Philanthropy is stepping in to fund local news media as commercial publishers collapse. But it faces hurdles that tend to be “ecosystem-level rather than organization-specific,”
according to a new study: "Founders: Rebuilding Local Journalism At Scale: A Field-Level Analysis of Infrastructure Needs.”
One problem is that "aggregate operating
needs far exceed philanthropic supply.” That means donors can’t cover it.
The project began when the Press Forward Infrastructure Open Call asked for funding
applications in 2024. The research team received 559 submissions in four categories: People (170 proposals), Audience (205), Operations (108) and Revenue (76).
In
analyzing the applications, the researchers found several issues, one being the very challenging need for shared services.
“Systemic cost and execution constraints
dominate the field,” the study notes. “Across the proposal pool, the dominant constraint is not a lack of ideas or demand in the abstract, but a set of systemic conditions that make those
ideas economically and operationally difficult to execute.”
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For instance, “applicants repeatedly surface the high marginal cost of producing local
journalism in fragmented, under-resourced environments. These are conditions that recur across geographies and organizational types regardless of mission or editorial
focus.”
Also, assumptions about the future of local journalism have coalesced around philanthropic support and the permanent de-commercialization of news.
“Many proposals implicitly treat long-term grant funding as a stable backdrop rather than as a finite and competitive resource.”
This assumption is
“understandable given the role philanthropy has played in stabilizing local journalism over the past decade, the study notes. “At the same time, it functions as a structural condition
shaping the field’s trajectory and expectations.”
Some observers quibble with the report. For example, Brier Dudley editor of the Seattle
Times Free Press, says donors should not rely too much on it.
“I fear it could lead them down a narrow path that limits the impact, reach and lasting benefit
of their generous campaign to support local news,” Dudley writes.
That’s because “the report is based on grant proposals from a small subset of the local news
industry,” he continues. “It does not represent the vast majority of organizations actually doing local journalism.”
In addition, “Nearly all local news is reported and
published by commercial, for-profit businesses, primarily newspapers. Many closed and many are struggling. But after years of brutal cost-cutting, the industry is stable and far from
‘de-commercializing.’”
That argument may also be questioned given the regular anecdotal reports about papers closing or consolidating. On its web site, the
Seattle Times says it is “one of the few remaining local, independent newspapers in the U.S.” But Dudley also disagrees with the report’s assertion
that ‘journalism’s traditional ‘hierarchies,’ prioritizing investigative and accountability reporting, are outdated and limiting.” Here’s what he says about the
suggestion that more priority be given to ‘service-oriented and audience-responsive journalism:’ "Ugh.”
Why didn’t they have a guy like Dudley as part of the research
team?
Still, the report is here, and may be combed for insights.
For one, “’infrastructure’ is not a stable or uniformly applied concept. In a
high-need environment, applicants stretch the term to include both shared systems and organization-specific operating capacity, framed
as structural constraints.”
The study continues, “This elasticity is itself diagnostic: it reflects genuine demand for shared
services while also signaling scarcity pressures that push urgent staffing and survival needs into infrastructure funding categories."
In the end, these patterns reflect “a fragmentation paradox: a field whose decentralized growth has enabled experimentation and local responsiveness while simultaneously raising
costs and diffusing the shared capacity required for durability at scale.”