Maine daily newspapers converted to nonprofits in landmark deal
National Trust for Local News and local nonprofit buy out Masthead Maine papers
Independent local newspapers around the country are in trouble. They are the source of vital local information for communities, but they’ve suffered from sharply declining advertising, digital competition from social platforms, and rising print costs. When companies decide to sell their publications, they’re often stuck choosing between selling to a large corporate chain or shutting down, leaving their communities in the lurch.
But, lately, a new option has emerged: converting the paper to a nonprofit with the support of the National Trust for News (NTLN). This ambitious organization has only been around for a few years, but has already bought a chain of newspapers in Colorado, helped a public media station buy a newspaper in Denton, Tex., and recently—with some support from Knight—helped buy all the daily newspapers in Maine except the Bangor Daily News. The acquired Maine newspapers are now all nonprofit, including the Portland Press Herald. That’s a prospect that would have been almost unthinkable just five years ago.
How did they do it? The National Trust’s CEO and co-founder, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, spent a lot of time as a research fellow at Harvard and Columbia, studying ownership models for local news, with one focus being the idea that public media stations could become more robust sources for local news. Hansen Shapiro eventually joined forces with Fraser Nelson, who helped convert the Salt Lake Tribune to a nonprofit and is now the National Trust’s chief partnerships officer.
NTLN intensely studies community newspaper markets around the country to determine which newspapers are doing fine, which are in trouble and, most of all, which might be able to continue as nonprofits. If a newspaper has been stripped bare of staff and has basically become a “ghost newspaper,” is it worth buying or is it better to consider starting over with a new community news outlet? This question is key for NTLN. Of course, converting to a nonprofit doesn’t mean a newspaper’s problems are over; it must still figure out a path to sustainability and digital transformation.
When the moment comes to make a purchase, NTLN likes to combine funding from national and local sources to make sure local communities have a stake in the newspapers’ future. In the case of the Maine papers, Masthead Maine wanted to sell five dailies and 12 weeklies, and a local group called the Maine Journalism Foundation tried to raise $15 million to buy them. When it fell short, the National Trust stepped in to facilitate a local-national partnership to close the deal.
Just how transformative is this for Maine local news? “I worked lots of days in the newspaper business—this was the best one,” former Maine Masthead CEO Lisa DeSisto told the AP on the day the deal closed.
Let’s hope for a lot more of these days to come for community newspapers.
Other news around the horn…
Investments
💰 AJP invests $1.6 million in news startups. Go big or go home. That’s the way the American Journalism Project (AJP) views its investment strategy, typically making $1 million investments in existing nonprofit newsrooms, and now launching an incubator with $400,000 in seed money for four news startups with an 18-month program. That’s big. The four startups in the first cohort include folks launching a video-first outlet in Miami, serving communities of color in Boston, engaging the LGBTQ+ community in Phoenix, and supporting and training journalists in Oregon. The founders will get support from Google News Initiative as well as other newsrooms in AJP’s portfolio. “By providing robust funding and council, this kind of program allows local news talent to go all-in on their ideas and draw on lessons learned from other nonprofit local news organizations across the country,” AJP said.
🔥 Type Investigations boosts investigative work in diverse communities. Investigative journalism often has the biggest impact, but also goes missing in marginalized communities. Type Investigations, which runs the Ida B. Wells fellowships for mid-career journalists, announced a new program, Springboard Project, to support investigative work in communities of color. Type Investigations will help with reporting, editing, data analysis and legal reviews, and will also work with partners in collaborative fundraising to ensure long-term sustainability. “To make journalism truly representative, we need a new model that ensures the survival of these local and diverse newsrooms that are already delivering high-impact investigative journalism,” said Type Investigations Editor-in-Chief Cassi Feldman. The first partner in the project is The Blacklight, the investigative unit at New York Amsterdam News.
🔔 Philly special for local news publishers from Lenfest. The Lenfest Institute for Journalism is on a roll, and that means Philadelphia local news publishers benefit. Lenfest has a growing menu of grant and support programs for existing and startup newsrooms, and the newest offering is the Lenfest Local News Sustainability Initiative, offering $2 million over two years to established publishers in the Philly area. The new program will invest in up to 16 newsrooms with grants ranging from $100,000 to $150,000 for core operating support and capacity building for nonprofit and for-profit publishers. The business focus means that publishers can use the grants for digital transformation, new revenue streams, community engagement or staff expansion. Applications are open now, and due by September 15.
👕 API funds newsrooms’ products, from merch to podcasts. It’s one thing to learn how to build a product, and it’s another thing to bring it to market. The American Press Institute is helping six newsrooms who were in the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program do just that, with $5,000 grants per publisher. After taking the product development sprint in partnership with the News Product Alliance, the publishers can now focus on launching products as diverse as a merchandise store in Bangor, Me., to a paid newsletter for foodies in Chattanooga, Tenn. “The feedback from people in our community, combined with advice we received from seasoned product experts, was invaluable and helped shape the newsletter, which is designed to cover our city’s growing and vibrant food scene,” said Alison Gerber, editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Tech
🦾 OpenAI invests $5 million in AJP, partners with AP. There are two schools of thought when it comes to the march of artificial intelligence:
1) OMG they are taking over and we will become extinct!
2) Let’s work the tech to automate menial tasks to free us up for deeper, human work.
The latter hope won out for the AJP and the Associated Press, both of which recently made deals with OpenAI, maker of the wonderful, horrible ChatGPT. AJP will receive $5 million in funding to establish an AI and tech studio for its portfolio of nonprofit newsrooms, while giving out grants to 10 newsrooms to experiment with AI. Meanwhile, the AP and OpenAI will partner on content and technology, with the AP opening up its text archive through 1985 to help train OpenAI’s algorithms (which can go off the rails into misinformation), while the AP will get access to OpenAI’s tech and product expertise. How will these experiments go? AJP CEO Sarabeth Berman remained hopeful: “We aim to promote ways for AI to enhance—rather than imperil—journalism.”
Policy
🏛️ GOP support for new tax break bill in Congress. For years, there has been a push in the U.S. Congress to pass a bill that would support local news through tax breaks for advertisers, publishers and subscribers. Now there’s a new bill called The Community News and Small Business Support Act (HR 4765) that Rebuild Local News’ Steve Waldman calls “a conceptual and political breakthrough.” Why? Its main sponsor is a conservative Republican, Rep. Claudia Tenney of upstate New York, and the focus is on tax breaks for small businesses that advertise in local news. In fact, those businesses would get up to $5,000 in a tax break the first year and $2,500 for four years after that. Plus, newsrooms that hire and retain local reporters get a payroll tax credit of $25,000 in the first year and $15,000 in the subsequent four years. Waldman notes that if this bill passes, it would be the biggest effort to support local news since George Washington signed the postal subsidy in 1792. And even if it doesn’t pass, it could be a useful template for state policy.
🌶️ State governments hot for local news fellowships. While there has been a big focus on government support for local news coming from tax breaks (see above), another route—fellowship programs—has been making inroads in New Mexico, California and Washington. Nieman Lab goes deep on the most established program, the New Mexico Local News Fellowship, offering pay for recent journalism graduates in the state to work in newsrooms for nine months. The program sold the state on funding as a workforce development project, as the majority of the fellows over the past few years are now working full-time in local journalism in New Mexico. Inspired by that success, California was able to garner $25 million in funding to launch an even more ambitious fellowship program, and Washington State recently funded another one earlier this year.
Disclosure: Mark Glaser, one of the writers of this newsletter, is involved in supporting the New Mexico Local News Fellowship program.
Jobs
Executive Director, Knight-Georgetown Institute. Learn more here.
CEO, Institute for Nonprofit News. Learn more here.
CEO, Indiana Local News Initiative. Learn more and apply here.
Program Coordinator, Oklahoma Media Center. Learn more here.
Director, Local News, MacArthur Foundation. Learn more here.
Program Officer, Local News, MacArthur Foundation. Learn more here.
Fellowships
Solutions Journalism Network
Projects covering mental health issues for youth
$5,000 stipend
Apply by August 29
Statehouse Reporting Fellowship
National Press Foundation
Attend a four-day training in Madison, Wisc., Sept. 18–21
Apply by August 16
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Written by Jim Brady, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Jim Brady, Jessica Clark and Kara Pickman
A Knight + Dot Connector Joint