The crisis in local news is old news.
Legacy for-profit news organizations have been in serious decline since the Great Recession, with staffing declines across the industry and a growing number of news organizations simply disappearing. Research by Penny Abernathy and her team at Northwestern University shows that between late 2019 and June 2022, more than 360 newspapers closed, with the United States losing over one-fourth of its newspapers since 2005. At the current rate, that number will rise to one-third of our newspapers in 2025.
It’s also not news that nonprofit news organizations have stepped up to fill the gaps and revive a focus on accountability journalism. Two of the best-known — ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — are within shouting distance of turning 20 years old. The Institute for Nonprofit News was founded in 2009 by representatives of 27 nonprofit news organizations; it now has more than 450 members.
Research has shown that nonprofit news has characteristics that make it distinct from commercial news organizations and citizen journalism. Jan Boehmer, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in his 2014 work that nonprofit news outlets are distinct as they “employ experienced journalists who have left for-profit organizations and now want to cover their local communities in new, elaborate ways.”
In short, these organizations are founded by journalists who believe communities deserve to be informed by nonprofit, nonpartisan newsrooms dedicated to public service.
But do audiences recognize this difference and the benefit of this type of reporting? Does labeling an article as one reported by a nonprofit news organization make audiences perceive it as more credible than if it’s labeled as coming from a for-profit news organization?
Our research shows that it doesn’t. In an online survey-embedded experiment among demographically-representative U.S. adults, we found that labeling an article as nonprofit does not impact how credible audiences find the reporting to be. Additionally, labeling an article as coming from a nonprofit does not impact a reader’s desire to return to the source in the future.
It didn’t even matter that the audience trusted journalists generally.
So why should we care whether readers see nonprofit news as distinctive?
It comes down to the values of trust and credibility — and of convincing audiences that those qualities are worthy of support. It should matter to the public that in order to get nonprofit tax status, news organizations by statute must serve the public interest — they must be “organized exclusively and operated primarily” for an education, charitable or social welfare purpose.
Research has shown that the work of nonprofit local news organizations makes a big impact in supporting local democracy. “Overall, we find strong support that nonprofit watchdog journalism can serve an important, supplemental role in shoring up government accountability that can help mitigate the impact of the declines of local newspapers,” scholars Nikki Usher and Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell wrote in a paper.
Most, if not all, nonprofit journalists would give a strong amen to that finding. Our findings present a challenge to these journalists: Find a way to make it clear to their communities that there is a nonprofit news difference.
Our research suggests something for nonprofit journalists to consider. Since simply labeling news as “nonprofit” doesn’t create a point of distinction, journalists should consider doing what they do best: Telling a story.
They should articulate exactly what it means to be nonprofit, why that is a benefit to readers and communities, and the substantive differences that show up in nonprofit journalism. Explain exactly what nonprofit means. Include more detail with individual stories about how philanthropic support made the work possible. Speak to the specific local environment: How does this community benefit from an independent news organization not built around a profit motive?
Nonprofit news models may be the future of the industry, but we need to reach a consensus on what “nonprofit news” means to us before we expect audiences to notice a difference.
Some might argue that the bigger question is whether we want audiences to notice a difference at all; whether we want nonprofit news models to blend seamlessly into the present infrastructure. We think that would be underselling the characteristics of nonprofit news that make it irreplaceable in today’s landscape.
To build and maintain the financial support that fuels nonprofit news, it’s essential to ensure that the model is noticeably distinct — a distinction that has to go beyond a label.
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