Editorial: Some agencies receive massive state funds up to over $1.2 million each under the Ethnic Media Outlet Hate Crime Grants, we demand answers, audits and investigations

The historic California Ethnic Media Outlet Grants program was proposed by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) and tailored to address the rising anti-Asian hate and violence during the peak of COVID-19 in 2020. The grants have been awarded for two years to several dozens of applicants.

While Wind Newspaper, an English and Chinese bilingual weekly, has been on the front line of breaking a long list of anti-Asian hate stories in San Francisco for over the past 3 years, we were denied the grants. In the meantime, several communication agencies or media collaboratives which are not media outlets were repeatedly awarded up to a total of over $1.2 million in 2 years. We demand answers, audits, and investigations on the public fund awarding procedure administered by the California State Library.

In order to maintain and ensure its integrity, impartiality and free of any conflict of interest, Wind Newspaper has decided not to submit any application to the Ethnic Media Outlet Grants in the future.

Wind Newspaper was launched on September 1, 2020 in the midst of the pandemic as the only English and Chinese bilingual news publication in the entire California and also the only locally-owned newspaper in language serving the Chinese community in San Francisco. We publish once a week both in print and online for free to serve everyone in the Asian community.

Within 3 years and 3 months, Wind Newspaper has become one of the most popular news publications in San Francisco targeting the Chinese community. Our readership and circulation have been growing.

Now we look back at the situation when COVID-19 started breaking out unprecedentedly in early 2020. All of us were afraid of getting infected in the pandemic and losing our lives. For all Asian Americans across the nation, we have had extra fear of being attacked when we were out on the streets or even at homes since the pandemic because of the stereotype and hate that COVID-19 was originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

That was why Assemblymember Ting, who is the Assembly Budget Committee Chair, worked with other Asian lawmakers in the State Legislature to introduce a number of budget proposals and legislations to address the rising anti-Asian hate and violence.

Among those budget proposals and legislations during the 2020 to 2021 sessions, the Ethnic Media Outlet Grants in the Budget Act of 2021, SB 129, was passed.

"SB 129 includes $10 million for ethnic media outlets to conduct effective, innovative and culturally competent outreach and education to Asian, Pacific Islander and other populations impacted by hate crimes and incidents," according to the California Grants Portal listed online.

The Ethnic Media Outlet Grants is a multi-year grant program with funds allocated from the State and designed to encourage ethnic media outlets, which serve different ethnic communities in their languages and culture with news coverage focused on issues related to them, to do more news projects to alert the communities about hate crime.

The California State Library is designated to administer the Ethnic Media Outlet Grants awarding process. In accordance with the information announced by the State Library on its website, the estimated amount per award for each ethnic media outlet is from $40,000 to $400,000. The grant amount of each ethnic media outlet is limited to $100,000 each year.

The Ethnic Media Outlet Grants program was first open for application in early 2022. Due to the 2-year in business requirement listed by the California State Library, Wind Newspaper was not qualified to submit an application in 2022.

According to the press release by the California State Library in June 2022, a total of over $5.9 million was awarded to 50 grantees.

In 2022, four grantees were awarded each with $200,000 to $400,00, including Latino Media Collaborative $400,000, San Francisco Study Center (Ethnic Media Services) $398,702, California Black Media $400,000, and Everyday Impact Consulting $200,000.

In early 2023, California State Library announced the grants to be open for the second year applications, the 2-year in business requirement was lifted. With the support and backing by a large number of our community leaders, Wind Newspaper submitted an application for the first time for the grant before the deadline in mid March 2023.

On June 5, 2023, Ethnic Media Program Manager Jen Lemberger informed via email that Wind Newspaper would not be funded for the Ethnic Media Outlet Grants without further explanation. We were disappointed and shocked to hear the outcome of our application.

Wind Newspaper subsequently emailed a request for more details on the denial of the application. The request was sent to Assembly Budget Chair Ting, AAPI Legislative Caucus Chair Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Silicon valley), Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), California State Librarian Greg Lucas, and Lemberger.

None of them responded to Wind Newspaper except Lemberger who wrote in the email, "For this year’s pool of applications, we had about twice as many applicants as last year, and a limited amount of funds to be given out. The eight application reviewers made thoughtful and focused feedback that led to the funding decisions that were made. Unfortunately, with the given constraints of compliance, number of applications submitted, and funding amount, we declined over 60% of applicants."

"The State Library will not be providing one-to-one feedback for all declined applicants. Generally, for applicants that did not receive funding, those that were reviewed it was noted that the responses to the questions about project outcome measurements had insufficient detail about how the proposed measurements would effectively capture program success and a lack of well-defined activities/timeline and budget that clearly incorporated the goals of the funding opportunity," Lemberger wrote.

On June 28, 2023, a list of Ethnic Media Round 2 grantees was announced. It was even more shocking for Wind Newspaper to find out the names of grantees and the amounts to be funded.

Most of the Round 2 grantees were repeatedly funded for two years. We wonder why Wind Newspaper, which has exclusively covered so many anti-Asian hate and violent incidents for the past three years including the 88-year-old Chinese elderly woman who was kicked to the ground with serious injury in San Francisco Union Square in July 2023, was not even deserved for a first-time grant?

Same four grantees, which were awarded with huge funds in 2022, were awarded again in 2023 even with more massive funds, including Latino Media Collaborative $824,175, San Francisco Study Center (Ethnic Media Services) $818,215, California Black Media $585,500, and Everyday Impact Consulting (Filipino Ethnic Media Collaborative) $398,395.

For two years, four grantees which are communication agencies or media collaboratives, not individual media outlets, have been awarded with public funds in total up to over $1.2 million each, including Latino Media Collaborative a total of $1,224,175 state fund, San Francisco Study Center (Ethnic Media Services) $1,216,917, California Black Media $985,500, and Everyday Impact Consulting (Filipino Ethnic Media Collaborative) $598,395.

On the California State Library website, only the names of 62 grantees were listed. There were a total of 160 applications submitted in 2023. Who were the rest of the 97 applying organizations in addition to Wind Newspaper which were denied for the grants?

Wind Newspaper sent another inquiry to Assembly Budget Chair Ting and State Librarian Lucas respectively seeking comments via emails in respect to Round 2 grantees.

"As Assembly Budget Chair, I’m proud to have played a key role in securing historic investments for the Asian American Pacific Islander community, including the API Equity Budget, to help efforts to stop AAPI hate. With the funding over the last three years, we’re finally seeing a downward trend in hate crimes and incidents against AAPIs in the last year, which gives a lot of us hope," Ting responded.

"While lawmakers approve policies and budget allocations, a department or agency typically implements them. This is a good process because it removes any undue influence over decision-making that would enrich personal contacts," Ting said. “In the case of the Stop AAPI Hate Ethnic Media Grants, we not only appropriated funding for it, but also set basic parameters that applicants should have for consideration, such as requiring grantees to be an ethnic media outlet. The California State Library was then charged with overseeing the application and disbursement of the grants to ethnic media organizations."

“The California State Library developed additional criteria, outreached to qualifying entities, spoke with stakeholders, created the application, set up timelines, and evaluated applications in order to select grantees. Legislators, including myself, do not have any decision-making capacity as to who receives a grant or how much," Ting clarified.

“Again, it is solely the State Library’s responsibility to administer the program, and lawmakers have no role in the selection process. While I agree with the majority of awardees who made the list, I do not agree with some of the selections," Tind added. "Additionally, some of the outlets who didn’t get a grant, like yours, were deserving. In fact, for the second year of funding, I narrowed the scope of entities that were eligible for grants in order to ensure there would be sufficient funding for ethnic media outlets and not consultants."

“I’ve been honored to be a supporter of Wind Newspaper since its inception and wish it had been included among the outlets receiving a media grant. There may be more opportunities in the future for more grants, and I hope Wind Newspaper applies again," Ting said.

With repeated requests for comments, State Librarian Lucas did not respond directly to Wind Newspaper. A statement from the Library Development Services Bureau team was issued.

"As stated in the grant application, the 2023 opportunity was open to ethnic media collaboratives and individual ethnic media outlets. Ethnic media collaboratives, by the nature of their structure, support and work with numerous individual ethnic media outlets throughout the state. This allows them to reach a wider audience with grant funds and can use a larger funding amount," the unnamed staff wrote in the statement.

"The second round of the Ethnic Media Outreach Grants received 160 applications requesting almost $30 million in funds. This far exceeded the available funding, so the criteria used by the State Library to evaluate applications and determine the award amounts was focused on identifying the recipients with the strongest proposals and funding their programs. Of the 160 applications, there were 62 that received grant awards, for a total of just under $8.3 million, " the statement further said.

However, many ethnic media outlets like Wind Newspaper are capable of developing their own news stories and projects to reach out to their communities on hate crime. Wind Newspaper has been well known for covering hate crime stories in both English and Chinese languages. We have never worked with any of the four awarded media collaboratives or consulting agencies.

State Librarian Lucas was the Capitol Bureau Chief of the San Francisco Chronicle prior to the appointment by former Governor Jerry Brown to this position in 2014. He should be well aware that more independent and diverse voices from media outlets would work better for all communities. Why would the California State Library choose to fund the consulting agencies or media collaboratives to manage the hate crime news stories throughout the state instead of providing support to individual media outlets? It cannot be justified from the journalism perspective.

Nowadays local news media, in particular the print media, is difficult to survive. There have been efforts and a number of legislations introduced in Congress and California State Legislature trying to support and save the local community news media. Why would the California State Library choose to repeatedly benefit the communication agencies which have no direct access to readers or audiences? Was it the goal when the Asian lawmakers proposed the ethnic media outlet hate crime grants in 2021?

The fund for Ethnic Media Outlet Grants is from the taxpayers of California. All Californians want answers.