A new report, commissioned by funders of local news, offers provocative suggestions for saving the industry.
It includes some sharp observations. They should be valuable to the national philanthropies, allied as a group called Press Forward, that in 2023 pledged more than $500 million to help save local journalism.
The more research the better, because saving local news is a big, complicated problem.
But I suggest Press Forward and other donors don’t rely too much on this particular report.
I fear it could lead them down a narrow path that limits the impact, reach and lasting benefit of their generous campaign to support local news.
That’s because the report is based on grant proposals from a small subset of the local news industry. It does not represent the vast majority of organizations actually doing local journalism.
“Rebuilding Local Journalism at Scale: A field-Level Analysis of Infrastructure Needs” is a deep analysis of 559 grant applications that Press Forward received, after soliciting proposals in 2024 to strengthen local news infrastructure.
Applicants had to be nonprofits, though for-profits could be part of a joint application. Less than half the proposals came from news outlets.
Author Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro told me 198 of the applications were from nonprofit newsrooms or applicants that identified as nonprofits.
Press Forward also received 74 proposals from higher education, including some institutions with public media groups, and 70 from regional journalism organizations. Another 97 were applications from libraries and other “community development institutions.”
Then there were 120 (!) grant requests from national nonprofits supporting journalism.
Hansen Shapiro was CEO of the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that acquired newspaper groups in Colorado, Georgia and Maine. She stepped down last year when the organization had to retrench and sell some papers to a commercial chain.
In an interview, she described the report as a “keyhole” providing a look into what’s needed to support the industry.
Lots of promising ideas surfaced and 22 were funded. But the applicant pool is a thin sample with biases that limit its applicability to the overall local journalism crisis.
It’s like asking a conference of radiologists how to fix a national shortage of hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses. They would have great ideas. But before going all in on their plans, you might want additional perspective.
Among the 559 applicants, there were concerning assumptions that philanthropy is a perpetual source of revenue.
Many “implicitly assume philanthropic support as a stable long-term backdrop, even as the scale of field need far exceeds available grant capital and as reliance on philanthropy raises unresolved questions about long-term sustainability and independence, particularly for accountability-driven journalism,” Hansen Shapiro wrote.
The report also asserts that journalism’s traditional “hierarchies,” prioritizing investigative and accountability reporting, are outdated and limiting. It suggests giving more priority to “service-oriented and audience-responsive journalism.” Ugh.
Grant proposals also show that assumptions about the “permanent de-commercialization of news” have coalesced among the nonprofits, Hansen Shapiro found.
That’s wildly off-base.
Nearly all local news is reported and published by commercial, for-profit businesses, primarily newspapers.
Many closed and many are struggling. But after years of brutal cost-cutting, the industry is stable and far from “de-commercializing.”
Nearly all the 5,400 surviving newspapers are for-profit. They’ll have combined revenues of around $30 billion this year and employ more than 20,000 journalists. Most have modernized, to various degrees, and operate both online and in print.
It was concern about newspapers that spurred conversations about the local journalism crisis and its effect on communities, civic literacy and democracy. That led to a surge of philanthropy. A 2023 survey found 59% of philanthropies increased support of journalism over the previous five years and 52% planned to give more to journalism in the future.
The support has been transformative. Commercial outlets like The Seattle Times bolstered their newsrooms with grant-supported journalists.
Nonprofit news startups proliferated and some have won Pulitzer Prizes. Converting outlets to a nonprofit is also an exit strategy for some retiring owners. But they remain a small subset of the ecosystem, with around 500 to 700 outlets.
Yet more than 90% of digital news startups (and 98% of news philanthropy) are in urban areas that aren’t necessarily news deserts. A 2022 analysis found they also tend to fail at about the same rate as new ones are created.
Hansen Shapiro agreed that focusing just on one business model “is very limiting.” She called out a section of the report describing how the nonprofit model can dampen experimentation and risk-taking, because its incentives are different from those of a commercial business.
“I think we’re going to get stuck in a little eddy if this is touted as, like, the only solution,” she said.
What’s also proliferating are nonprofit journalism support groups, in some cases mirroring groups that have long supported the industry.
The report suggests that funders consider thinning the herd, potentially through consolidations, because there’s so much duplication and overlapping administrative work consuming grant dollars.
Hansen Shapiro wrote that the long-term health of local journalism depends on whether it can cut costs and find efficiencies, including shared infrastructure and consolidation.
Sadly, that’s been happening across the local news industry for decades.
Chain newspapers in particular consolidated operations, turning to shared infrastructure like sales and administration in remote locations. Some have even outsourced reporting and editing to central offices, distant vendors or AI systems.
That contributed to the loss of 77% of newspaper jobs since 2004. Publications and production facilities have consolidated, fewer stories are covered and more people are deciding they’re fine with the jumble of “free” news online and on TV.
I guess it’s ironic that the report concludes journalism nonprofits must make the same painful choices that those dead-ender capitalists took to become sustainable.
That may help Press Forward and others get more bang for their buck. I hope it also prompts a discussion about whether they are broadly reviving local journalism or building a smaller version of what already exists.
Brier Dudley is editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press Initiative. This column was originally published on March 15th and is reprinted here with permission. Dudley’s work will appear regularly on the Medill Local News Initiative site.
