Nonprofit journalism in rural areas needs 'ignition' that helps citizens understand that they can raise philanthropic support

Newsrack in Monterey, Va. (PBS)

By Al Cross, director emeritus

Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

Judy Woodruff of PBS continued her reports about journalism and democracy on "NewsHour" tonight with a story about a rural Virginia editor-publisher who charges $5 a copy for her weekly paper, and a look at the prospects of journalism being funded by philanthropy as well as advertising and the audience.

"While that nonprofit model is showing promise in urban settings, economic realities persist for small, local newspapers that still depend on subscriptions and advertising," Woodruff reports, referring to The Recorder, a weekly that covers three counties in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia and was the first newspaper to report plans for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project abandoned in the face of public opposition (and the first to report its demise, she says). Editor-Publisher Anne Adams raised her single-copy price to $5 in 2017, and when the pandemic hit in 2020, her readers helped her stay afloat with donations.

But few rural newspapers are asking for donations or charging that high a price for single copies, which would seem to require a certain level of quality that is harder to achieve when profit margins have become thin. "There just isn't sufficient subscriber revenue to pay the bills, and of course, there's not sufficient philanthropic dollars to lift them up over the profit margin," newspaper researcher Penny Abernathy of Northwestern University told Woodruff.

It may take a different way of thinking. Sarabeth Berman, head of the American Journalism Project, which is supporting 41 newsrooms, including Mississippi Today, the Pulitzer Prize winner that was also featured in Woodruff's report, said "These organizations are really thinking of their financial structure in the same way we think of other organizations that are really essential to our communities, like libraries and museums and other institutions that stitch us together."

That's harder in rural areas. Abernathy said, "These smaller communities are kind of at a loss as how you go about getting that initial ignition that brings people together and helps 'em understand that they can do this, they can raise that money to support local news operations." 

She said, "Increasingly I'm worried that we're evolving into a nation of journalistic haves and have-nots. That has huge implications for not only our democracy but for our society: How do we come together around a common set of facts to solve the issues that are confronting us in the 21st century?"

An earlier report in Woodruff's series focused on another great rural editor-publisher, Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record of Texas, which now exists only on Facebook after it stopped printing in March.