Tara Francis Chan is The Trace’s Director of Operations. Chan will build tools that support newsrooms with innovative and nontraditional structures, processes, and policies as well as amplify their best practices to the journalism industry at large. These tools will include a comprehensive database of nontraditional newsrooms; a guidebook for news startups on nontraditional newsroom models (such as worker-led nonprofits, worker-owned cooperatives, nonhierarchical structures, co-leadership, etc.); and a resource of innovative insights, lessons, and policies from nontraditional newsrooms that can be adopted by both nontraditional and traditional newsrooms to address operational gaps.

“In 2021, I co-founded a non-traditional newsroom, and while launching any news startup is a daunting task, building an entirely new business and internal operating structure only added to the mountain we needed to climb,” Chan said. “I’m incredibly excited to use this fellowship to build the tools and resources I wished had existed in those early days.”