attended the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Annual Summit, where our Editor-in-Chief's panel discussions put animal agriculture on the agenda for the first time in the conference's 34-year history.
In July, Sentient became the first media outlet to formally join the Public News Service's new Industrial Meat program — where reporters will transform 300 articles about industrial meat into audio snippets. So far, 24 of our articles have been converted into PNS audio snippets with a reach of over 22 million listeners.
If you'd like to hear an example, click here to listen to their snippet of A Tyson Exec Wrote Kentucky’s Ag-Gag Law. What Could Go Wrong?
How Marginal Funding Can Help:
Receiving marginal funding would help us sustain our current operations and scale our organization to match the growing significance of reporting on food systems and animal agriculture. It's vital that Sentient leads this discourse to ensure that comprehensive storytelling, including animal suffering, replaces the current dominant narrative, which is riddled with red-herring solutions like "shop local" or regenerative agriculture.
One specific way this marginal funding would help Sentient is by supporting our editorial expansion.
Currently, we publish rigorous solutions journalism, accountability journalism, disinformation debunking and fact-checked explainers. Our team of reporters, editors and fact-checkers are all experts in their fields, with bylines in significant outlets from The New York Times to The Washington Post.
Our editorial activities for the next 24 months include expanding the team by hiring a rural reporter to help with local news coverage and outreach to rural farmers so that these communities can see themselves in the food system change story.
Six in ten Americans say they have more trust in local news than national news to give them information they can use in their daily life. It's critical we get news about factory farming delivered to these audiences in a voice they trust to achieve any impact (find the study here).
The salary range for this position is between $65,000 - $75,000 so some of the marginal funding would go toward this.
In addition to hiring a rural reporter, our ongoing partnership with the Public News Service (PNS) will help us reach those in rural communities through a medium they trust and in a voice they recognize. Each clip PNS produces is distributed to 10,000+ radio stations nationwide for free syndication. PNS' network reaches 50-60 million weekly listeners nationwide, primarily in red states, rural communities, news deserts and other areas with low or no engagement with information on climate change or factory farming. Our partnership gives us unprecedented access to these communities.
We appreciate you taking the time to read this. Thank you! If you'd like to support our work, you can find our donation page via the button below. We're participating in the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) NewsMatch program, so new donations will be matched up to $1,000!
Support Sentient's WorkIf you have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]