Kevin Loker, senior director for program operations and partnerships at the American Press Institute, recently completed a visiting fellowship with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His project explored the reimagining of local opinion journalism — and philanthropy’s role in the trend. Below is the introduction from the full report, which you can read here.
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Journalism has played an important role in our democracy since our country’s founding nearly 250 years ago. Our free press is that “great bulwark of liberty,” as my alma mater’s namesake, George Mason, put it in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted that same 1776. Journalism helps the public hold the powerful accountable, and when executed well, it helps the public make well-informed decisions and our communities thrive.
As a resident of Virginia interested in my family’s and community’s flourishing, it’s encouraging for me to see today’s community and philanthropic leaders affirm journalism’s critical role in a democratic society. Since 2016, U.S. philanthropic support for journalism has increased just as the field promoting a healthy democracy has overall. As one example, more than half of funders in a recent survey said their journalism grantmaking had increased in the past five years, with roughly a third reporting funding journalism for the first time. Notably, more than 7 in 10 funders said they had made investments to support local journalism.
That interest is coming from multiple directions.
Interest in supporting local journalism exists across political divides, at least at the institutional level. The bipartisan More Perfect effort, a “campaign to align America around a shared vision for democratic renewal,” is one example. Founded as a partnership among all 14 of the country’s Presidential Centers, it now counts more than 100 nonprofit and institutional partners representing a range of political persuasions, from Edward M. Kennedy Institute to the McCain Institute. More Perfect includes “Access to Trusted News & Information” as one of five “Democracy Goals,” with local news specifically listed alongside information at the state and national levels.
Longtime philanthropic supporters of journalism are doubling down on local journalism specifically—and encouraging others to join them. The MacArthur Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in 2023 anchored the launch of Press Forward, a “$500+ million initiative to reimagine local news,” which in June 2024 counted 62 funders in its coalition. Their interim report projected a $100+ million investment in local news by the end of 2024.
Designed in part to bring new dollars into supporting local news, many Press Forward funders are local, empowering a trend already underway. Twenty-five Press Forward local chapters had been established by June 2024, with partners including community funders such as the Atwood Foundation in Alaska, the Blue Grass Community Foundation in Kentucky, and the North Carolina Local News Lab Fund.
And that says nothing of funders, both large entities and individuals of various backgrounds, that are exploring their own direct funding of local journalism initiatives. Corporate-connected philanthropy, such as Microsoft’s Democracy Forward program and Levi Strauss Foundation, support local journalism transformation. In July 2024, NPR announced a $5.5 million grant from philanthropists Eric and Wendy Schmidt to launch regional newsrooms in Appalachia and the Mountain West, and to sustain other collaboratives. Individual giving makes up 29% of nonprofit news sites’ revenue, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News, with almost a third of that coming from donors giving less than $1,000 a year. The funding landscape now comfortably ranges from long-standing foundations to community foundations to individuals of high net worth to small donations from individuals that add up to large support.
Research on journalism’s role in inclusive democracy underscores the attention on—and the urgency of—these investments. “News deserts” are growing rapidly, with newspapers (often weeklies serving rural areas) closing at an average rate of more than two a week. When a newspaper closes, it increases political polarization, as measured by an increase in partisan down-ballot voting. But when a local paper stays focused on local issues, it appears to slow polarization.
The philanthropic support may be welcomed by many in an ailing news industry, a complex information landscape, and a democracy challenged in 2024 by much more than polarization.
But what intrigued me and formed the basis for my project as an SNF Agora Institute Visiting Fellow was this often-cited last study, the one about the effects on polarization from news outlets keeping a focus on local issues. The findings were not that keeping reporting focused on local politics—that is, on city hall over the presidency—limited polarization (though that should be studied, too) but rather that keeping local opinion and commentary focused on local issues did so.
Further, from more than a decade of work at the American Press Institute, I have seen that philanthropy is not just funding more local reporters and experiments on the “news” side, an intervention that might signal a priority on “more facts, please” as leading to better civic health. It’s also funding experiments in local opinion sections, bolstering the civic discourse these community forums provide.
The trends highlight a key point: Local journalism has many functions. This report explores why philanthropy should be interested in more than one of them.
The bulwark needs both fact and commentary
When I moved as a kid to a small town in rural South Dakota, the paper I came to read every day provided facts (it held city hall accountable) but it also provided a vehicle, through the opinion section, for residents to share their views, debate, and influence the public conversation. As a newcomer, the op-eds and letters I read taught me issues my neighbors cared about, stakeholders for those issues, and that there was at least some room to air divergent views about what’s best for the community.
To George Mason and his contemporaries, the value of the free press would have always been about more than gathering and publishing facts. Alexander Hamilton and co-authors published The Federalist Papers, arguments to ratify the Constitution, in two New York state newspapers, the New York Packet and The Independent Journal. These written opinions were reprinted in papers across the state. And the early days of U.S. newspapers blurred reporting, commentary, and analysis, as political parties and politicians often subsidized newspapers (including Hamilton and his New York Post). News of current events mattered, but so did the space and the vehicle for discourse they provided.
Of course, in the intervening years, the position of opinion journalism has changed. Historians note that the New York Tribune introduced the separation of news and opinion when it gave opinion its own page. That separation has largely held, with newspapers (including eventually the one I read in South Dakota) copying the format. Even new nonprofit news and commercial start-ups retain such distinctions. Some media companies are doubling down on the distinction, even as the rise of self-publishing, enabled by the internet, may again be blurring lines.
Ask American journalists today and one will find open debate about how much opinion should be in our press and where. What opinion should come through in news stories, if at all? Do opinion sections cause more trouble than good and should they be dumped entirely? Are there middle grounds where fact and analysis or perspective can be labeled in a clearer way?
Americans, however, recognize that journalism should do many things. Majorities in surveys say it should be accurate and fair and provide diverse perspectives. Many say it should provide community forums. Young consumers of news say about the same as older generations on these points—and young people who pay or donate to news are more likely to want the forums. And as far back as 2018, Americans signaled that clarity of purpose is useful. Roughly 8 in 10 said to address fake news and misinformation, journalists should make the difference between news stories and opinion “more distinct.”
These debates aside, philanthropists and researchers paying attention to the role of local journalism in U.S. democracy would do well to notice two modern trends:
1. Local opinion and commentary sections are reinventing themselves for today’s needs. The image of a standard opinion page, the same as it was decades ago, does not speak to the innovation underway in big and small ways across the country. To support civic discourse and better serve communities, news leaders are reimagining how they steward the local marketplace of ideas, the local “agora,” supporting democratic discourse. We are at the start of a movement where opinion editors are finding new ways to model healthy civic discourse, equip residents for healthy civic discourse, and even actively facilitate healthy discourse. These roles of the opinion sections complement and expand what’s possible with traditional reporting—together they fortify the bulwark—though limitations in staffing, resources, and skills inhibit experimentation.
2. While much philanthropic funding for journalism focuses on increasing reporters or the amount and quality of news reporting, grants and donations have also supported experiments that advance this reimagining of local opinion. People are seeing the value of local opinion journalism and the “agora” it provides to help civic life. Local media have found ways to partner with philanthropy or take donations to fund opinion editor positions, enable series on pressing local issues and from more diverse voices, and equip more residents to share their voices on the topics that matter to them. Like philanthropic involvement with traditional news reporting, unique ethical considerations remain. Yet news organizations and funders are navigating them for the good of better local conversation.
This report is designed as an introduction to both trends. It relies on discussions and planning from a convening I hosted among opinion editors, researchers, and philanthropists at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., in 2024; two larger convenings of opinion editors I organized in 2019 and 2023 for the American Press Institute; and participation in programming with news leaders, philanthropists, and researchers at API since 2013, as well as new research, interviews, and surveys with involved parties.
Mini-case studies and discussions within this report will provide an overview of the ways philanthropy and community donations are helping reimagine local opinion journalism. They are complemented by reflections on the civic functions of opinion journalism, how quickly the landscape of opinion journalism has changed, and what news leaders see restrains them from embracing these functions more fully.
The report ends with implications and recommendations for academic researchers, philanthropists interested in the health of U.S. democracy, and news leaders themselves.
The moment we’re in is a junction for how stakeholders support and reimagine local journalism. It deserves a lens that includes what’s possible, and already happening, for both reporting and opinion.
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- Philanthropy and local opinion journalism: A civic opportunity
- How local opinion journalism serves civic discourse and democracy
- Challenges, opportunities for local opinion journalism and philanthropy
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