America’s local news crisis has shaped a generation of local news leaders who have worked tirelessly to adapt their organizations for their new business reality and the needs of their communities. Now, several of these leaders are ready to take the next step for organizational growth and expansion into new markets.

That’s why we’ve invested $5.4 million to create the Knight Growth Challenge Fund. It’s designed to support selected news outlets that have proven journalistic and business prowess and a solid business plan for sustainability. The fund will help support their efforts to expand into new markets and, in doing so, help fertilize news deserts and expand access to local journalism.

In a year that has been marked by layoffs and headlines about our industry’s decline, we’re supporting publishers who are ready to build something that will serve their communities for the long term. And, we hope this fund will create a model for other publishers to learn how to leverage their brands, existing operations, partners and resources into additional ways to address a community’s news needs.

The fund’s inaugural investments are directed toward six outstanding local news organizations, each selected to receive two years of support aimed at bolstering new staff, technology, and marketing efforts. These organizations, which include both for-profit and nonprofit entities of varying sizes, span the country from coast to coast. Each has a strong foundation as an established newsroom, with a loyal audience and a proven track record of delivering high-quality journalism that effectively serves their communities. Additionally, they have crafted detailed business plans to expand and grow their operations into new markets. Below are the newsrooms included in this first cohort.

The communities served by these news organizations are in many cases requesting intervention to meet critical coverage gaps. By creating a cohort of organizations with similar ambitions and enabling an open exchange of data and tactics, we are helping publishers increase their likelihood of success while lighting a path for others. This cohort-based approach is supported by Blue Engine Collaborative, which will provide coaching, consulting and other resources to each of the selected publishers. 

“Local news can thrive with the right mix of courageous, ambitious leadership, a team deeply in touch with community needs, deep digital capabilities, and the capacity to better serve new audiences,” said Tim Griggs, Blue Engine Collaborative’s founder and CEO. “These first six organizations can prove that local news can find ways to grow to serve more communities, and we’re absolutely thrilled to help them reach their full potential over the next two years.” 

This fund will be administered by The Miami Foundation so that it can support more publishers with ambitions to expand into new communities. Interested publishers should contact David Grant, director of partnerships at Blue Engine Collaborative, at [email protected].

Below is a breakdown of the first cohort of news outlets, along with a description of where they are now and where they hope to be, in their own words.

By providing a robust support system and fostering collaboration, the Knight Growth Challenge Fund aims to add an additional pathway to breathe new life into local journalism. It’s an initiative that emphasizes the importance of sustainable growth and community-focused reporting.

The Assembly

Where are we today?

In three years, the Assembly has grown to around 4,000 paid subscribers and built a newsletter list of 30,000. Across our network, we count more than 5,000 paid members and a newsletter list of close to 100,000. In the last six months, we’ve increased our publishing frequency and doubled readership. Across our network, we’re on track to hit over 6 million pageviews this year.

We’ve grown from a full-time staff of 3 (spring 2022) to 18 today, and opened small bureaus in Greensboro (June 2024) and Wilmington. Next month, we’re launching a dedicated higher education newsletter to go alongside our existing courts newsletter. In addition, we have entered management agreements with outlets in Fayetteville (CityView) and the Triangle (INDY Week) to build out our hub-and-spoke model of highly local and statewide reporting.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

Over the next two years we will build a best-of-class audience and product team that matches the level of sophistication and ambition we’ve long prioritized on the editorial front. We’ll further professionalize our business operation and build a network of state, local and industry reporting that serves a much wider array of reader needs than previously. 

By the end of 2026, we intend to be a cash-flow positive organization that is adding staff in sustainable but aggressive ways in order to continue to expand across the state and increasingly become a one-stop-shop for North Carolinians who want deeply curious and nuanced reporting about what’s going on in their backyard.

Cityside

Where are we today?

Our first two newsrooms, Berkeleyside (founded in 2009) and Oaklandside (founded in 2020) are well established. Cityside launched Richmondside, our third newsroom, in June 2024. In the first five weeks, Richmondside published more than 80 stories, had over 16,000 visitors to the site and 1,500 people subscribed to the newsletter. We’re particularly encouraged that 125 Richmonders have made donations to support our journalism. Because Richmond is a nearly majority Latino city, we’re experimenting for the first time with a WhatsApp channel for our stories, which has developed a small but dedicated following. With important local elections coming up, Richmondside is planning a series of local candidate forums in different Richmond neighborhoods with local media and community partners.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

Based on our experience with Oaklandside, which launched in 2020, we’re confident that by the end of 2026, Richmondside will be deeply embedded in the fabric of Richmond. Residents will trust and rely on Richmondside for the community and civic information they need to get the most out of their city. It will help them participate effectively in Richmond’s local democracy and it will help Richmonders build identity and cohesion in their community. We also expect by the end of 2026 to have our plans for a fourth newsroom at an advanced stage with a launch imminent.

The Post and Courier

Where are we today?

We have hired three of the four positions to round out the project in Columbia and Myrtle Beach.  This includes the editor of newsletters and emerging platforms and community engagement producers in both markets. These individuals join a journalism staff of 10 in Columbia and 5 in Myrtle Beach. In addition, we have secured our technology needs of a customer data platform, social media management tool and a data consultant through another grant to support our overall statewide expansion.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

We will have created a sustainable news organization that is respected and engaged with over 20,000 new digital subscribers in Columbia and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

The Salt Lake Tribune

Where are we today?

We are focused on supporting existing outlets across Utah and building new offerings to meet community needs. In 2023, the Tribune acquired the 130-year-old Moab Times-Independent and converted it to a nonprofit. The weekly paper is now sent directly to 6,500 households in Moab, free of charge. In northern Utah’s Cache Valley, we have established a partnership with Utah Public Radio and recently welcomed a shared reporter. In southwest Utah, we have directed more Tribune reporting resources across platforms to cover this rapidly growing region.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

We will deepen our work in three areas: Cache Valley, southwest Utah and Moab. In Moab, we seek to ensure the Times-Independent  has the resources necessary to cover government, growth, water and land use and more. In Cache Valley and southwest Utah, we will create community-specific offerings, working closely with local partners. Tribune teams will work with all regions, strengthening our business, marketing and audience efforts to be able to serve outlets statewide. In all this work, we are committed to listening to the communities, to being rooted locally and to creating sustainable business structures, ensuring this work continues for years.

Spotlight PA

Where are we today?

With three reporters and a reporter/editor, Spotlight PA’s first regional bureau produces investigative and public-service journalism about Penn State University, challenges facing rural communities and local government accountability in State College and north-central Pennsylvania. The bureau’s work has been cited in national media and won state and national awards. All stories are available at no cost at spotlightpa.org/statecollege and via Spotlight PA’s partner network of 100+ news outlets in Pennsylvania, including more than a dozen regional news partners. The bureau also produces a weekly newsletter, to share original reporting and top news out of north-central Pennsylvania.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

In order for Spotlight PA to continue to produce impactful investigative and public-service reporting in the region in the long term, we aim to substantially increase local support—giving from those within the region served by the bureau—by the end of the grant period through a combination of increased individual giving, business/corporate donations, sponsorships and more. This will necessitate an investment in growing the reach and audience of the weekly newsletter, as well as considering expansion of that newsletter. This success will lay the groundwork for future Spotlight PA expansion in other areas of Pennsylvania.

Georges Media 

Parent company of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Baton Rouge Advocate, the Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate and other Louisiana-based media properties

Where are we today?

Just a little over a year ago, we set out to see if local news could be revived in a community that lost it. On July 17, 2023, a local team of reporters and editors supported by the parent company of the Times-Picayune and the Advocate launched a digital-only news outlet for Shreveport and Bossier City, sister cities in northwest Louisiana where online rumors and misinformation had taken the place of its struggling local paper. Today, the Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate is farther along in building a sustainable model for local news than we thought possible. More than a million readers have encountered our journalism and we’ve grown to serve more than 1,900 digital subscribers and 30,000 newsletter subscribers. Our team has expanded to 10 reporters and editors and is supported by digital subscriptions, advertising dollars and local and national philanthropy, including a major grant from Microsoft. We’ve brought to light issues in local government, politics, criminal justice and the regional economy that have gone unnoticed for years.

Where will we be by the end of 2026?

Our vision for the Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate is to continue our growth as the trusted and essential source of news and information for the community by the end of 2026. We aim to grow our digital-only subscriber base to over 5,000 and reach a total readership of over 5 million. Additionally, we strive to achieve 75,000 newsletter opt-ins, ensuring our content reaches and resonates with our audience.

We are committed to earning the trust of the community through in-depth coverage of the topics that matter most to them, from local news and events to critical issues impacting the region. Our dedication to being strong community partners extends to working closely with the nonprofit sector, supporting and highlighting their efforts to make Shreveport-Bossier City a better place for all.

The local news crisis matters for the simple reason that news provides the facts people need to govern themselves. If we lose local news, everything that follows is bad: less community debate, fewer candidates and voters, more expensive government and more corruption. 

When local journalism works best, it helps people understand each other and solve common problems. But the more impactful stories require special effort. Enter the lawyers. Someone must sue to liberate public information. Someone must review stories before publication to protect journalists from frivolous lawsuits.   

Knight Foundation and a relatively small group of other funders have over decades helped nonprofits create a legal safety net for journalists and news outlets.   

But much of it still lives on year-to-year funding. And it’s still too small. 

Rebuilding local news won’t go far without pro bono lawyers.   

Together, journalists and lawyers can produce lasting results – not just for journalists, but for all Americans. Here’s a snapshot of documents obtained and stories reviewed, drawn from the 2023 annual reports of Knight grantees.  

Reforming a city’s deadly police department 

Vallejo, a mid-sized city in the San Francisco Bay Area, had one of the worst records of fatal shootings by police in the country: 17 deaths in nine years. But since Open Vallejo reported that officers were marking their badges after each fatal shooting, there has not been a single killing, roughly half the force left, two police chiefs have come and gone. The city settled a lawsuit, brought by the state attorney general, by agreeing to more than 100 reforms and an independent evaluator. ProJourn, which matches journalists with pro bono lawyers, helped make this possible by prying the public records from the city, including recent revelations about a death the city had covered up for a decade.  

Fighting Massive Wage Theft in New York 

More than 127,000 New Yorkers have been victims of wage theft in recent years; the state had failed to recover $79 million in back wages. When the New York Department of Labor would not release this public information, the Local Journalism Project at Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic sued on behalf of the investigative outlet  Documented. In August 2023, after a series by Documented and ProPublica, three state legislative bills were introduced to punish companies that wrongfully withhold wages.

All cold cases can’t be kept secret

A student from the Local Journalism Initiative of the Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic successfully argued before the state Supreme Court for a new standard for releasing cold case files. Police can’t just speculate that a case might be solved; they would need to show there is “at least a reasonable possibility.” The lawsuit came out of the making of the HBO documentary Murder on Middle Beach, about the brutal, unsolved  2010 murder of a Hartford woman in her front yard.  

Guns in schools, autopsies, murder and Google’s water use

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, under its Local Legal Initiative, works directly in selected states. Examples: * In Denver, news organizations won the release of records of a closed-door school board meeting that put armed police at schools — board incumbents were defeated at the polls. * In Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Court ordered autopsy records must be released when inmates die in custody.* In Oklahoma, state and federal investigations were ordered after body-worn camera footage showed police repeatedly tasing a Choctaw Nation citizen who begged in vain for his life to be spared. * The Oregonian won records of Google’s massive use of water to cool its data centers. As part of a settlement, the company announced it would no longer treat water use as a trade secret. 

On the national level, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University won access to opinions of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel showing the growth of executive branch power. Other documents include spyware reports from the CIA; revelations on employees at the Centers for Disease Control being barred from speaking to the public;  details on efforts to declassify a U.S. intelligence report on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and how the State Department continues to use social media identifiers to vet visas.   

Internationally, Knight supports the Committee to Protect Journalists, which in 2023 helped nearly 600 journalists in unsafe situations worldwide, particularly Palestinian journalists,  and worked toward the release of 200 jailed journalists.  

Knight legal service grantees do more than support newsgathering. The Knight Institute’s research in 2023, on topics such as “Algorithmic Amplification and Society,” was viewed 350,000 times and downloaded almost 10,000 times, and there were some 850 different news stories on the institute’s activities. As legacy media once did, Knight grantees look out for everyone’s free expression rights.  

Today in this overheated nation, basic rights are melting away like polar ice caps, “slowly and suddenly,” says Bobby Block of the Florida First Amendment Foundation Unprecedented bans on books and on teachers discussing gender led the global Human Rights Watch to issue its most recent report not on Uganda or Pakistan but on the state of Florida.  

Toward a stronger the safety net 

Focusing on local news has shown us there simply aren’t enough pro bono attorneys helping reporters. All the Knight-funded programs, and most of the other members of the legal safety net – press associations, access nonprofits, legal clinics, newer Knight grantees such as Lawyers for Reporters  (which specializes in business and employment law) – have more work than they can handle.  

How can the number of local journalists fall but legal needs increase? Many traditional outlets have slashed legal budgets. Newer outlets don’t yet have legal budgets. There are more freelancers. To their credit, the remaining local journalists still care about the stories that matter most. Top training interests among journalists today include data, documents and media law.  

Meanwhile, government secrets keep growing. The ugly truth is that most journalists who request public records don’t get them. The nonprofit  MuckRock says journalists make up just a third of its users, but file half the requests. In the past year, they filed some 7,100  requests;  3,100 were fulfilled and 4,000 were not. Of those, 2,500 beg to be appealed, and, if warranted, end up in court. 

Said MuckRock’s Michael Morisy: “In those thousands of cases … even a small amount of time from a pro bono lawyer can have an outsized impact.” 

To continue to grow this network of pro bono lawyers, we need to better define it and measure its growth and impact. The report Standing Up For Journalism says “there is no systemic way of tracking or growing that help.”  Other areas of pro bono law – immigration, voting rights, homelessness – are better known and better promoted. The report estimates that fewer than 1% of the nation’s 1.33 million attorneys have enough experience in newsgathering law to help journalists. 

The report found 9 in 10 journalists want more pro bono legal help . 

With news philanthropy increasing, it falls to the network and its funders to explain why legal aid grants are essential to the enabling environment – the infrastructure, if you will — that helps makes American journalism essential to the communities it serves.

Eric Newton is a consultant to Knight Foundation. A former staffer, he has helped develop First Amendment and journalism grants since 2001.