OUR STORY
HomeFront Productions is a new, video-focused national nonprofit media organization dedicated to helping families thrive by shedding light on meaningful and trustworthy news, information, and resources that can transform lives today and pave the way for a better future.
We aim to serve families by telling stories that matter to them.
Through engaging, solutions-focused journalism in communities across the country, and impactful partnerships with mission-aligned organizations, HomeFront strives to raise awareness about issues affecting the health and well-being of America’s diverse, multi-generational families and move the needle forward.
NONPROFIT, COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM
HomeFront was founded in 2025 by award-winning video journalists Cat Wise and Kate McMahon, the producing team behind the PBS NewsHour's national five-part child care series "Raising the Future - America's Child Care Dilemma."
HomeFront is one of the first video-focused news organizations to be approved for fiscal sponsorship and provisional membership by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), which supports more than 500 independent, nonpartisan news organizations in North America.
HomeFront follows INN’s membership standards for editorial excellence, independence, and financial transparency.
Collaboration is central to HomeFront's reporting and our mission. We work with local, regional, and national nonprofit newsrooms, civic organizations, and other mission-aligned partners to highlight shared challenges in communities across the country and impactful solutions that bring people together and help them thrive.
WHERE TO FIND US
Launching in 2026, HomeFront’s free-to-consume, fact-checked reporting will be available on a variety of platforms, including our website, newsletter, and YouTube channel, collaborators’ sites and distribution channels, and news apps. Our goal is to make HomeFront’s reporting easy to find wherever families look for trusted news and information.
Our Founders
Catherine (Cat) Wise: Executive Director
Cat is an award-winning news producer and correspondent. For the past twenty-five years, she has traveled throughout the U.S. and overseas, covering a wide range of issues for the PBS NewsHour.
In 2023, Cat was a member of a NewsHour reporting team that won a Peabody Award for coverage of the nation’s ongoing gun violence epidemic. In their award announcement, the Peabody Board of Jurors wrote, “With a strong, clear tone, and an apolitical approach, this series of stories should be seen by every American, regardless of where they stand on guns or the Second Amendment; it is pointed and direct, saying what must be said.”
Cat has been a member of other award-winning NewsHour reporting teams that received a National Press Club Award and were nominated for two national Emmy Awards. Cat's science reporting has received recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and she has participated in journalism fellowships at Harvard Medical School and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
During her two decades in public media, Cat covered a number of issues that impact the health and well-being of America's families, including early learning and brain development, caregiving across generations, K-12 education, higher education, health care, mental health, substance use disorders, housing, the criminal justice system, food insecurity, and environmental health concerns in homes and communities.
Cat was the primary correspondent for two in-depth PBS NewsHour series:
Invisible Scars - America's Childhood Trauma Crisis
Raising the Future - America's Child Care Dilemma
In October 2021, Cat and Producer Kate McMahon's child care reporting was expanded into a one-hour PBS primetime special.
Cat lives in Portland, OR - Kate’s hometown too! - with her husband and two sons.
Kate McMahon: Executive Producer
Kate is an award-winning producer, director, writer, and journalist of documentaries, podcasts and digital content for platforms like FRONTLINE, The PBS NewsHour, NOW With Bill Moyers, ITVS, PBS independent programs and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).
In 2025, Kate won an Emmy for an OPB Art Beat documentary and from 2022 to 2025, Kate produced, directed, wrote, and filmed the Emmy-winning OPB series, Class of 2025.
Kate and Cat’s 5-part series, Raising the Future , premiered nationally on PBS NewsHour in July 2021 and Kate’s 4-part PBS series, Hacking Your Mind, premiered nationally in September 2020. That same year, she produced FRONTLINE: Coronavirus Pandemic, which premiered on April 21, 2020.
Kate has contributed to more than 50 hours of national documentary and news programming, primarily for PBS, since she began her career in 1998 as an Associate Producer for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Her other past work includes The Doctor Fix: A New Era of Modern Medicine (PBS stations 2017); FRONTLINE: The Vaccine War (updated, 2015); Oregon Field Guide; Oregon Art Beat (2015); and, The Programmers – a trilogy of short documentaries about game-changing women in computing (2015.)
Documentaries include FRONTLINE: Life and Death in Assisted Living (2013); FRONTLINE: Nuclear Aftershocks (2012); FRONTLINE: The Vaccine War (original broadcast in 2010); FRONTLINE: Sick Around America (2009) and FRONTLINE: Sick Around the World (2008). In 2008, Kate co-produced a two-hour historical documentary, Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency for PBS. In 2004, Kate associate produced Alex Gibney’s Oscar-nominated film ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room and in 2005 she co-produced FRONTLINE: The Meth Epidemic.
In 2001, while working at ABC-NEWS Nightline producing the PBS series Life 360, Kate covered the tragic events of 9/11 for Peter Jennings in New York City.
Outside of producing video content, Kate has produced and reported public radio podcasts and publishes a monthly newsletter: Well ONE DAY, to inform and benefit people affected by childhood cancer, like herself. Kate also teaches Documentary Production and Multimedia Marketing courses at Portland Community College.
She has received several awards and nominations for her work including a Northwest Regional Emmy, a Peabody, and Emmy for her ABC-News coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York City on 9/11 and the NIHCM Health Care TV and Radio Journalism Award.
Kate lives in Portland, OR - not far from Cat! - with her husband, son, and daughter.
OUR Editorial policies
As a nonprofit journalism organization, HomeFront Productions subscribes to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News.
We retain full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue.
Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.
HomeFront also accepts gifts and grants to support coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
HomeFront makes public all donors who give $1,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.
We have a responsibility to produce journalism that reflects the diversity of America and thoughtfully highlights the experiences of families historically underserved and underrepresented in the media.
HomeFront is committed to building trust and connection with our audience. We strive to make our reporting process as transparent as possible, and when we make mistakes, we acknowledge and correct them.