‘Local’ gets loud on journalism

Report for America sustainability report offers hope as communities pitch in to save local news

  • In all, Report for America had a nearly $10 million philanthropic impact on U.S. local news in 2020. The total amount donated to Report for America newsrooms grew from $861,000 in 2019 to $4.6 million. Report for America matched local newsroom success with its own $4.6 million in corps member salaries.
  • Community foundations are becoming more active — and are creating new models focused on long-term sustainability. In 2020, 56 foundations contributed to newsrooms through Report for America, an increase of 124% from the contributions of 25 foundations in 2019. Just as importantly, community foundations are becoming increasingly creative in creating structures that can harness interest from the community in the long run.
  • For-profit newsrooms have accelerated their fundraising efforts but still lag behind nonprofit newsrooms. For-profit newsrooms are becoming more skilled at raising money philanthropically. The average amount raised per for-profit newsroom was $26,811, and per reporter this number was $18,825. Though they represented 48% of corps member positions, for-profit newsrooms raised 38.3% of all 2020 Report for America local share funds.
  • COVID-19 and civil unrest did not disrupt charitable giving to journalism. In fact, giving in some newsrooms working with Report for America increased due to the pandemic. In most cases, COVID-19 undercut advertising revenue, but also increased the community’s understanding of the importance of local journalism. Those newsrooms that attempted fundraising usually succeeded.

--

--

A national service program that places emerging journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Report for America

A national service program that places emerging journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.