👋 How are you? I'm ready for this election thing to be over though I have a feeling it's not going to down easy. And I don't expect we'll get a respite from the craven, hateful, and juvenile dialog that passes for American leadership. But it would be nice to dispense our care and energies on supporting one another.
Hey - I want to give a big big shout out to the newest Future Community subscribers: Adel, Jasmine, and Jim. I'm glad you're here. Please reach out if you have any questions or suggestions.
I also want to give thanks to Lyndal, Kendra, Daniel, Nithin, Stacey, and Lynn for becoming paid members in recent weeks. Appreciate your support and it's been good checking in with each of you.
That leads me to invite you to become a paying member of Future Community. You'll be supporting this newsletter (and me), helping keep Future Community Jobs accessible to all, and getting a few benefits like coaching, consulting, and free access to paid events. Find out more and join us.
And for all of you reading this: if Future Community has been helpful, interesting, inspiring, or maybe even aggravating, let me know or share the newsletter and let others know.
What are we reading?
I shared a brief review of Camonghne Felix's revelatory Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom. It's both a memoir and a sharp look at how language shapes power and our futures.
What are you reading these days?
We're not required to pay for our demise
danah boyd jumped into the story about Meta paying people to hate on Jonathan Haidt with both feet and I imagine nobody knows more about what they're getting into than danah. Read it here: No one paid me to disagree with Jonathan Haidt. It was teenagers who taught me that he was wrong.
I have two Gen Z kids now in their early to mid-20s and have lived through a world of raising teens with unfettered access to phones, social media, algorithms, and now AI. Should teens spend less time on their phones and tech in general? Yes.
But it's people 30 and up whose brains are being broken by tech. I see it all the time in the zombified faces of drivers looking at their phone, people walking their dog and staring into the middle distance of some IG reel on their phone, people clicking away on their Apple watch during yoga. I'm hardly innocent here (except for the watch/phone in yoga...the worst).
The problems facing teens (and adults) are systemic, structural, and deeply political. They won't be fixed with less (or more) phones or tech.
But this "political" piece is important. Meta is a cancer that has metastasized. Its political power is too great. It can and should be starved of resources until it's weakened enough to be broken into pieces that can be shaped to serve communities and people instead of itself.
Meanwhile, let's stop thinking our teen (and our own) mental health issues can be sorted with more (or less) tech–and certainly not tech controlled by the largest platform companies in the world.
Bright Ideas ☀️
Smart people. Big questions.
1/ You don't need more visitors. You need a better offer. That's one takeaway of the annual Innovation in Media report, according to Madeleine White at The Audiencers. Big news publishers are seeing less traffic but more paid subscribers. Audience reach is falling for a number of reasons. Fewer search referrals due to AI is one of those. Nonprofits big and small experiencing similar traffic disruptions must understand that donors are still there. But it's urgent that you present compelling content, express a clear point of view, and make the journey towards giving as desirable and accessible as possible.
Worth noting that content that's valuable and accessible to people is more important than ever. That means having a website, a newsletter or three, and maybe an app where content can live. All together, valuable and accessible content are essential to "building reader habits" as a path to more revenue. I agree.
2/ In The System We Haven’t Built Peter Altman describes a 3-layer infrastructure that will do more than "better messaging" to meet progressive communications goals. The layers include Creation, Coordination, and Capability. I'd love to see these built across a shared and systemic landscape rather than the hodgepodge of short-termism and random consultant driven comms strategies that rule the progressive advocacy and campaign world today.
3/ Meta is a miserable company desperate for cash: Meta’s Pay-to-Play Comes to Organic Social Media… and organizations should do all they can to get audiences onto platforms they control. [Carrie Lawless / M+R]
4/ The mundane middle of our algorithmic world: The New York Times asks Why does culture feel so monotonous? It's a look at data scientist Lauren Leek's argument that predictive algorithms are flattening the everyday world, from pub menus to pop lyrics. See also Leek's original article: Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same. Of course, the medianization of all things is not new to anyone who has ever been in a mall, looked at the HGTV show listings, or driven down the commercial strip of any suburb anywhere only find give up and go to Applebees. [Scott Reyburn / New York Times]
5/ Getting clean: Canary Media has a cool map charting how clean (or not) the electricity generated in your state is these days. Might surprise you. This one comes via the Hot Bones newsletter.
6/ Nationalizing AI companies, as Spencer Ackerman suggests, is a proposal unlikely to go anywhere no matter who is President or which party control Congress. But given the behavior and devastating flaws of the big players it's a reasonable option.
7/ I doubt there are many organizations with the reach and event types to make live blogging worthwhile. But testing or making a habit of "going live" as news is happening could reach some new audiences. Read about how The Times and Guardian use live blogs to drive engagement in Digital Content Next.
Events and Training
- Project C is hosting Is Indie Journalism Right for Me? Layoff Season Edition on November 11th. This is a solid set of pros sharing honest experiences.
- Any chance you'll be fundraising in November or December? Want to get your team and supporters involved? Join How Do I Ask My Friends to Give? on November 17th to learn about turning a network into collective fundraising power. [Donor Organizer Hub]
Want to share your event or training? Click reply and make sure we know about it.
Check out the Year End Email Fundraising Cookbook if you need ideas, guidance, process, and just some sense of calm while putting together your fundraising campaigns over the next couple months.
It's all there for you. No charge. It's yours to use.
And please reach out if you have questions or need some last minute support for your year end fundraising.
Future Community Jobs
A few cool new jobs and a couple hot fellowship opportunities. Get a full list on Tuesday or check the always updated Future Community job list.
- The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship program at Stanford is accepting applications until Dec 2, 2026. This is a full-time, on site program at Stanford University.
- Mozilla Foundation has opened applications for its fellowship program. This is a global non-resident program though some fellows will be embedded with an organization. Letters of intent are due Dec 17, 2026.
- Executive Director : Documented [New York City]
- Director of Growth and Strategic Partnerships : Report Local [Remote in the US]
- Communications Writer : Environmental Law and Policy Center [Chicago]
- Community Organizer : The Planetary Society [Washington, DC]
Hi. I'm Ted Fickes. I run Bright+3 where we help teams in progressive spaces create content and stories that build community so that organizations turn supporters into leaders. I also write Future Community (this newsletter) and run Future Community Jobs.