A new era in the local news landscape is emerging. On Monday, the Salt Lake Tribune announced a historic IRS ruling, allowing their 149-year-old newspaper to convert into a local news nonprofit. Just last week, the Akron Devil Strip broke new ground by transitioning into the nation’s first local community news cooperative. And NewsMatch, the matching gifts […]

Executive Summary An emerging class of news businesses is modeling a promising path to sustainability — one drawn from the community itself. Their solution: pursuing nonprofit status rather than the strictly for-profit corporate form, embarking on greater engagement with philanthropic models that reimagine how local news is funded. Local news organizations play a fundamental role […]

As local newspapers struggle amid massive cuts, newer nonprofit and for-profit outlets are establishing themselves as the new watchdogs on the block. This is certainly a time for hope and renewal—but the newer players are going to need a big slice of philanthropy and investment […]

CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXTENDED VERSION OF THIS REPORT. Local foundations are known for directing grants to nonprofits in their towns, but not as much for supporting local news. That equation is changing, as more place-based foundations see watchdog journalism faltering. Many times they have an “a-ha” moment when they realize that no one […]

You are on a mission. You’re tired of hearing the bad news about local news and its deleterious effects on civic engagement and democracy: The layoffs, the cutbacks, the mergers and potential mergers of large newspaper chains. So now is your time to act, to launch a new local news outlet that will provide the […]

On March 31, Knight announced a $6 million investment in three organizations helping create a strong support system for local newsrooms across the country. Learn more about the announcement here. Since Knight Foundation announced a $300 million initiative in February to help rebuild local news, we’ve received an exuberant response from funders, civic leaders and […]

This op-ed originally appeared in The Miami Herald and McClatchy newspapers nationwide on February 19, 2019. Reprinted with the permission of the Miami Herald. After a gunman opened fire at The Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland last year, cable news pundits rushed to determine the paper’s political bent. The answer, they discovered, is that the […]

When it comes to trust, local news media continue to outperform their national counterparts. But with a new Knight-Gallup study released today, we now know that we can’t take that trust for granted.  Americans still believe local news outlets are doing many things right, and the study confirms that. Six in 10 Americans believe local news […]

As Knight Foundation continues to study television news, its role in informing communities, and possibilities for the future, we are also examining data around television audiences.  While most people in the U.S. still get their news from TV, the picture is not all rosy. New Knight research published today shows that the TV audience is […]

If news and information are part of the fabric of democracy, then the fabric of U.S. democracy is in tatters. That’s the conclusion that leaps off the map in the 2018 The Expanding News Deserts report, which shows that 171 U.S. counties do not have a local newspaper, and nearly half all counties – 1,449 […]

The post is part of the Knight/Gallup research series on Trust, Media and Democracy, and was originally published on Gallup.com. Americans who come into direct contact with local news organizations tend to exhibit more trust in the local media and greater civic engagement in the local community. However, the experiences U.S. adults have interacting in person […]

“Americans have lost faith in the institutions that underpin our democracy. We must confront this crisis together and, with this report, we have a compass.” —Anthony W. Marx and Jamie Woodson, Co-Chairs of the Knight Commission  

Karen Rundlet is director for journalism at Knight Foundation. Below she writes about NewsMatch, the annual national matching gifts campaign for nonprofit news organizations, which is accepting donations today through Dec. 31.  This is the third year for NewsMatch, the national matching-gift campaign that supports nonprofit organizations across the country. The campaign’s participants, all of them […]

NewsMatch, the largest grassroots fundraising campaign to support nonprofit news, is matching donations to 155 nonprofit newsrooms, up to $25,000 per organization, through Dec. 31, 2018. Below, Lindsey Millar, founder of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, a NewsMatch 2018 participant, explores how the network represents the future of public interest journalism and what the money raised […]