Lance Knobel

Notable work and positions

Cityside - co-founder and CEO
Berkeleyside - co-founder, publisher, editor, and reporter
Uncharted: The Berkeley Festival of Ideas - founder and curator
Management Today - editor-in-chief
World Link - editor-in-chief
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting - director of the programme, 1999-2000

Biography

Lance Knobel is a journalist, publisher, and media entrepreneur whose career has ranged from international business journalism to community-based local news. He grew up near Chicago and studied at Princeton University and the University of Oxford before beginning his career writing about architecture and design in London. He later became editor-in-chief of Management Today, a leading British business magazine, and ran a magazine publishing company in Italy. He subsequently served as editor-in-chief of World Link, the magazine of the World Economic Forum, and in 1999-2000 directed the programme of the forum's Annual Meeting in Davos. He also worked as an adviser in the British prime minister's Strategy Unit. After moving to Berkeley in 2005, Knobel, Tracey Taylor, and Frances Dinkelspiel became concerned about the decline of local reporting in the city. The three launched Berkeleyside in October 2009 as an independent digital news publication devoted to Berkeley. Knobel reported and edited for the site while taking a leading role in its business development, events, and experiments in reader-supported journalism. Between 2016 and 2018, Berkeleyside raised more than $1 million from over 300 readers through an innovative direct public offering. The shareholders later approved the publication's 2019 conversion to nonprofit status. Knobel then co-founded Cityside with Taylor, Dinkelspiel, and Tasneem Raja and became its CEO. Cityside developed into the nonprofit parent of Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, Richmondside, and East Bay Nosh, combining independent city reporting with community listening, membership, philanthropy, sponsorship, and public events. Knobel also founded and curated Uncharted: The Berkeley Festival of Ideas, which ran from 2013 through 2018 and brought journalists, scholars, artists, scientists, and civic leaders together for public conversations.

Notable work

• Berkeleyside Founded in 2009 · An independent digital publication covering Berkeley government, public safety, education, housing, business, culture, food, and neighborhood life. Knobel co-founded the site with Frances Dinkelspiel and Tracey Taylor in response to declining local news coverage and helped develop it into a widely studied model for city-focused journalism.

• Cityside Co-founded in 2019 · A nonpartisan nonprofit journalism organization supporting Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, Richmondside, and East Bay Nosh. As CEO, Knobel oversees an organization designed to share business, fundraising, technology, membership, and operational capacity across independent community newsrooms.

• Berkeleyside direct public offering 2016-2018 · A community-investment campaign that raised more than $1 million from readers. The offering tested whether a local publication could finance growth by allowing residents to become shareholders; those investors later consented to Berkeleyside's conversion into a nonprofit organization.

• Uncharted: The Berkeley Festival of Ideas 2013-2018 · A six-year public festival founded and curated by Knobel. Produced by Berkeleyside, it paired prominent and emerging thinkers in conversations about science, technology, politics, race, culture, cities, food, and the arts.

• Writing on the future of local news · Through essays and interviews for outlets including Nieman Journalism Lab, Knobel has argued that modern journalists need skills in audience building, community engagement, partnerships, product development, and revenue, and that nonprofit news organizations have a distinct mission to serve communities that commercial publishers cannot sustainably cover.

Lance Knobel
Cityside: citysidejournalism.org
Author page: Lance Knobel at Berkeleyside