In Texas, Nonprofit Journalism Aims to Fill Gap as For-Profit Local Media Falter

“What is the future of a free press in US cities like San Antonio?” asks Robert Rivard, founder, and publisher of the Rivard Report, a 501c3 nonprofit San Antonio-based media organization. The answer, he says, lies in nonprofit journalism. “There are now more than 140 state and city nonprofit media sites in the US that belong to the Institute for Nonprofit News. No one claims these nonprofit news sites equal the historic reach of daily newspapers, but they are making a measurable difference and they are growing rather than declining.”
At NPQ, this is hardly the first time we have covered what we labeled at the beginning of this year the rising wave of nonprofit journalism. Indeed, it was only two months ago in April when editors and reporters of a number of papers, including the Denver Post and the Orange County Register, advocated openly for conversion of their papers from for-profit to nonprofit ownership. In May, in Montréal, Canada, family owners of La Presse, a large French-language local daily digital publication (with a circulation estimated at 270,000 daily) indicated that they were donating the outlet to a nonprofit foundation that was being established.