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May 24, 2023, 2:53 p.m.
LINK: inn.org  ➚   |   Posted by: Sarah Scire   |   May 24, 2023

The Institute for Nonprofit News reported a 17% growth in the number of new nonprofit newsrooms in 2022, in an annual report released this week.

INN’s Index Report Snapshot is based on self-reported data from 315 nonprofit news outlets — about 90% of INN’s members — for 2022. (INN says it will release a “deeper and more complete Index Report focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion” this summer.)

Overall, roughly half of nonprofit news outlets are focused on local issues (184 newsrooms), with the rest split between state and regional coverage (104 outlets) and those focused on national or global issues (106 outlets).

A few other tidbits from the report:

  • Revenue across the nonprofit news sector kept up with the growth of new newsrooms, increasing by 19% between 2021 and 2022 to nearly $500 million. “This indicates that growth in the field is not stretching or competing for a static or shrinking pool of resources, but that news organizations are developing new resources as they grow and as new ones launch and build support in additional communities,” the report reads. “More than 80% of the outlets surveyed either grew total revenue or maintained revenue from 2021 to 2022.”
  • Large and established state and regional outlets are driving the nonprofit news industry’s gain in median revenue. “Our data don’t explain why foundation support to state and regional newsrooms is growing,” the report notes, “but our reporting indicates a shift in philanthropic attention to statehouse coverage.”
  • The majority of outlets surveyed distribute their journalism through a website (74%), with other subsets primarily delivering via email newsletter (11%) or print (9%).
  • A little over a third of outlets grew their web audience in 2022, but a similar portion saw their average monthly unique visitors decline. Local outlets were more likely to see their web traffic increase, according to INN, while outlets focused on national and global coverage were the least likely.
  • INN estimated its digital-first members employ nearly 4,000 people. Roughly two-thirds of those employees are reporters, editors, and other kinds of journalists.

You can read the full INN Index Report here. INN also published its own financial information in an impact statement.

Note: This article previously referred to incomplete data and included an incorrectly labeled chart. Both have been updated.

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