Nonprofit startups restore local journalism in some places; can it work if audience is poorer and sparsely populated?

Jenn Paluzzi is editor of The Concord (Mass.) Bridge. (Photo by Alice Kaufman)

Local journalism is "stampeding back, town by town," says a founder of one of several nonoproft newspapers that have restored coverage of community news in towns near Boston. But is The Concord Bridge, which fills a vacuum left by the devolution of Gannett Co.'s Concord Journal, an example that can be replicated in rural areas with less money? Concord, which has about 18,000 people, has a median household income of about $160,000, more than double the U.S. average of $71,000. At the end of her story for the Poynter Institute, Mariya Manzhos asks Jonathan Kealing, chief network officer of the Institute for Nonprofit News, the question: "How can less affluent communities achieve sustainability in their nonprofit newsrooms?"

"Launching similar nonprofit newsrooms in historically marginalized communities with low wealth is possible, but it may require a different strategy, said Kealing, like focusing on institutional funders and underscoring the value of serving a particular community as opposed to soliciting money from that community," Manzhos reports. "Nearly 50% of INN members make their primary mission of serving a historically excluded or marginalized community." But her examples are urban, not rural.

Concord is pinpointed. New Bedford is at the I-195
sign on the coast (Buzzards Bay). (Google map)

That said, “Local nonprofit startups are growing so much faster than any other segment of the nonprofit news sector,” Kealing told Manzhos. They are about a third of INN's 400-plus members, and Kealing predicts there will be 600 of them by 2025. His organization provides support for nonprofits, and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism does likewise for The Concord Bridge and several other nonprofits in eastern Massachusetts. "The New Bedford Light, launched last year, has done some groundbreaking reporting on the city’s fishing industry, health, and environmental issues," Manzhos reports; the city has 100,000 people.

In Concord, the Bridge began with 100 people at a forum held "to gather feedback from residents about their vision for local news," Manzhos reports. "The town was hungry for a local news source, both print and digital, with stories on key issues in Concord, as well as police logs and obituaries. . . . Responding to what they saw as an overwhelming need, the group embarked on a project to launch a hyperlocal newspaper and website." They raised $900,000, enough to run a weekly for two years. It launched in October and is delivered free to all 8,700 households and businesses in the town of 17,000.

Kealing cautions that the nonprofit model has special challenges of revenue and audience. “It takes time and effort and skill to build up the individual, institutional donor and supporter base that allows organizations to survive and thrive,” he told Manzhos. “There is so much competition for people’s time and attention in the world we live in, so these nonprofit news organizations have to prove their value every day.” Co-founder and board member Kate Stout said, “The worry about whether the people have given once and will never give again could be a worry. But what we’ve gotta do is give them a product that they can’t say no to.” In other words, they won't pay good money for bad journalism.