Sixteen years ago, two dozen nonprofit newsrooms from around the country gathered in New York to create Investigative News Network.
It was recognition of the drastic and traumatic changes in journalism in the 21st Century — the failing for-profit business model, the closing of newspapers, and ongoing budget and staff cuts in newsrooms, and the diminishing of watchdog journalism.
But rather than bemoaning these conditions the gathering offered a new way forward through collaborative nonprofit journalism. A new way that has been so embraced that the network now has 500 member organizations that must meet the network standards of independence and transparency.
The group agreed on a document known as the Pocantico Declaration (named after where the gathering was held, the Pocantico Estate.)
“Its mission is very simple: to aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work and public reach of its member news organizations, including, to the fullest extent possible, their administrative, editorial and financial wellbeing. And, more broadly, to foster the highest quality investigative journalism, and to hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels.”
With veteran journalists leaving or being laid off from newspapers during and after the Great Recession of 2008, the group believed there was a realistic and valid alternative to traditional for-profit media.
There were already successful examples of long-standing nonprofit newsrooms – Mother Jones, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity – and relatively new enterprises – the Pulitzer Center, ProPublica, the Voice of San Diego, the Texas Tribune, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and other local and regional newsrooms, including the Beacon in St. Louis. Furthermore, PBS and NPR stations provided hundreds of examples of nonprofits providing news.
What was not fully realized at the time was that the needs of the industry went beyond investigative reporting to the very roots of the community news coverage that included watchdog and public service journalism.
Thus, the network expanded to welcome non-profit community newsrooms that included watchdog and public service reporting and changed its name to the Institute for Nonprofit News. The purpose of the network also was condensed into two practical tasks: Provide intense training in best business practices for journalists who had little or no experience in running a nonprofit small business and create vibrant environment in which it would be easier to collaborate on stories and share editorial and business tips.
The initiative was met with doubts and skepticism, particularly from traditional newsrooms who had fervently resisted change. Those newsrooms and columnists suggested foundations and funders would be fickle and cease supporting nonprofit newsrooms within a few years. They said foundations would unduly influence news coverage, ignoring that newsrooms had always undergone pressures from advertisers. They doubted that small newsrooms could have impact or develop sufficient audiences and questioned the expertise of the nonprofit reporters, even though many were former colleagues.
In addition, their media reporters, who lived in that ever-smaller bubble of awareness of journalism outside their newsrooms, were especially slow at recognizing what was happening. Even last year, a New York Times reporter suddenly came to and noted that nonprofits seemed to be “popping up” around the country.
But with the slow and inevitable death spiral of traditional news, dozens of startups were launched each year since 2009, and those newsrooms continue with a relatively small failure rate compared with commercial news.
Two recent studies chronicle contrasting patterns in detail.
The annual News Deserts report this fall from Northwestern University and its Medill School found that the number of counties in the U.S. with no or only one news source to be about 1,700, meaning that about 50 million people have “limited or no access to local news.” Another 136 newspapers closed in the last year making the total for two years at 236 closures. The report also estimated that the traditional newspaper industry has lost more than three quarters of its jobs since 2005.
The News Deserts reports more recently have recognized the soaring numbers of local nonprofit newsrooms. It estimated this year that there had been “more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support.” But it said the vast majority of those startups are in metro areas.
However, the report pointed out the number of local news sites that are part of larger national networks continues to multiply and said there are 849 sites across 54 separate networks that “illustrates the increasingly prominent role of digital network sites on the local news landscape.”
The report that best tracks the rise of the nonprofit newsrooms, however, is the annual survey and index by the Institute for Nonprofit News. This fall’s edition quantifies and details the continuing increase in local and rural newsrooms in INN membership.
The 2025 INN Index, which is the eighth annual survey of INN members across North America, “show that nonprofit news organizations continued to strengthen financially in 2024, building on revenue growth from the prior year while also seeing a steady rise in the number of local outlets joining the field.”
It shows that “for the first time, local news outlets make up the majority of INN’s membership, rising to 51% in 2024 from 48% in 2023. These organizations often operate with smaller budgets and leaner staff, yet they distinguish themselves through a close alignment with community needs. Local outlets are far more likely to define their missions around broad and current news coverage: 75% cover a wide range of topics (compared with 29% of non-local outlets) and 61% focus on current events (versus 25%). They are also more likely to serve rural communities, with 23% doing so compared with 16% of non-local outlets.
The index noted that true to the original mission,” INN members are turning to collaborations to increase capacity and reach. In 2024, 4 in 10 organizations participated in four or more editorial collaborations, and nearly 80% partnered on at least one… The steady rise in collaboration reflects a durable trend of resource-sharing across the field.” In addition, INN has created a rural network of dozens of its members newsrooms who are reporting on issues outside of urban areas.
Outside of INN, for profit newsrooms are turning to or incorporating nonprofit business models. Over the past few years The Salt Lake Tribune and other for-profit newspapers switched to nonprofit status. The Seattle Times partnered with a foundation to raise money to fund more than two dozen reporters doing investigations and covering beats. Other newspapers are asking readers to donate to them without the benefit of tax deductions, and many are seeking grants from foundations while still reaping profits for owners and investors.
What Lies Ahead
Meanwhile, the link between community news and democracy has become more apparent and more funds from foundations are being steered to journalism. A major initiative, Press Forward, was started two years ago to pool foundations’ funds and encourage community foundations to contribute to the newsroom. While it has had a shaky start the effort has increased the public’s awareness of the damaging results to society from the loss of local and regional news.
But new perils to journalism and nonprofit newsrooms have also become vividly apparent. While commercial news has been the target of the current Trump administration through lawsuits and constant criticism, the attack on nonprofit news is spreading. Internationally, the shutdown of US AID money damaged an estimated one third of the 250 non-profit newsroom members of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, which is an organization that was one of the inspirations for INN.
In the U.S., a lethal blow was dealt to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, when its funding was cut, and budgets for PBS and NPR were slashed leaving some of its stations on the verge of failure. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has called for an overhaul of the IRS and replaced the chief of its investigative unit so that the agency can pursue donors and groups the administration believes are “left leaning.”
Among those targets are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, who has supported nonprofit journalism newsroom internationally through the Open Society Foundation. Other major donors and foundations also are bracing for the kind of assault the administration has mounted on universities.
Yet while the battle to sustain a free and independent nonprofit press heats up, another sector of nonprofit journalism is growing and thriving at universities. Indeed, the number of college journalists and newsrooms covering communities and statehouses throughout the U.S. has gone from a handful over the past decade to more than 170 such newsrooms across the country, as counted by the Center for Community News, which has established a network of those newsrooms.
Thus, the journey of nonprofit newsrooms is far from finished.