“The Privilege to Take Risks.” Alberto Ibargüen Reflects on His Tenure at the Knight Foundation

When Alberto Ibargüen was a student at Wesleyan University, he attended a performance by the experimental composer John Cage. “It was an electronic music concert, and I didn’t know what electronic music was,” Ibargüen said. Cage set up microphones next to a set of descending metal sheets. Then, he rolled ball bearings down the sheets, and the microphones picked up the sound. “The sheets went pling-plang,” Ibargüen said, “and I thought, ‘Wait, this is music?’”

It was an epiphany that stuck with him throughout a career that has included stints in law, publishing and philanthropy, where, as president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, he has overseen $2.3 billion in grantmaking over 18 years.

“I learned that there are no rules except the blinders that you’re willing to put on your own imagination. And yet, it also provided a structure,” he told me. “That’s how I think about our philanthropy. Our job is to create that structure that allows for the independent creation by the grantee.”

In March, Ibargüen announced he was stepping down from Knight, capping a tenure that has included making bold investments in local news, addressing the impact of technology on media and democracy, and cultivating the arts in cities where the foundation has a foothold. With his employer currently searching for his successor, I caught Ibargüen in a reflective and expansive mood during a freewheeling conversation that touched on his younger impatient self, the backstory behind a new Knight-funded institute in Washington, D.C., and the way a powerful painting can leave you speechless.

As our call unfolded, it became clear that the Cage-like structure that guided Ibargüen was the belief that at its core, Knight was in the business of “social investing,” where “it’s all about outcome, not output.” Unlike charity, where “you give to an organization and hope for the best, social investors stick around and require a return on investment that improves society,” he said. “I want those of us in philanthropy to be investors. I want us to be actively engaged in making those grants successful, while realizing that’s not always going to be possible.”

“I’ve been on both sides of the equation”

Ibargüen was born in Puerto Rico in 1944 and raised in South Orange, New Jersey. After graduating from Wesleyan, he served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela and Colombia, returned to the states to attend the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and became a legal aid attorney in Hartford, Connecticut.

He made the leap to the publishing world, joining the Hartford Courant and Newsday in New York. He then moved to Miami, where he became the publisher of El Nuevo Herald, and a few years later, the Miami Herald. Under his leadership, El Nuevo Herald won Spain’s Ortega y Gasset Prize for excellence in journalism and the Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes.

Looking back, Ibargüen said that working in media didn’t exactly prepare him for the very different world of philanthropy. “The fun part of being in the newspaper business was that it was action-oriented,” he said. But readers know that this isn’t how the deliberative world of philanthropy tends to operate. Ibargüen described himself as “impatient” during those early years at Knight. “There was an urgency in the news business that I did not find in foundations. In media, long-term planning meant, ‘What will I have for lunch tomorrow?’” he said. He realized that working in philanthropy meant “thinking harder and better and longer than what I had been used to.” 

That said, the new role didn’t catch Ibargüen entirely flat-footed. He previously served on the boards of the New York Community Trust and what was then known as the Miami-Dade Community Foundation before it was renamed the Miami Foundation, while his legal aid project received funding from the National Conference of Bishops. “I had been on both sides of the equation,” he said.

Ultimately, Ibargüen sought to bring some of that sense of urgency he found in the newspaper business to his work at Knight. “You see yourself as a funder of experiments,” he said. “And if you don’t pursue that, it can be a lost opportunity.”

Lamenting “the national shouting match”

Since the foundation was established by newspaper publishers John and James Knight, journalism has always been a central part of its mission. But when Ibargüen came on board almost two decades ago, the field was staring into a figurative abyss. Print advertising dollars were evaporating, subscription rates were plummeting and more consumers were getting their news online.

Ibargüen committed the foundation to helping media organizations adapt to a rapidly changing landscape, drawing inspiration from his experience in publishing as well as that of esteemed philosopher Yogi Berra (naturally).

“Yogi had a saying, ‘If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them,’” Ibargüen said. Or to put it another way, news consumers were gravitating to the “digital ballpark,” and it was incumbent on outlets — and the funders that support them — to “deliver the information in a way where the crowd can use it and engage with it.”

Ibargüen knew this was easier said than done. Looking back at his time in publishing, he acknowledged that while he and his fellow leaders could see how customers’ preferences were changing in the late 1990s and early 2000s, outlets could have done a better job at facilitating the transition to digital. “We created dull websites, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we lost audiences,” he said. “If we had been able to deliver information to people in a more engaging way, things may have turned out differently. But that’s spilt milk.”

As far as the present day is concerned, Ibargüen recognizes philanthropy’s limitations in our deeply polarized media culture. “We’re not built for, nor do we have enough money, to participate in the national shouting match that people call ‘media’ that takes place on cable television or social media,” he said. Yet many Americans unfortunately equate cable talking heads with the media. “And if they do, they’re going to view the field with skepticism, and that’s a problem.”

“Green shoots are popping up”

Ibargüen was never interested in participating in the “national shouting match.” Instead, under his leadership, Knight has helped major print outlets transition to the digital world and allocated millions to build out sustainable local and independent digital news outlets.  

Like other journalisms funders, Knight believes that supporting local news is a sound investment for three key reasons — consumers inherently trust the medium; many regions are “news deserts” and need community-focused newsrooms to keep an eye on local officials; and local outlets produce impactful work.

“Just look at George Santos,” Ibargüen said, referring to coverage from Long Island’s North Shore Leader. “You have a guy who didn’t have a lot of the things he claimed he did, and the story came out in a local paper with a small circulation, and it was eventually picked up by the New York Times.”

But powerful stories alone won’t pay the bills. Outlets need a revenue model consisting of diverse and reliable sources to be sustainable for the long haul. “We need to bring back the independence that newspapers enjoyed when they had a wide range of advertisers and income from classified ads and circulation revenue,” Ibargüen said. “Because if you’re not sustainable, you’re dependent.”

Among its many investments, Knight committed $20 million over five years to the American Journalism Project, (AJP), which launched in 2019 and has supported the growth and expansion of 37 grantees, with more on the way. “They have far exceeded any expectation that [AJP founder] John Thornton had when he came to us with his idea,” Ibargüen said, noting that he was proud that the Emerson Collective has since surpassed Knight as the AJP’s biggest backer.

Ibargüen cited other promising and validating developments in journalism philanthropy, such as Arnold Ventures’ big investment in the recently launched Houston Landing, and IP 2021 “Journalism Hero of the Year” Stewart Bainum’s efforts to resuscitate Baltimore’s ecosystem. MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey also has plan to raise “hundreds of millions of dollars” for local news. “I think those are great indicators,” Ibargüen said, “and the reason we are starting to see foundations getting involved is because green shoots are popping up all around the country.”

A new institute focused on tech and policy

In 2019, Knight announced a $300 million, five-year commitment to rebuild trust in democracy and strengthen journalism. Central to this work was building up a field of research examining how technology is transforming democracy and the way consumers receive and engage with information. As part of this effort, it committed $50 million to fund new, cross-disciplinary research at 11 American universities and research institutions, including the creation of five new centers of study.

Four years, a presidential election and one artificial intelligence gold rush later, Knight’s initiative is looking harrowingly prescient. “If you read Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s book on Gutenberg and the printing press, you realize that people were worried about how they could possibly keep track of all that technological change and volume of information,” Ibargüen said. “And you hear echoes of that today, especially with ChatGPT, which is the biggest development since, what, the smartphone? I think this raises the ante for whatever the solutions are going to be.”

In late May, Knight announced it was partnering with Georgetown University to invest $15 million apiece in a nonpartisan institute to help policymakers and tech leaders address “pressing issues related to technology, policy and ethics and make informed decisions on how technology is used to shape, produce and share information across platforms.”

Ibargüen said he and his team considered setting up the institute in Silicon Valley or New York, but ultimately decided on Georgetown due to its reputation and proximity to Capitol Hill. “Our goal is to provide a place where scholars can debate and discuss with policymakers the consequences from very different perspectives,” he said. “We purposefully fund the left, right and center. The country is divided, and our view is that solutions that arise in the field of social media are going to be best decided by people trying to come together.”

This approach comes with its own set of risks. Critics have called out the funder for providing support to conservative organizations and, more recently, sponsoring an event addressing trust in the media convened by the news nonprofit Semafor and featuring Tucker Carlson as a speaker. Speaking to Hell Gate NYC about Carlson’s appearance, Jim Brady, Knight’s vice president for journalism, said Semafor selected the speakers, but that Knight stood by the decision, citing its belief in “freedom of expression and in the values expressed in the First Amendment.”

This pushback reflects a broader debate around philanthropy’s role in curbing polarization in America. We’ve seen a number of initiatives emerge in recent years seeking to build bridges, find common ground and restore civility in the country. Others have challenged the idea that division is the correct problem to focus on, pointing out that in a post-Trump era, dangerous extremism on the right is the underlying threat. While it’s not an either-or position, under Ibargüen’s leadership, Knight has placed its focus more on bridge-building side of the spectrum.

“Bright, shiny objects” in hindsight

In an era when many funders have sharpened their focus on matters of social justice, Knight has also drawn criticism for its continued emphasis on innovation and tech. In 2016, a report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) accused Knight of chasing “bright, shiny objects” while lacking “well-articulated long-term goals and strategies” and failing to help marginalized communities in the 26 cities where it operates.

Speaking with IP Editor David Callahan a year later in a profile headlined “The Futurist,” Ibargüen pushed back on the report’s findings, contending that Knight had an obligation to honor the wishes of the Knight Brothers, who, in addition to ensuring that their foundation supported journalism-related causes and cultural organizations, also experimented with nascent technologies as publishers.

Around that same time, Knight published its updated strategy, which found it narrowing its approach to focus on a set of initiatives that it believed would generate impact. Knight defined itself as a “social investor” guided by principles like impact, innovation and learning to cultivate “informed and engaged communities to strengthen our democracy.” The strategy sought to implement core beliefs — free expression, an engaged citizenry, and engaged, equitable and inclusive communities — through programs backing journalism and First Amendment protection, shared public spaces, economic opportunity, and the arts.

Looking back at the six years that have elapsed since Ibargüen spoke with Callahan, Knight’s stance looks less like one of chasing bright, shiny objects, and more like a funder attempting to navigate rapidly changing conditions on the ground.

Take Knight’s journalism grantmaking. Under Ibargüen, it dialed back its giving to university-based programs. “I want us to be investors, and that’s not possible if you’re endowing chairs,” he told me. Instead, Knight pivoted to helping newsrooms and journalists navigate the digital revolution through grants for burgeoning local outlets, and initiatives like its Knight News Challenge, which went live in 2007 to support projects that created more engaging and sustainable forms of journalism. Some of the tech-heavy work may have seemed a bit too, well, futuristic for some folks, but in retrospect, we can see how this is something of a necessity when funding an industry in the grips of an existential crisis.

A different example of Knight responding to an evolving field in a way that supported diversity and racial justice in journalism was the foundation’s role in the controversy over Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tenure at the University of North Carolina. In 2021, UNC appointed Hannah-Jones to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, but denied her request for tenure after a major donor expressed concerns over her work on the 1619 Project, which reexamined the role of slavery in American history. After Hannah-Jones turned down the UNC position, Knight moved quickly to establish a new Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University to be held by a tenured Hannah-Jones.

Arts outputs

If aspects of Knight’s journalism grantmaking now seem conventional in retrospect, much of its arts giving under Ibargüen has been unique and envelope-pushing.

On his watch, Knight bankrolled a helicopter dropping poems on a rock concert and countless under-the-radar arts organizations and venues. More recently, Knight is funding the digitization of Motown Records’ music archives and the construction of a state-of-the-art theater to house the Massachusetts-based dance troupe Jacob’s Pillow. The new building is “going to be a place that has the capacity to redefine what contemporary dance means in America and maybe the world,” Ibargüen said.

He views Knight’s arts grantmaking — $466 million committed during his tenure — as a catalyst that “creates a sense of community and excitement and expectation.” Sure, you can’t plug that experience into a spreadsheet, but you sure know it when you feel it. “If you look at a great painting that is completely different than anything you’ve ever seen, then people will say, ‘Wow, what is that? What the hell does that mean? How does that make me feel? I want art that moves you.’” 

I suspect readers who have been impacted by a painting or dance performance won’t dispute this perspective. The tricky part is “quantifying” the value of the arts in a world of unprecedented need and (seemingly) finite capital. This is where Ibargüen’s focus on outcomes is brought into sharper focus.

Ibargüen and his fellow creative placemaking proponents know that beyond generating powerful yet ephemeral feelings of community and belonging, the arts can spur economic development, create jobs and galvanize urban renewal. Through its Knight Arts Challenge, it has done precisely that, helping to transform Miami into an international cultural mecca and enabling artists to “reimagine the new narrative of Detroit.” (Ibargüen’s role in orchestrating the “Grand Bargain” that saved the city from bankruptcy didn’t hurt, either.)

“The arts are a phenomenal economic driver,” he said. “We have so much more arts business and tourism than we ever could have imagined before.” 

“Take risks and explore the unknown”

Under Ibargüen, Knight has drawn critiques from time to time, but this should be expected in a vast philanthropshere where foundations are viewed as the stewards of “society’s risk capital” and we’re all projecting our concerns and desires onto grantee lists as if they were Rorschach tests. It’s a healthy and frequently constructive dialogue that — at the risk of belaboring the Cage analogy — often takes place within the structures set by the individuals who established the foundations in the first place.

As our call wound down, Ibargüen acknowledged these challenges. “Not all foundations are the same,” he said. “I have a friend who has sent 970 students to college on full or partial scholarships through his family foundation, and if you ask him to fund cancer research, he’ll say, ‘That’s not what I do.’” In a similar vein, Knight’s charter “is a different kind of philanthropy. Jack [Knight] made a deal with the IRS that gave me the amazing privilege to take risks and explore the unknown.”

Speaking of exploring the unknown, Ibargüen acknowledged that he’ll be out of a job a year from now, and wasn’t entirely sure about what he would do after that. But he did have one final on-the-record comment. Leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds is “gathering information” in its intensifying search for his replacement. “So if anyone who reads this story wants a job,” he said, “there’s a really good one available.”