Ups and downs in nonprofit news
Yesterday brought both hope and disappointment in the world of nonprofit news.
First, the hope: The Cowles family of Washington state announced that it was donating The Spokesman-Review to a Spokane-based nonprofit organization, the Comma community journalism laboratory.
Under the deal, Comma would raise an initial $2 million, then Cowles would match it. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds laid out the details, rationale and ambition behind the arrangement.
Later came the misfortune. The nonprofit outlet Houston Landing said it is closing as a result of financial challenges. “Although Houston Landing launched with significant seed funding, it has been unable to build additional revenue streams to support ongoing operations,” the organization said on its website.
Sewell Chan, editor of Columbia Journalism Review who was previously editor of the Texas Tribune, laid out some numbers including this one: Last year the Landing spent $2 million more than it brought in.
Noting the recent closure of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, he walked through some of the current challenges facing nonprofit news. Among them: “The growth of the nonprofit news movement has meant more competition for donations and eyeballs.”
News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.
Civic Discourse & Democracy
>> White House to ask Congress to rescind $1.1 billion From NPR and PBS (The New York Times)
The White House is planning to ask Congress to rescind more than $1 billion budgeted for public broadcasting in the United States in a move that “could ultimately eliminate almost all federal support for NPR and PBS.” Government money accounts for a small part of those networks’ budgets, a team of New York Times reporters writes, with most funding going to local stations.
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Culture & Inclusion
>> Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters. (Grist)
In 2023, the federal government began translating extreme weather alerts into Spanish, Chinese and other languages for people who don’t speak English. Now, write Grist’s Kate Yoder and Ayurella Horn-Muller, those alerts are gone. The change, they write, will leave some people vulnerable at a time when climate change is bringing about extreme weather events.
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Community Engagement & Trust
>> Events are driving local news forward — and the results are measurable (Editor & Publisher)
A “robust calendar of events” is a good sign that a local media operation is working to strengthen its connection with its community, writes Bob Sillick. He cites five local news organizations across the country that are holding events of various types, saying they allow local media to both “engage with the local community and attract more event sponsors, subscribers and advertisers.”
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Revenue & Resilience
>> Oregon lawmakers to decide whether big tech should pay to support local journalism (The Oregonian)
Oregon’s legislature is considering a bill that would require big tech companies like Google and Meta to compensate local publishers for their locally generated content. The legislation would require the firms to pay at least $122 million per year to online news outlets in the state. Support for the bill is growing, writes Carlos Fuentes, meaning Oregon could become one of the first states to make tech giants pay for content.
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What else you need to know
🌪️ CNN’s Mark Thompson: ‘Our entire industry is going through a revolution’ (Financial Times)
👀 Reuters is the latest media company to drop ‘diversity’ language in response to Trump executive order (Nieman Lab)
🔀 Journalism at the crossroads: Notes from Perugia IJF25 (Medium, Djordje Padejski)
📉 Support dips for U.S. government, tech companies restricting false or violent online content (Pew Research Center)
