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March 19, 2026

Audience growth is the work: Why nonprofit news must build belonging, not just readership

John Adams writes that audience growth is about building a sense of belonging.

November 22, 2024

What if we embraced news as a public good?

In Democracy without Journalism: Confronting the Misinformation Society, media scholar Victor Pickard argues that news is a public good in the neoclassical economic sense: “One person’s consumption of the good does not detract from another’s” and some people will be “free riders” who consume the good but expect others to pay for it. Pickard also argues […]

June 11, 2024

A pivotal moment: 15 years of building the nonprofit news movement

INN’s CEO Karen Rundlet prepared these remarks to open the INN Days conference in San Diego on June 11, 2024. I attended my first INN Days as a very new journalism funder back in 2016. It was shortly after I’d spent a decade at a major metro, living through layoffs and salary reductions, and becoming […]

April 5, 2024

As an INN fellow, I saw nonprofit newsrooms’ engagement innovations firsthand

Editor’s note: In 2023, the Institute for Nonprofit News welcomed Allison Altshule as its first audience research fellow, and I mistakenly thought her work here would be relatively straightforward. The challenge was obvious: There were a growing number of news organizations facing strategic challenges around increasing their audience and a lack of people who saw […]

March 22, 2024

Newly published research highlights how typical discussions of news media decline miss the mark

Anyone familiar with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) will not be surprised to hear that the traditional model of journalism has imploded, especially at the local level. But there is some new research that may be helpful as nonprofit news organizations continue to make the case for their relevance and importance in shoring up the market […]

January 8, 2024

Looking back, looking forward: two INN CEOs discuss the nonprofit news movement

Last week, I felt like I had two bosses: Sue Cross, the outgoing CEO of INN, who hired me at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and has overseen a rapid growth in the nonprofit news field since then, and Karen Rundlet, the incoming CEO, whom I have known as one of INN’s greatest […]

December 21, 2023

Why trust is the cornerstone of news philanthropy

In this season centered on giving and connections with family and friends, I’ve been reflecting more on trust. Trust bonds people to each other, and people to the institutions that are fundamental to a functioning and thriving society. It is the sine qua non of both journalism and fundraising, where my professional life has intersected for 20+ […]

December 14, 2023

INN predicts: Nonprofit news in 2024

INN staff indicate how they refer queries from member newsrooms to colleagues with the right expertise during our strategy retreat in July 2023. We all know and love that annual journalism prediction series (and participate in it), but this year we thought: we have our own experts, let’s ask them what’s in store for 2024. So […]

December 8, 2023

Three ways to build pathways to careers in nonprofit news

I think a lot about career pathways. Some people call them talent pipelines, but I prefer the idea of people negotiating professional journeys rather than being pumped through a tube. In my position as director of leadership and talent development at INN, I also consider the many points in a career when someone might turn […]

June 30, 2023

While philanthropic giving drops overall, giving to journalism holds steady

The philanthropy headlines were stark last week: The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Drop in Giving … Among the Steepest Ever” The Nonprofit Times: “U.S. Philanthropy Plummeted $17 Billion as Donors Disappeared” Both are pegged to the annual Giving USA report, which found charitable giving declined 10.5% after inflation from 2021 to 2022. So how did news nonprofits […]