Efforts across the country identify ‘trusted news and information’ as a means of promoting civic engagement
By Megan Rogers-Granite State News Collaborative
Two and a half years ago, a group of community members, business leaders and philanthropists approached the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona and proposed working together to strengthen local news. The group was concerned about cuts in local news coverage, a scenario familiar to news outlets and communities across the country.
Jenny Flynn, president and CEO of the foundation, which supports seven counties in southern Arizona, was initially skeptical, though quickly on board. The foundation’s mission is to build a thriving community through philanthropy and Flynn became convinced of the role local news and information plays in supporting that mission.
“It was 100% in our lane to work on this,” Flynn says.
The Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona was launched in 2023. This year, the foundation announced $275,000 in unrestricted grants to area news organizations. Now, Flynn is talking to others about the opportunity to fund local news and information. Often, she’s not the one bringing up the local news fund. Many potential donors mention the community foundation’s local news initiative.
“That tells me [that] for a subset of people, it’s an inherently interesting, important philanthropic priority,” she says. “Once we named it, people stepped forward.”
Traditionally, newspapers relied on advertising dollars, but as that business model has collapsed, more news outlets are turning to new funding methods, including donations from individuals and foundations. Private foundations and other funders are increasingly taking up civic information and local news as priorities to fund.
Nearly three-quarters of foundations reported an increase in journalism funding within over the past five years, according to a 2024 report from Media Impact Funders, a membership organization that brings together foundations and individuals supporting media and journalism. The most common choice selected for funding journalism in the survey of 47 funders was to “help promote civic engagement with trusted news and information.”
‘Strong and vibrant communities’
In 2023, a group of donors launched Press Forward with a $500 million commitment to support local news across the country over a five-year period. This was a major catalyst for the growing philanthropic focus on local news and civic information.
Since then, the organization has expanded via local chapters – there are now 41 across 31 states, according to the organization, including in Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont. Many of the local chapters are led by community foundations, including Press Forward Southern Arizona, which the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona leads.
The Vermont Community Foundation announced last year it would lead Press Forward Vermont. Since then, the foundation has been building relationships with news outlets and organizations supporting journalism in Vermont, says Jess Schmidt, the foundation’s director of strategic initiatives. So far, grants have been made to Vermont Journalism Trust, the nonprofit behind the online news outlet VTDigger, for work on collaborations between news outlets across the state, and the Vermont Journalism Coalition, which represents all news outlets in the state. The foundation is also conducting a news ecosystem research project.
“From a mission perspective, we are here to support strong and vibrant communities in Vermont and we know that one of the things that is key to those healthy communities is strong civic engagement,” Schmidt says.
That sentiment is echoed by other community foundations.
A few years ago, the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque in Iowa partnered with the Dubuque Telegraph Herald — a news outlet that covers the tri-state area of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin — to raise money for a Report for America fellow to cover poverty for the newspaper.
Foundation leaders saw the impact on their communities when local newspapers struggled and people lost access to news and information. One example of the impact of the local news crisis, says Mary Jo Jean-Francois, the foundation’s vice president of impact, is the attitudes many people in the region had about the area’s growing foreign-born population. The area’s diversity went from being a point of pride for people to being a source of fear, she says, pointing to national infotainment options that can fill a void in the absence of local news.
The community foundation, which provides grants to its partners in eastern Iowa, wanted to be a part of the local news and information solution, she says.
The foundation now has an endowed fund for local news and information, a non-endowed fund that supports local news interns and fellows, and has hosted events focusing on civil society and the importance of journalism. The Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque also leads Press Forward Northeast Iowa.
A shift in conversation
As the foundation’s focus began to include local news, conversations with donors shifted.
“We stopped telling the negative story of business model and advertising model,” says Nancy Van Milligen, president and CEO. “[We] started to talk about why you should care about this and what news and information can do for you and your community.”
She likens local news to an art museum or a library — a civic institution that brings people together.
While some donors are hesitant to funnel philanthropic dollars to a private business, Jean-Francois says many people see the value of local news. People want to know about local sports and when roads will be shut down, and what’s at stake in local elections — all topics covered much more in-depth at a local paper than anywhere else.
“What we heard so much from our community was that they don’t want to lose those pieces that make them so proud of who they are in a small town,” she says.
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This story is part of Know Your News — a Granite State News Collaborative and NENPA PresTs Freedom Committee initiative on why the First Amendment, press freedom, and local news matter. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact.