Media Growth Team
David Clinch
As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Partnerships, David Clinch leads strategic partnerships for MGP in all the following areas:
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News industry groups and associations
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Funders of journalism.
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Media technology companies
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Providers of managed services
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Academic and research Institutions
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Business development and sales
David has worked as an international journalist at ITN and CNN, and then as a media executive at both Storyful and Mather.
Throughout his three decade career at the intersection of the news and technology industries David has created an unrivaled network and a skill set built on direct experience of innovative journalism and successful business strategies in the digital age.
From his time as an early adopter and evangelist for the adoption of digital technology and social media at CNN, David has become an expert in both the opportunities and risks involved in connecting journalism to technology.
Helping to build a successful digital news organization at Storyful also helped him understand what is involved in developing a business strategy that can build sustainable growth and diversified revenue streams.
This passion for journalism and the appropriate application of digital technology and resources is at the core of David's current work at MGP, helping small news organizations not only survive, but thrive, in a way that has a real impact in society.
We have placed ourselves at this exact point of implementation and partnered with both the industry associations that small news organizations belong to, and with the providers of managed resources that can support them, in order to help in the difficult "last mile" implementation of this growth process.
We are also putting an emphasis on the importance of measuring the full social and economic impact of local journalism over the long term, so that news publishers can track their growth and funders of journalism can better track the full social and economic ROI of their investments and support.
David lives in Atlanta and is also VP of Partnerships at Mather Economics, working with news organizations all over the world to support their reader revenue strategy.
Eli Flournoy
As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Impact Finance, Newsgathering & Communications for Media Growth Partners, Eli Flournoy leads strategic initiatives in the following areas:
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Impact Measurement
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Startup and Growth Capital Access
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News Business Modeling
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Newsgathering Operations
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Strategic Communications
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Event Production (live and virtual)
Eli is an award-winning veteran journalist and impact finance specialist, dedicated to building global communications partnerships for the growth of local journalism businesses. Eli serves as a Senior Media Industry Consultant for clients like Mather Economics, CNN International, Google, META, the International Center for Journalists, international universities and a diverse portfolio of journalism, fact-checking and media tech companies. Eli has extensive virtual and live event production and moderator experience, and is developing the documentary and podcast series “Brain in Progress”, with Co-Creator and award-winning Director Seema Mathur.
As an Executive in Residence with the Voinovich School’s Social Enterprise Ecosystem and Social Return on Investment (SROI) programs at Ohio University, Eli provides business coaching, strategic communications, advisory and corporate board development, and C-suite technical support to small businesses and clients of the SROI impact measurement consulting team. News industry clients include the innovative non-profit startup Athens County Independent. Eli serves on advisory boards to Ohio University’s SROI Team, Social Media Analytics Research Team (SMART) Lab, and College of Business Department of Management.
Eli is a lecturer and speaker on circular innovation models, news standards and practices (ethics), anti-misinformation, digital and social media newsgathering, multi-platform media management, the servant leadership model, diversity management and business modeling, and social/local impact investing and finance.
During a 24-year career at CNN, Eli ran CNN’s global news agency and affiliate training, consulting and newsgathering operation as Senior Director of CNN International Newsource. Eli has led the launch of news ventures like CNN Indonesia and CNNIndonesia.com.
Eli lives in Atlanta and holds an MBA from Ohio University, and a BA from Indiana University.
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Katy Byron
As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Content, Programs & Audience Development for Media Growth Partners, Katy Byron leads strategic initiatives in the following areas:
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Program Management
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Content Creation
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Audience Engagement and Growth
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Marketing and Branding
Katy Byron is a third-generation journalist with 20 years’ experience in social media, TV, wire service, print and digital news. Byron is passionate about supporting the journalism industry and the development of new storytelling styles and techniques using innovative technology. Byron has managed multi-million dollar nonprofit programs and campaigns, and teams of up to 35 people in three time zones. She is an expert in social media content creation, Gen Z audience tastes and trends, media literacy and misinformation.
Before co-founding MGP, Byron worked at the Poynter Institute, a journalism teaching nonprofit, leading the MediaWise project, Poynter’s multi-million dollar digital media literacy initiative. In three years, Byron grew MediaWise from a program focused on teaching one million U.S. teenagers how to sort fact from fiction online, to a global program for people of all ages, with initiatives in five countries.
Prior to Poynter, Byron was the first Managing Editor for News at Snapchat, overseeing coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as all other news on the platform. Under her leadership, Snapchat expanded its Our Stories news coverage beyond politics to include breaking news and international news, for audiences worldwide in more than seven languages.
Byron began her career in TV news with more than a decade spent at CNN and CNBC covering breaking news, political news, business news and more in Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and New York.
Byron has conducted significant interviews in front of and behind the camera with newsmakers including President Joe Biden, Warren Buffet, multiple Treasury secretaries, state governors and Fortune 500 CEOs. She is often interviewed by national media for her expertise on misinformation and social media and has appeared in print and on air stories by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Associated Press, NBC News, MSNBC, Forbes and the Hill.
Byron lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband Pat Poats, son Teddy and daughter Margot. She loves exercise and sports – played field hockey and lacrosse at Trinity College; is the captain of her USTA tennis team today and was an alternate for the U-16, U.S. olympic field hockey team in her youth.