The need for investment in non-profit local journalism is driven by the precipitous decline of for-profit news outlets which have been hit hard as more Americans consume news digitally. A 2024 Medill State of Local News Report found that the availability of high-quality local journalism is rapidly declining. Since 2005, more than 3,200 newspapers have closed and more than 73% of newspaper jobs have been lost. The U.S. has lost more than one-third of its print newspapers over the past two decades, creating a critical gap in coverage of vital local issues.
Filling the local journalism gap fits well with the mission of public broadcasting stations, which exist to serve the public with quality information and programming. More than 1,500 local public radio and television stations together reach 98.5% of Americans with free over-the-air and digital content. An average of 42 million people weekly tune into NPR programming across platforms. NPR also ranks #1 out of 13 news brands for trustworthiness, integrity, and respect.
Unlike other news outlets, which are pulling funds from local reporting beats, public media has been investing in local journalism. According to data collected by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and shared by the Station Resource Group, station-based, full-time journalists at these stations had increased by 30% over five years to 3,068 in 2018. That number has continued to grow. Public media stations represent the largest, multimedia, nonprofit news system in the U.S., with more than 4,4000 journalists based at local stations.
Public media has a strong base to build upon in terms of becoming a primary source of local civic information for their communities. For this reason, AVDF awarded a $750,000 grant in 2020 to the American Journalism Project (AJP), which AJP combined with their own investment to provide venture philanthropic support to a local public media journalism outlet.
AJP’s overarching mission is to grow the resources available for local journalism by investing in sustainable, mission-based news organizations. Their strategy is three-fold: fund existing nonprofit newsrooms through grantmaking, provide intensive support to develop grantees’ fundraising and commercial media capacity, and build a movement of support for this model.
While AJP makes grants to various types of non-profit journalistic endeavors, they had not yet made an award to a local public media outlet before the partnership with AVDF. After a thorough review of candidates, AJP decided to invest in two public media outlets instead of one: Louisville Public Media (LPM), and WFAE in Charlotte. AVDF funding, along with an additional $495,000 provided by AJP, enabled AJP to make three-year sub-grants to each station, with $590,000 going to WFAE and $655,000 to LPM. The AVDF grant also supported the development and dissemination of a report detailing lessons learned from the two investments.
The investments aimed to support the growth of sustainable revenue streams of the two public media organizations, so as to accelerate their transformation into primary local news providers. Throughout the grant term, AJP worked with each station on their organization’s vision and impact, financial sustainability and revenue strategy, and operating capacity. And they helped each station develop a success plan and a roadmap for reporting on the progress of their strategic milestones.
Each station achieved key goals and faced some challenges during the grant. LPM succeeded in increasing their newsroom staff, saw a growth in foundation revenue and major gifts, and evolved their editorial strategy. They are now continuing to work toward leveraging multiple platforms and increasing their output. And they plan to produce more in-depth coverage of complex issues impacting their community.
During the grant period, WFAE rebuilt its leadership and revenue teams. In addition, they completed a strategic plan and launched a capital campaign to expand their newsroom.
To assess whether reporting improved, AJP commissioned an audit of each station’s web content at the start of the sub-grants and then again, a year later, so as to track the production of original and local digital stories. Over this period, LPM saw a 30% increase in original reporting and a 44% increase in local stories.
In 2022, AJP released a comprehensive learnings report. This report was funded by the AVDF grant along with additional funding provided by the Wyncote Foundation. The report included an analysis of each stations’ progress, as well as recommendations for how philanthropy can partner with public media organizations that are transitioning to become primary local news providers. In addition, the report identified three main factors that are essential for advancing public media as a leading local news source: market landscape, leadership, and internal conditions.
“The report found that public media has the unique advantage of accessibility and nonprofit products, and determined that strong leadership and a commitment to newsroom operations is critical for success,” said Miica Patterson, AVDF Associate Director of Board Relations and Communications. “Moreover, the internal structure of a public media organization heavily impacts that organization’s ability to navigate cultural and strategic shifts in the transition to a primary news provider.”
The co-investments in public media journalism developed valuable criteria for evaluating public media news entities and shared learnings about the sector.
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