The American Press Institute today announced two new members of its Board of Trustees: Paulette Brown-Hinds, founder of Voice Media Ventures, and Amanda Zamora, co-founder and publisher of The 19th.

The two leaders expand API’s board experience in leading independent news businesses and nonprofits.

The founder of Voice Media Ventures, Brown-Hinds is a second-generation publisher of Black Voice News, the first African American newspaper on the West Coast to publish a website. Voice Media Ventures also supports a content production company and strategic communications firm, as well as the community and civic engagement initiatives Mapping Black California and Footsteps to Freedom. Calling California home, Brown-Hinds is a past president of the California News Publishers Association, the first African American to be elected to the role. She additionally serves on the boards of the California Press Foundation and CalMatters, a nonprofit news site serving the state.

Zamora is the co-founder and publisher of The 19th, a new nonprofit news site “reporting on gender, politics and policy.” Zamora has spent nearly two decades in digital, product and audience roles in nonprofit and for-profit news organizations. Before launching The 19th in January 2020, Zamora was most recently the chief audience officer at The Texas Tribune. Prior to that, she led innovative audience approaches at both ProPublica and The Washington Post.

“With the addition of Paulette and Amanda, API has added two remarkable minds to our board of trustees,” API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel said. “Paulette, who left a full-time career as a scholar of English literature to apply her talents to journalism, is one of the most dynamic people I have met in the news industry. Amanda, whom I have known for years, has been a pioneer of new media and audience engagement for years. She is one of the leading journalists of her generation and one of the country’s most prominent Latina journalists.”

API’s Board of Trustees is a 15-member board made up of business leaders and journalism innovators from across the U.S. news landscape. They include publishers from local newspaper chains, independent publishers of newspapers and digital media, national news innovators, public media leaders, and people serving the field of journalism.

Brown-Hinds’ membership on the board adds representation from the Black press and increased representation from the West Coast.

“Through its comprehensive research and diverse programming, API is at the center of innovation in the news industry — an industry that is not just a public good, but as this year has shown the world, a valuable service,” Brown-Hinds said. “I look forward to serving the organization and advancing its mission as an engaged trustee.”

Zamora’s membership adds representation from nonprofit digital news.

“As someone who has leveraged American Press Institute’s tools and expertise in my own newsrooms, I’m looking forward to serving on the board to help advance the API mission toward more audience-centered, sustainable journalism,” Zamora said.

The increasing range of media experience on API’s board reflects API’s mission to help all news organizations that constitute “the press” transform to understand and better serve their communities.

For example, API’s Trusted Elections Network serves a variety of local news organizations seeking to address misinformation and improve coverage of the 2020 election. More than 160 journalists and 110 news organizations have participated in this network. And of the 36 news organizations that received nearly $225,000 in microgrants, 20 were commercial news outlets, 7 were digital nonprofit news, 12 were independent online-only news, 5 were public and community radio and 4 were publishers of color.

“API programs draw on the best practices in the news  business and are open to all,” Rosenstiel said. “We strongly believe that for journalism to thrive, people from all sides of the industry should work together.”

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