Find Your Mentor

Ariel Zirulnick is the senior editor for community engagement at KPCC/LAist in Los Angeles, coordinating efforts to leverage the newsroom’s resources to serve community members more deeply and consistently and to integrate that work into editorial, product, and revenue decisions.

Before KPCC/LAist, Ariel worked at Membership Puzzle Project, a public research project that catalyzed and studied membership models in news 2017-2021. As the director of MPP’s Membership in News Fund, she provided financial runway and venture support to newsrooms experimenting with membership. Ariel also led the publication of the Membership Guide, a practical, tactical guide to membership models in news.

Ariel leads global membership community calls with the Media Development Investment Fund and teaches with CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program on identifying your value proposition, choosing the right revenue model for your venture, and conducting audience research on a lean team.

You can talk to Ariel about membership, systems and workflows to support community engagement, raising money for change projects, designing trainings and venture support, building knowledge communities around a subject, and explaining windy careers.