Learnings and Insights | February 2020–December 2023

Since 2020, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has partnered with Impact Architects to better understand the impact of Knight Foundation’s investments in local news sustainability. Knight Foundation’s strategy has centered on investing in infrastructure organizations that provide support services to local newsrooms, such as direct investment and coaching from the American Journalism Project, revenue and technology support from News Revenue Hub, legal support from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and much more.

For this 2023 annual report, we gathered data from 188 local newsrooms across the United States that have participated in seven grantee interventions. Across 100 newsrooms, from 2022 through 2023, we found an average annual revenue increase of 7.3%. With respect to audience, for the 146 organizations for which we have data over the same time period, we found an average digital monthly users (DAMU) increase of 3.2%. As revenues increased, it appears that news organizations invested in their operations, with an average increase of 33.6% in staff (four full-time equivalent roles¹).

At a time when revenues are declining, audiences are shrinking and, in the worst cases, newsrooms are disappearing altogether, it is a significant finding that, on average, local newsrooms supported by Knight Foundation grantees grew their revenues and audiences.

The seven interventions included in this assessment all aim to contribute to news organizations’ sustainability, albeit through diverse programming. In some cases, the grantees make direct investments (grants) to the news organizations. We recognize that including investments from the grantees in the news organizations’ revenue influences revenue change in this assessment; however, in all cases, the investments are restricted and are used in the same year to support staff hiring and/or operational costs (e.g., technology). Furthermore, over the long term, grantee investments fall away, and we are left with a clear picture of long-term change.

In each annual assessment, we have faced the challenge of parsing out the impact of specific grantee interventions on organizations, when, in reality, most (61.7%) of the newsrooms for which we have data are participating or have participated in more than one grantee program. For example, all non-public media AJP grantees are INN members and many are also LION members; almost all BloomLab participants have also used services from the Center for Community Media. The core analysis and trends are inclusive throughout this report, meaning many organizations contribute to audience and revenue figures for multiple grantees. But we also segmented out those newsrooms that were part of only one grantee intervention and compared their revenue and audience changes with newsrooms that had participated in more than one intervention with the goal of determining if there is an additive benefit from participating in multiple interventions, as we have heard consistently in interviews since 2020.

We found that news organizations that participated in multiple grantee interventions reported an average annual revenue increase of 8.6% from 2022 to 2023, compared with an average annual revenue decrease of -0.3% in newsrooms that participated in only one grantee intervention.² And while staff size increased for both cohorts, newsrooms that participated in multiple interventions increased their staff size by more than double compared to newsrooms that participated in only one intervention, with an average increase of 40.5% compared with 17.2% (5.1 vs. 1.4 full-time equivalent roles).

With respect to audience change, the results were flipped, with newsrooms that participated in only a single intervention reporting an average increase in DAMU of 20.9% and organizations that participated in multiple interventions reporting essentially no change (a 0.3% increase). This difference is largely due to the fact that news organizations that participated in only one intervention were either startups or organizations that were just embarking on their digital transformations. In both cases, because the starting point was close to zero, growth was, on average, greater than that of more established newsrooms (which also tend to be participants in more than one intervention).

Support from grantees is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the difference in revenue among these cohorts. However, there are many possible additional explanations for these differences, and one obvious factor is that newsrooms that participated in multiple interventions are generally more mature organizations with more established audiences experiencing incremental growth. About 70% of news organizations that participated in a single intervention are from LION and tend to be small local or hyperlocal newsrooms. The group also includes many for-profit organizations, which aren’t eligible for support from many other grantees.

BloomLab and CCM have significant overlap in the newsrooms they serve that are not accessing programs or services from other Knight Foundation grantees. Both BloomLab and CCM serve newsrooms led by and serving people of color, most of which are independent for-profit news organizations. A full table of all combinations of grantee interventions and the associated number of participant newsrooms is available
in Appendix C.

Digging a bit deeper to look at change for newsrooms participating in grantee interventions in 2023, all cohorts of newsrooms had positive average annual revenue changes, ranging from an average annual revenue increase of 2.8% for BloomLab to 13.9% for CCM.

From 2022 through 2023, average DAMU change ranged from a decrease of 2.9% for NRH Hub newsrooms to an increase of 11.6% for SPS newsrooms. SPS’s trend-bucking increase in DAMU supports the working hypothesis that improving technology for newsrooms results in a long-term increase in audience and, subsequently, in revenue from individual contributions.

Overall, the interventions of Knight Foundation grantees are generally moving newsrooms in the direction of greater sustainability, supporting increased and diversified revenue while also helping to build digital audiences. The table below summarizes key insights for each grantee, and in the report that follows we present more in-depth analysis across the portfolio.

1. Part-time staff are reported as fractional positions. ↩︎
2. As a result of the timing of data collection, revenue for LION’s sustainability audit participants is from 2021 to 2022, and those
   organizations are therefore excluded from the analysis of revenue change from 2022 to 2023. ↩︎