University journalism programs increasingly offer their students the opportunity to report from poor or marginalized communities. The advantage: you don't have to pay the reporters. The disadvantage: they don't bring knowledge of the communities they cover and they don't stick around once they've acquired it. What I learned after founding The Hunts Point Express at Hunter College and the Mott Haven Herald at the CUNY j-school is that to succeed you need at least one paid editor who becomes a mainstay in the community. I was able to raise enough money to fund that position, but after that editor and I retired, the post went unfilled, The Express was merged with the Herald and the story count and story depth diminished.
Thanks for this, Buddy, and greetings from a fellow Riverdale native. For those who don’t know, Mr. Stein is a former Pulitzer-winning local publisher, as it happens from the neighborhood where I grew up.
Our sites in Berkeley and Oakland are now strong enough that they are effectively subsidizing Richmond. Richmond, standing alone, would never be self-supporting, certainly not at the quality and depth the community deserves (based on my root belief that relying on foundation support forever is not a believable strategy).
Also, a slowly increasing number of supporters understand and appreciate that we're building a network of local newsrooms serving diverse communities, some of which don't have the resources to adequately support the work.
Responding to the comment from Corinne in southeast Ohio, we're acutely aware of the dangers of parachuting into a community. That's why our pace of growth has at times frustrated some of our funders. We never want to be riding into a place on our horse waving the banner of local news for the benighted inhabitants. The newsroom has to, in some fundamental ways, be of, by and for the community. We're bringing considerable expertise and money, but without the work being rooted locally, it will fail.
If you want a TLDR on my Nieman prediction, it's this paragraph, which I think echoes some of the themes of Dick's newsletter:
The harsh truth is that, taken in isolation, there is likely no viable economic model for decent news provision in economically struggling cities or rural areas. For-profit publishers have either already abandoned these places, or they will in the near future. I think the nonprofit perspective reaches a different conclusion. We look at those cities and rural counties and think: that’s our mission, right there.
This is exactly the path that makes the most sense now. A major issue is that extractive models are accelerating the number of communities in need as they monetize the assets to the point of extinction through pricing and cost reductions.
A scaled non-profit model that sees those without local news sources as the mission has a chance to invest the earnings from the operations into that mission. Earnings invested rather than distributed to shareholders, predatory ownership or debt service.
Hey Lance — I would love it if relatively wealthy nonprofits could support a pooled fund that offers general operating support to less-wealthy ones (as well as startups, since startup funding is incredibly difficult). Maybe INN could administer it, although INN would rather not be valued primarily as a funder. My concern is whether that kind of support is sufficient to meet the need. The fact of the matter is that rural and small-market organizations will always have a gap between what we can raise from our communities and what we need to sustain a robust news operation. A pooled fund could help fill some of that gap, but I wonder if larger orgs consistently have enough excess profits to support it. And I worry about potential pressure on orgs like CitySide to cannibalize their own operations to support mine. IMO, we should be putting pressure on Big J-philanthropy to put its money where its “saving journalism” mouth is.
I think only a handful at best have sufficient surpluses to contemplate something like that. We do it in an owned-and-operated way as a deep part of our mission. And, I'll admit, it's very early days. There's nothing easy about this business. Yes, it would be wonderful if institutional philanthropy made it a priority, but I'm with Dick in having a very skeptical view of the long-term commitment there.
Thanks Dick. Lack of sustainable money is the heart of the problem. Press Forward was a huge disappointment. We were one of the few 220 or so lucky news outlet that received $50,000 each year for two years and they went to for-profit and nonprofit outlets. Where did the rest of the half a billion dollars go? It certainly wasn't enough to pay a director of development or build our business department as we have long dreamed. The reporters and writers and tech guy and everyone here at nonprofit InDepthNH.org have subsidized local news with our cheap and often free labor for 10 years because we can’t stand to watch as the powerful continue to take over, to the detriment of New Hampshire and democracy, without at least trying to inform the people. We need to come up with a real financial plan even though I truly believe our readers have been generous. It's just not enough and remember we'll need more next week and next year. Everyone, call me if you’ve got a plan and I will work on coming up with one myself, although I seem to have drawn a blank in that department for a decade. 603-738-5635. I will post on InDepthNH.org by next Thursday what I come up with. email me what you come up with at nancywestnews@gmail.com We can do this, just harder than I expected. And giving money to the organizations that keep on training us, or to train our neighbors to be pretend reporters would be fine if we were funding real reporters first. We know how to do the news part, just not great at the money end. Thanks, Nancy West, proud journalist for four decades no matter what they say about us.
As an editor/publisher in a rural county, I see firsthand that the available membership and advertising dollars can sustain a lean, well-managed newsroom. A thirty-dollar a year subscription is doable, especially when coupled with sponsorship or advertising, and distribution partnerships with national organizations, like NPR, or Apple News that can expand their markets through local partnerships. If the LLMs want to include our content, they should pay. It is possible, under the right conditions, to make a living.
So how do we allow the right conditions to emerge?
What rural communities often need is stability, not duplication. We need negotiators at the table, not do-gooders whose efforts undercut local business models.
Outside investors — both nonprofit and for-profit — can unintentionally divert limited advertising and membership dollars while producing coverage that relies heavily on announcements and press releases. Truly local, in-depth reporting, is repurposed by outside organizations with more powerful SEO and larger distribution networks, without credit to the original work. It's an example of how in small markets, where the revenue pool is finite, well-funded new entrants can destabilize existing local outlets — sometimes intentionally.
In one case I am personally familiar with, a taxpayer-funded reporting position — one of the few roles paying at or near the area’s median income — functions in a way that competes directly with established local publishers. That may not have been the intended outcome when the funds were appropriated by the California Legislature, but it illustrates how public or philanthropic investments can have unintended market effects.
There's an easy fix — Creative Commons licensing for taxpayer-funded work and intentional collaboration on other stories— but that would require a cultural shift by the institutions that say they want to advance local news.
Rural communities deserve reporting that is deeply rooted, accountable, and economically sustainable within the community itself.
Philanthropic models appear to be strengthening larger urban markets. But rural local news has not experienced the same recovery. In many places, the challenge is not a lack of outside interest — it is ensuring that limited local resources reinforce, rather than fragment, the news ecosystem.
Dick, your point about the "hardest problem" is the right one to be obsessing over, but I’d argue there’s an even deeper structural trap here: Concentration Risk.
In the research I’ve been doing on major giving, there’s a recurring "single point of failure" that haunts almost every mission-driven organization. When 70% or 80% of your funding comes from a tiny slice of donors giving $5k+, the operation stops being a community asset and becomes a fragile dependency. That "strategic fickleness" you mentioned isn't just a donor personality trait; it’s a systemic risk when we build newsrooms to a scale that requires those few large checks just to keep the lights on.
The goal is to move away from this high-risk concentration and build a model lean enough to survive on a broader, more distributed base of support. We have to stop building newsrooms that are one "no" away from extinction, especially in the places that need us most.
Yes on the idea of PEOs. It's a great way to begin to bring fragmented newsites run by individual journalists into a coordinated whole that can divide and conquer on big stories and upskill together.
I agree about the danger of funding concentration, but there are some communities which are so poor that there is no model lean enough. See my comment above about Harvey IL.
Hi, Yoni — In the linked article, you state that “these aren’t just zip codes; they are high-intent ‘civic islands.’ By testing the model in a cluster that ranges from 18% to 42% non-white residency, I’m proving that revenue density isn’t a ‘wealthy enclave’ phenomenon. It’s a human one. It’s about people who are invested in where they live.”
But in my experience, revenue density isn’t a function of people’s desire to invest in their community. In a county with a 25% poverty rate, more than 55% of our historical individual giving revenue has come from people who give less than $1k/year. Most of that comes from recurring donations of $5/month.
In our annual reader surveys, we ask those who have never given to us why they don’t. Most of them say that it’s because they can’t afford even $5/month. For these folks, $5 isn’t about giving up Starbucks one day a month; it’s about needing every dollar they have for basic needs. Those folks still support us by subscribing to our newsletters, sharing our stories on social media, and telling their family and friends about us. They may not be able to invest financially, but they’re definitely invested in our survival — because they know that high-quality, locally owned independent news is a pillar of a strong community.
This is a very effective assessment of one of journalism's toughest problems. Thank you for such a succinct statement of the challenge.
In 2018 I coauthored an article with Fiona Morgan entitled "Poor Information: How Economics Affects the Information Lives of Low-Income Individuals" which looks at how information creation depends on the different values placed on changing the decisions of individuals and how that value varies by income. See https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8340
This line from your article sums up what has happened during the last decade of attempts to save journalism: "subsidies often flow to intermediaries rather than the intended beneficiaries."
I know from my own experience as a State Senator working in this space how hard it is to both unify the diverse news outlets still operating and advance sensible public policy— that creates sustainable financial support while maintaining journalistic independence.
I have some thoughts on this matter if you have the time to check in. My email is glazers@pacbell.net.
As someone who started a media org specifically to serve a very low-income community, I’ve been humbled(!) in learning about and experiencing the immense gaps, blind spots and biases in addressing this issue. (One of those gaps is simply awareness and attention, so I appreciate you for elevating an issue that many of my peers have been working on and thinking about from a ground level for decades.) The lack of attention and will has also meant a lack of funding to invest in new possibilities for solutions.
El Tímpano created a whole new revenue model to support our work, civic partnerships, which allowed us to grow from 0 FTEs and no philanthropic support to a team of 15 with an impact across 60+ Bay Area municipalities. I’ve written about it and about the need that led to its development at the link below. If you're interested in solutions that work, check it out. I'll be sharing more about it this spring, and happy to chat.
In the UK I think this problem was long ameliorated by the BBC. Its reach has diminished as has linear TV, of course, but I think the basic principle underpinning it is still sound.
The licence fee that (largely) funds the BBC is levied directly from every household with a television. It was preceded by a similar tax on radio ownership. The logic is pretty neat: the more the medium is used, the more funding is provided for high-quality, public service information on that medium. It's worth considering whether the same principle should be extended to the social media era.
The UK's media regulator is currently consulting on how to give public service broadcasters prominence on connected TV services, and it's urged our government to legislate to make those broadcasters easy to find on YouTube. I think that's right, but I'd take it one further: public service content should be both easy to encounter on online platforms and the burden for funding it should be tied directly to usage of those platforms. How exactly that looks, I don't know, but I don't think it's crazy to tax those platform providers as a price of doing business in the country.
I appreciate this is politically probably a non-starter in the US - frankly, it may be a non-starter here. But hey, political reality is preceded by political imagination.
Of course, as you say, any state-connected news organisation can, and to some extent probably will, be politically captured. But I'd argue that the existence of the BBC, and the shared sense of reality it fostered nationwide, have been stabilising factors that have mitigated polarisation and reinforced certain political norms - including that the independence of the public broadcaster should be preserved.
The BBC is a much greater competitive advantage for the UK than many Brits understand, I think. But the lessons for the US may be limited. Britain, for all of its coarsening, still has a much greater culture of self-restraint. My favorite example: if the US Constitution were unwritten, I think the country at this point would quickly fly apart.
Bron, you make a great point. Since software has eaten the world, and the LLMs really do exist in symbiosis with information gatherers (reporters), a tax of sorts would make sense.
As always, a succinct framing of a neglected, but important issue.
I see one avenue towards progress here: deep subject specialization. The breadth of topics and depth of knowledge and skills required to report in ANY locale is huge and getting huger: economics, accounting, medicine, legal, law enforcement, FOIA, tech, environment, data analytics…the list goes on and on. It is impossible for local shop to meet this.
And yet there are many shops and individual reporters that already have the knowledge and some of the tools to support this.
For example, in police accountability, national.cpdp.co has employment history data from over 1 million police officers from 27 states- the wandering officer problem. The data set comes via FOIA and it is growing every day. This data proved essential in the early reporting around the shooting Sonia Massey in Springfield Illinois and is a core component in police accountability reporting. And most important for this argument, doing this work requires deep know of FOIA, data analytics, legal, and police practices that a local shop could never develop, but now doesn’t need to. We need to enable reporting that otherwise would not take place.
So maybe we look for reporting fields which are: high impact, predictably occur, but have high knowledge barriers, but where there are already well know pockets of expertise. Off top of head examples might include: rural areas with massive livestock operations, ICE enforcement, municipal finance, water usage/data centers. And then Philanthropy actively supports creating codifying, and disseminating knowledge which makes local reporting possible.
I absolutely agree with your analysis of the problem, Dick. I disagree the answer is major foundations--because they also have their own priorities and tend to be patronizing. I think public funding will have to be part of the solution--especially if it looks like the funding in NJ, where the funds are actually managed by a nonprofit with a board that is not named by politicians.
One of my favorite news startups is the Harvey World Herald (https://harveyworld.org/). I visited Harvey, which is south of Chicago, with Herald founder Amethyst Davis. I was really shocked by how poor the community is--no grocery, no retail really--but also impressed by how resilient the community is, with a thriving arts community and a community-supported high school. Harvey needs great journalism--they have corrupt politicians, an deeply broken infrastructure (sewer, water, gas) and more. How are they going to get funding? What happens if the 2-3 major funders supporting them change priorities? Harvey needs more public funding period, and that includes every kind of utility including journalism.
I have been saying much the same thing since I co-founded a digital newsroom in Ohio’s poorest county in 2022. Philanthropy has long equated impact with numbers; by that measure, investing in urban and suburban markets is more effective because of the larger population. But the loss of local news sources — leaving ghost outlets and actual news deserts — has been felt most keenly in rural and small markets that have much lower philanthropic and earned revenue capacity.
The solution isn’t AJP’s version of multi-local, in which folks from the big city parachute in to establish satellite newsrooms for the hapless yokels. In southeast Ohio, we’re taking a different approach: creating a road map for local people to build their own independent outlets, all of which will share the cost of back-office functions like HR, payroll, finance, IT and graphic design. These will not be satellite operations; each outlet will be editorially and largely operationally independent.
Others have suggested that larger organizations subsidize smaller ones, but I don’t think that’s viable. Consider this: When Ohio launched its lottery, the sales pitch was that proceeds would benefit public schools. The catch is that those proceeds are “excess profits” — which means the state gets to decide how much the lottery can afford to give away to education. Spoiler: It ain’t much.
The whole point of being a nonprofit is that excess revenue goes back into the business, rather than being distributed to shareholders. We plow that profit into higher pay and benefits, upgraded equipment, new services, and shoring up our reserves. Has anyone actually studied how much large organizations can afford to siphon off to subsidize smaller ones?
Ask any of us out here in the rural/small market trenches and we’ll tell you the same thing: We need multiyear general operating support to fill the gap between what we can reasonably generate from our communities and what we need to serve our communities effectively. And it seems to me that Big J-Philanthropy has the means to make that commitment … but neither the interest nor the will to do it.
Sounds like the conversation we had back in Indy at the RJI event, Corinne. Operational budgets should be the number one priority of large philanthropy, and as I told you then, and still think, I am sick of the corporate media + venture capital dudes having the balls to swoop in to rural America and tells us how news works. Just help us do what we already know how to do. We aren't small potatoes because we aren't good enough to be big. We're responding to a need, not greed. (Sorry I deleted my other comment. This is where I meant to be).
Yes on this idea: "In southeast Ohio, we’re taking a different approach: creating a road map for local people to build their own independent outlets, all of which will share the cost of back-office functions like HR, payroll, finance, IT and graphic design" -- Corinne, I'd love to talk more about how you are going bout this.
We’re a worker-managed nonprofit as well. Tara Francis Chan, an RJI fellow, just completed her study of nontraditional news business models, including a practical guide to starting and running a nontraditional newsroom. The Athens County Independent was just one of the organizations she studied.
Agreed on many points, but we also need to be sure that increased funding also goes to local talent development. Sending outside journalists into an at risk community, and even regional news collaboratives, are helpful, but if those journalists don't fully understand the local culture it's not necessarily serving that community.
Not only talent development, but also sufficient funding to provide staff with a living wage and appropriate benefits so they can afford to put down roots. Passion and community spirit don’t pay the bills.
I do think it's a structural problem. Right now, local journalism is framed as... write stories -> get attention -> sell ads -> make money. All the focus is on making the "write stories" piece cheaper thus increasing profits. I think that's the wrong place to focus.
One of the hardest problems in building a product, especially these days, is building distribution channels. aka consistently getting attention and building trust.
However, these 2 things that are the strengths of local journalism. So I think the question is, how do you build a profitable enterprise that leverages the attention and trust structures that local media develops.
I think there's a chance that can be done by embracing and building hyper local products and services. Especially these days since code is cheap thanks to AI. Use the attention/trust to serve the communities in other ways.
This isn't new. Classified ads weren't just advertisements. They were a marketplace that leveraged the papers distribution to connected people and the paper took a cut for facilitating the connection.
I think the question is... What other products and services could local media provide to help the people in the community make progress in their lives that's local specific. Maybe the media company builds it, or maybe a third party provides it (like a syndication type model).
Good comments, speaking as an ME of two rural newspapers (exurban North Texas, not rich but moderately to decently above average for many similar rural areas on per capita income).
I won't say there's nothing to cover "in depth" (other than high school sports), but short of a hidden, unknown ax murderer on true crime or something like that, there's not THAT much in communities of under 2,000. And, no, no local government malfeasance here. Plenty of ag, but no CAFOs here.
We do, on the $$$ side, have a sports booster page that runs during the school year. Approximately 2/3 page of extra sports photos, sponsored by small ads.
Re Nancy West, we're already seeing more universities offer a "mass communications" or similar, not journalism, with PR folded together with journalism, aren't we?
No disrespect to Mr. Landfried, but it sounds like he is in part reinventing the States Newsroom wheel, only with streaming, rather than written words (whether online only or print as well). And, given that major newspapers, MAJOR newspapers, pay less than $500 for a guest column? And, streaming? Who's paying the start-up costs of video equipment? Something that looks more professional than a Zoom background? Production training? I quote from N2's website. https://www.n2mediaholdings.com/:
>>The model is funded the same way streaming platforms fund their original programming: through industry-standard cost-plus production contracts that cover 100% of operating expenses. Advertising revenue is additive margin, not survival money. Under an independent distribution model, the ad revenue model alone exceeds operating costs at scale. Either path works without grants, tax credits, or public subsidy. We are sustainable and resilient.
The Local doesn't compete with independent journalists and local newsrooms. It pays them. Partner organizations receive $500 to $1,000 per story through recurring, commercially funded contracts — earned revenue they can report to matching-fund programs like NewsMatch. The model is built to strengthen the local news ecosystem from inside it, not to replace what remains.<<
I encourage the (other?) more skeptical commenters to look at N2's FAQs page https://www.n2mediaholdings.com/faqs and Mr. Landfried's Substack, which does to me seem to have good marketing as well as a good discussion of this issue.
Next to finally, what's "rural"? I respectfully doubt Mr. Landfried would even be interested in sites at my level of rural, and probably not anything below a county of 50,000 population with one city of at least 10,000 population.
Finally, given that the Plain Stealer (sic) just announced that doubling down on AI earlier this week, larger corporations that own many smaller papers will surely eyeball how that turns out.
I appreciate the perspective. A couple of quick clarifications that might help frame what we’re doing:
First, the model isn’t built on the assumption that every small community generates deep, daily enterprise coverage on its own. All of the reporting is original—not aggregated. The structure is state-level, with a mix of statewide, regional, and local stories produced each day, so smaller communities are included consistently without needing to carry the full burden of coverage themselves. This isn’t about putting newspapers on TV—it’s about producing the stories people need to hear in a format that fits how they consume them.
Second, on costs: we’re not asking local newsrooms or journalists to fund production infrastructure. We provide the videographer and equipment at no cost to partners. They focus on reporting. We also ensure they receive bylines and can publish versions of the stories on their own platforms, so they retain visibility and value from the work. In practice, that also helps expand their reach beyond their existing audience.
Third, on rural coverage: communities smaller than 50,000 are absolutely part of the model. In many cases, they’re the ones most underserved by current systems, which is exactly the gap we’re trying to fill.
Happy to walk through it in more detail if it’s helpful—this tends to make more sense in conversation than in fragments across comment threads.
University journalism programs increasingly offer their students the opportunity to report from poor or marginalized communities. The advantage: you don't have to pay the reporters. The disadvantage: they don't bring knowledge of the communities they cover and they don't stick around once they've acquired it. What I learned after founding The Hunts Point Express at Hunter College and the Mott Haven Herald at the CUNY j-school is that to succeed you need at least one paid editor who becomes a mainstay in the community. I was able to raise enough money to fund that position, but after that editor and I retired, the post went unfilled, The Express was merged with the Herald and the story count and story depth diminished.
Thanks for this, Buddy, and greetings from a fellow Riverdale native. For those who don’t know, Mr. Stein is a former Pulitzer-winning local publisher, as it happens from the neighborhood where I grew up.
Bernard, how long do you think there are going to continue to be university journalism programs?
I think we're making it work at Cityside with what you term the multi-local model, Dick. I even wrote about it for Nieman Lab: https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/the-gap-between-nonprofit-and-for-profit-local-news-will-widen/.
Our sites in Berkeley and Oakland are now strong enough that they are effectively subsidizing Richmond. Richmond, standing alone, would never be self-supporting, certainly not at the quality and depth the community deserves (based on my root belief that relying on foundation support forever is not a believable strategy).
Also, a slowly increasing number of supporters understand and appreciate that we're building a network of local newsrooms serving diverse communities, some of which don't have the resources to adequately support the work.
Responding to the comment from Corinne in southeast Ohio, we're acutely aware of the dangers of parachuting into a community. That's why our pace of growth has at times frustrated some of our funders. We never want to be riding into a place on our horse waving the banner of local news for the benighted inhabitants. The newsroom has to, in some fundamental ways, be of, by and for the community. We're bringing considerable expertise and money, but without the work being rooted locally, it will fail.
Thanks so much, Lance, and bravo on Richmond!
If you want a TLDR on my Nieman prediction, it's this paragraph, which I think echoes some of the themes of Dick's newsletter:
The harsh truth is that, taken in isolation, there is likely no viable economic model for decent news provision in economically struggling cities or rural areas. For-profit publishers have either already abandoned these places, or they will in the near future. I think the nonprofit perspective reaches a different conclusion. We look at those cities and rural counties and think: that’s our mission, right there.
This is exactly the path that makes the most sense now. A major issue is that extractive models are accelerating the number of communities in need as they monetize the assets to the point of extinction through pricing and cost reductions.
A scaled non-profit model that sees those without local news sources as the mission has a chance to invest the earnings from the operations into that mission. Earnings invested rather than distributed to shareholders, predatory ownership or debt service.
Bravo on Richmond indeed.
Hey Lance — I would love it if relatively wealthy nonprofits could support a pooled fund that offers general operating support to less-wealthy ones (as well as startups, since startup funding is incredibly difficult). Maybe INN could administer it, although INN would rather not be valued primarily as a funder. My concern is whether that kind of support is sufficient to meet the need. The fact of the matter is that rural and small-market organizations will always have a gap between what we can raise from our communities and what we need to sustain a robust news operation. A pooled fund could help fill some of that gap, but I wonder if larger orgs consistently have enough excess profits to support it. And I worry about potential pressure on orgs like CitySide to cannibalize their own operations to support mine. IMO, we should be putting pressure on Big J-philanthropy to put its money where its “saving journalism” mouth is.
I think only a handful at best have sufficient surpluses to contemplate something like that. We do it in an owned-and-operated way as a deep part of our mission. And, I'll admit, it's very early days. There's nothing easy about this business. Yes, it would be wonderful if institutional philanthropy made it a priority, but I'm with Dick in having a very skeptical view of the long-term commitment there.
Thanks Dick. Lack of sustainable money is the heart of the problem. Press Forward was a huge disappointment. We were one of the few 220 or so lucky news outlet that received $50,000 each year for two years and they went to for-profit and nonprofit outlets. Where did the rest of the half a billion dollars go? It certainly wasn't enough to pay a director of development or build our business department as we have long dreamed. The reporters and writers and tech guy and everyone here at nonprofit InDepthNH.org have subsidized local news with our cheap and often free labor for 10 years because we can’t stand to watch as the powerful continue to take over, to the detriment of New Hampshire and democracy, without at least trying to inform the people. We need to come up with a real financial plan even though I truly believe our readers have been generous. It's just not enough and remember we'll need more next week and next year. Everyone, call me if you’ve got a plan and I will work on coming up with one myself, although I seem to have drawn a blank in that department for a decade. 603-738-5635. I will post on InDepthNH.org by next Thursday what I come up with. email me what you come up with at nancywestnews@gmail.com We can do this, just harder than I expected. And giving money to the organizations that keep on training us, or to train our neighbors to be pretend reporters would be fine if we were funding real reporters first. We know how to do the news part, just not great at the money end. Thanks, Nancy West, proud journalist for four decades no matter what they say about us.
Thanks for the offer. I'll call you after I walk the dogs. It'll be from a 650 number.
I appreciate the insight.
As an editor/publisher in a rural county, I see firsthand that the available membership and advertising dollars can sustain a lean, well-managed newsroom. A thirty-dollar a year subscription is doable, especially when coupled with sponsorship or advertising, and distribution partnerships with national organizations, like NPR, or Apple News that can expand their markets through local partnerships. If the LLMs want to include our content, they should pay. It is possible, under the right conditions, to make a living.
So how do we allow the right conditions to emerge?
What rural communities often need is stability, not duplication. We need negotiators at the table, not do-gooders whose efforts undercut local business models.
Outside investors — both nonprofit and for-profit — can unintentionally divert limited advertising and membership dollars while producing coverage that relies heavily on announcements and press releases. Truly local, in-depth reporting, is repurposed by outside organizations with more powerful SEO and larger distribution networks, without credit to the original work. It's an example of how in small markets, where the revenue pool is finite, well-funded new entrants can destabilize existing local outlets — sometimes intentionally.
In one case I am personally familiar with, a taxpayer-funded reporting position — one of the few roles paying at or near the area’s median income — functions in a way that competes directly with established local publishers. That may not have been the intended outcome when the funds were appropriated by the California Legislature, but it illustrates how public or philanthropic investments can have unintended market effects.
There's an easy fix — Creative Commons licensing for taxpayer-funded work and intentional collaboration on other stories— but that would require a cultural shift by the institutions that say they want to advance local news.
Rural communities deserve reporting that is deeply rooted, accountable, and economically sustainable within the community itself.
Philanthropic models appear to be strengthening larger urban markets. But rural local news has not experienced the same recovery. In many places, the challenge is not a lack of outside interest — it is ensuring that limited local resources reinforce, rather than fragment, the news ecosystem.
Dick, your point about the "hardest problem" is the right one to be obsessing over, but I’d argue there’s an even deeper structural trap here: Concentration Risk.
In the research I’ve been doing on major giving, there’s a recurring "single point of failure" that haunts almost every mission-driven organization. When 70% or 80% of your funding comes from a tiny slice of donors giving $5k+, the operation stops being a community asset and becomes a fragile dependency. That "strategic fickleness" you mentioned isn't just a donor personality trait; it’s a systemic risk when we build newsrooms to a scale that requires those few large checks just to keep the lights on.
I’ve been testing a different hypothesis—something I call The Sebastopol Protocol (https://www.backstoryandstrategy.com/p/the-sebastopol-protocol?r=3alec&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) —to see if we can actually right-size the "Hub" to fit a community’s realistic economic scale.
The goal is to move away from this high-risk concentration and build a model lean enough to survive on a broader, more distributed base of support. We have to stop building newsrooms that are one "no" away from extinction, especially in the places that need us most.
Very interesting. Thanks for reading, and for sharing.
Yes on the idea of PEOs. It's a great way to begin to bring fragmented newsites run by individual journalists into a coordinated whole that can divide and conquer on big stories and upskill together.
I agree about the danger of funding concentration, but there are some communities which are so poor that there is no model lean enough. See my comment above about Harvey IL.
Hi, Yoni — In the linked article, you state that “these aren’t just zip codes; they are high-intent ‘civic islands.’ By testing the model in a cluster that ranges from 18% to 42% non-white residency, I’m proving that revenue density isn’t a ‘wealthy enclave’ phenomenon. It’s a human one. It’s about people who are invested in where they live.”
But in my experience, revenue density isn’t a function of people’s desire to invest in their community. In a county with a 25% poverty rate, more than 55% of our historical individual giving revenue has come from people who give less than $1k/year. Most of that comes from recurring donations of $5/month.
In our annual reader surveys, we ask those who have never given to us why they don’t. Most of them say that it’s because they can’t afford even $5/month. For these folks, $5 isn’t about giving up Starbucks one day a month; it’s about needing every dollar they have for basic needs. Those folks still support us by subscribing to our newsletters, sharing our stories on social media, and telling their family and friends about us. They may not be able to invest financially, but they’re definitely invested in our survival — because they know that high-quality, locally owned independent news is a pillar of a strong community.
This is a very effective assessment of one of journalism's toughest problems. Thank you for such a succinct statement of the challenge.
In 2018 I coauthored an article with Fiona Morgan entitled "Poor Information: How Economics Affects the Information Lives of Low-Income Individuals" which looks at how information creation depends on the different values placed on changing the decisions of individuals and how that value varies by income. See https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8340
This line from your article sums up what has happened during the last decade of attempts to save journalism: "subsidies often flow to intermediaries rather than the intended beneficiaries."
worth reading. Thanks so much, Professor.
Appreciate your informed perspective.
I know from my own experience as a State Senator working in this space how hard it is to both unify the diverse news outlets still operating and advance sensible public policy— that creates sustainable financial support while maintaining journalistic independence.
I have some thoughts on this matter if you have the time to check in. My email is glazers@pacbell.net.
As someone who started a media org specifically to serve a very low-income community, I’ve been humbled(!) in learning about and experiencing the immense gaps, blind spots and biases in addressing this issue. (One of those gaps is simply awareness and attention, so I appreciate you for elevating an issue that many of my peers have been working on and thinking about from a ground level for decades.) The lack of attention and will has also meant a lack of funding to invest in new possibilities for solutions.
El Tímpano created a whole new revenue model to support our work, civic partnerships, which allowed us to grow from 0 FTEs and no philanthropic support to a team of 15 with an impact across 60+ Bay Area municipalities. I’ve written about it and about the need that led to its development at the link below. If you're interested in solutions that work, check it out. I'll be sharing more about it this spring, and happy to chat.
https://www.eltimpano.org/inside-el-timpano/toward-equitable-models-of-journalism-sustainability/
In the UK I think this problem was long ameliorated by the BBC. Its reach has diminished as has linear TV, of course, but I think the basic principle underpinning it is still sound.
The licence fee that (largely) funds the BBC is levied directly from every household with a television. It was preceded by a similar tax on radio ownership. The logic is pretty neat: the more the medium is used, the more funding is provided for high-quality, public service information on that medium. It's worth considering whether the same principle should be extended to the social media era.
The UK's media regulator is currently consulting on how to give public service broadcasters prominence on connected TV services, and it's urged our government to legislate to make those broadcasters easy to find on YouTube. I think that's right, but I'd take it one further: public service content should be both easy to encounter on online platforms and the burden for funding it should be tied directly to usage of those platforms. How exactly that looks, I don't know, but I don't think it's crazy to tax those platform providers as a price of doing business in the country.
I appreciate this is politically probably a non-starter in the US - frankly, it may be a non-starter here. But hey, political reality is preceded by political imagination.
Of course, as you say, any state-connected news organisation can, and to some extent probably will, be politically captured. But I'd argue that the existence of the BBC, and the shared sense of reality it fostered nationwide, have been stabilising factors that have mitigated polarisation and reinforced certain political norms - including that the independence of the public broadcaster should be preserved.
The BBC is a much greater competitive advantage for the UK than many Brits understand, I think. But the lessons for the US may be limited. Britain, for all of its coarsening, still has a much greater culture of self-restraint. My favorite example: if the US Constitution were unwritten, I think the country at this point would quickly fly apart.
Bron, you make a great point. Since software has eaten the world, and the LLMs really do exist in symbiosis with information gatherers (reporters), a tax of sorts would make sense.
Very tough issue. Thanks.
As always, a succinct framing of a neglected, but important issue.
I see one avenue towards progress here: deep subject specialization. The breadth of topics and depth of knowledge and skills required to report in ANY locale is huge and getting huger: economics, accounting, medicine, legal, law enforcement, FOIA, tech, environment, data analytics…the list goes on and on. It is impossible for local shop to meet this.
And yet there are many shops and individual reporters that already have the knowledge and some of the tools to support this.
For example, in police accountability, national.cpdp.co has employment history data from over 1 million police officers from 27 states- the wandering officer problem. The data set comes via FOIA and it is growing every day. This data proved essential in the early reporting around the shooting Sonia Massey in Springfield Illinois and is a core component in police accountability reporting. And most important for this argument, doing this work requires deep know of FOIA, data analytics, legal, and police practices that a local shop could never develop, but now doesn’t need to. We need to enable reporting that otherwise would not take place.
So maybe we look for reporting fields which are: high impact, predictably occur, but have high knowledge barriers, but where there are already well know pockets of expertise. Off top of head examples might include: rural areas with massive livestock operations, ICE enforcement, municipal finance, water usage/data centers. And then Philanthropy actively supports creating codifying, and disseminating knowledge which makes local reporting possible.
Very interesting, and holds some promise for those already engaged with the news— but less so, I fear, for average local citizens.
I absolutely agree with your analysis of the problem, Dick. I disagree the answer is major foundations--because they also have their own priorities and tend to be patronizing. I think public funding will have to be part of the solution--especially if it looks like the funding in NJ, where the funds are actually managed by a nonprofit with a board that is not named by politicians.
One of my favorite news startups is the Harvey World Herald (https://harveyworld.org/). I visited Harvey, which is south of Chicago, with Herald founder Amethyst Davis. I was really shocked by how poor the community is--no grocery, no retail really--but also impressed by how resilient the community is, with a thriving arts community and a community-supported high school. Harvey needs great journalism--they have corrupt politicians, an deeply broken infrastructure (sewer, water, gas) and more. How are they going to get funding? What happens if the 2-3 major funders supporting them change priorities? Harvey needs more public funding period, and that includes every kind of utility including journalism.
I have been saying much the same thing since I co-founded a digital newsroom in Ohio’s poorest county in 2022. Philanthropy has long equated impact with numbers; by that measure, investing in urban and suburban markets is more effective because of the larger population. But the loss of local news sources — leaving ghost outlets and actual news deserts — has been felt most keenly in rural and small markets that have much lower philanthropic and earned revenue capacity.
The solution isn’t AJP’s version of multi-local, in which folks from the big city parachute in to establish satellite newsrooms for the hapless yokels. In southeast Ohio, we’re taking a different approach: creating a road map for local people to build their own independent outlets, all of which will share the cost of back-office functions like HR, payroll, finance, IT and graphic design. These will not be satellite operations; each outlet will be editorially and largely operationally independent.
Others have suggested that larger organizations subsidize smaller ones, but I don’t think that’s viable. Consider this: When Ohio launched its lottery, the sales pitch was that proceeds would benefit public schools. The catch is that those proceeds are “excess profits” — which means the state gets to decide how much the lottery can afford to give away to education. Spoiler: It ain’t much.
The whole point of being a nonprofit is that excess revenue goes back into the business, rather than being distributed to shareholders. We plow that profit into higher pay and benefits, upgraded equipment, new services, and shoring up our reserves. Has anyone actually studied how much large organizations can afford to siphon off to subsidize smaller ones?
Ask any of us out here in the rural/small market trenches and we’ll tell you the same thing: We need multiyear general operating support to fill the gap between what we can reasonably generate from our communities and what we need to serve our communities effectively. And it seems to me that Big J-Philanthropy has the means to make that commitment … but neither the interest nor the will to do it.
Thanks for this very thoughtful response. I hope others will weigh in with their experience, both in agreement and not.
Sounds like the conversation we had back in Indy at the RJI event, Corinne. Operational budgets should be the number one priority of large philanthropy, and as I told you then, and still think, I am sick of the corporate media + venture capital dudes having the balls to swoop in to rural America and tells us how news works. Just help us do what we already know how to do. We aren't small potatoes because we aren't good enough to be big. We're responding to a need, not greed. (Sorry I deleted my other comment. This is where I meant to be).
Yes on this idea: "In southeast Ohio, we’re taking a different approach: creating a road map for local people to build their own independent outlets, all of which will share the cost of back-office functions like HR, payroll, finance, IT and graphic design" -- Corinne, I'd love to talk more about how you are going bout this.
Always happy to talk shop! 😁 You can reach me at corinne@athensindependent.com.
We’re a worker-managed nonprofit as well. Tara Francis Chan, an RJI fellow, just completed her study of nontraditional news business models, including a practical guide to starting and running a nontraditional newsroom. The Athens County Independent was just one of the organizations she studied.
Agreed on many points, but we also need to be sure that increased funding also goes to local talent development. Sending outside journalists into an at risk community, and even regional news collaboratives, are helpful, but if those journalists don't fully understand the local culture it's not necessarily serving that community.
Not only talent development, but also sufficient funding to provide staff with a living wage and appropriate benefits so they can afford to put down roots. Passion and community spirit don’t pay the bills.
I do think it's a structural problem. Right now, local journalism is framed as... write stories -> get attention -> sell ads -> make money. All the focus is on making the "write stories" piece cheaper thus increasing profits. I think that's the wrong place to focus.
One of the hardest problems in building a product, especially these days, is building distribution channels. aka consistently getting attention and building trust.
However, these 2 things that are the strengths of local journalism. So I think the question is, how do you build a profitable enterprise that leverages the attention and trust structures that local media develops.
I think there's a chance that can be done by embracing and building hyper local products and services. Especially these days since code is cheap thanks to AI. Use the attention/trust to serve the communities in other ways.
This isn't new. Classified ads weren't just advertisements. They were a marketplace that leveraged the papers distribution to connected people and the paper took a cut for facilitating the connection.
I think the question is... What other products and services could local media provide to help the people in the community make progress in their lives that's local specific. Maybe the media company builds it, or maybe a third party provides it (like a syndication type model).
Good comments, speaking as an ME of two rural newspapers (exurban North Texas, not rich but moderately to decently above average for many similar rural areas on per capita income).
I won't say there's nothing to cover "in depth" (other than high school sports), but short of a hidden, unknown ax murderer on true crime or something like that, there's not THAT much in communities of under 2,000. And, no, no local government malfeasance here. Plenty of ag, but no CAFOs here.
We do, on the $$$ side, have a sports booster page that runs during the school year. Approximately 2/3 page of extra sports photos, sponsored by small ads.
Re Nancy West, we're already seeing more universities offer a "mass communications" or similar, not journalism, with PR folded together with journalism, aren't we?
No disrespect to Mr. Landfried, but it sounds like he is in part reinventing the States Newsroom wheel, only with streaming, rather than written words (whether online only or print as well). And, given that major newspapers, MAJOR newspapers, pay less than $500 for a guest column? And, streaming? Who's paying the start-up costs of video equipment? Something that looks more professional than a Zoom background? Production training? I quote from N2's website. https://www.n2mediaholdings.com/:
>>The model is funded the same way streaming platforms fund their original programming: through industry-standard cost-plus production contracts that cover 100% of operating expenses. Advertising revenue is additive margin, not survival money. Under an independent distribution model, the ad revenue model alone exceeds operating costs at scale. Either path works without grants, tax credits, or public subsidy. We are sustainable and resilient.
The Local doesn't compete with independent journalists and local newsrooms. It pays them. Partner organizations receive $500 to $1,000 per story through recurring, commercially funded contracts — earned revenue they can report to matching-fund programs like NewsMatch. The model is built to strengthen the local news ecosystem from inside it, not to replace what remains.<<
I encourage the (other?) more skeptical commenters to look at N2's FAQs page https://www.n2mediaholdings.com/faqs and Mr. Landfried's Substack, which does to me seem to have good marketing as well as a good discussion of this issue.
Next to finally, what's "rural"? I respectfully doubt Mr. Landfried would even be interested in sites at my level of rural, and probably not anything below a county of 50,000 population with one city of at least 10,000 population.
Finally, given that the Plain Stealer (sic) just announced that doubling down on AI earlier this week, larger corporations that own many smaller papers will surely eyeball how that turns out.
I appreciate the perspective. A couple of quick clarifications that might help frame what we’re doing:
First, the model isn’t built on the assumption that every small community generates deep, daily enterprise coverage on its own. All of the reporting is original—not aggregated. The structure is state-level, with a mix of statewide, regional, and local stories produced each day, so smaller communities are included consistently without needing to carry the full burden of coverage themselves. This isn’t about putting newspapers on TV—it’s about producing the stories people need to hear in a format that fits how they consume them.
Second, on costs: we’re not asking local newsrooms or journalists to fund production infrastructure. We provide the videographer and equipment at no cost to partners. They focus on reporting. We also ensure they receive bylines and can publish versions of the stories on their own platforms, so they retain visibility and value from the work. In practice, that also helps expand their reach beyond their existing audience.
Third, on rural coverage: communities smaller than 50,000 are absolutely part of the model. In many cases, they’re the ones most underserved by current systems, which is exactly the gap we’re trying to fill.
Happy to walk through it in more detail if it’s helpful—this tends to make more sense in conversation than in fragments across comment threads.