Atlanta — When newspaper veteran Ross McDuffie became the first-ever chief portfolio officer for the National Trust for Local News, the nonprofit organization owned two dozen newspapers in Colorado and generated around $5 million in earned revenue.
A little more than a year and a half later, the Trust has grown rapidly by nearly every measure. After new rounds of acquisitions and launching its first new local newspaper, the National Trust for Local News currently has:
- 65 newspapers across three states (Colorado, Maine, and Georgia)
- 500 employees, about half of whom are journalists
- 100,000 paying subscribers
- 300,000 copies of a print product distributed per month
- $50 million in earned revenue
- 2.5 million unique monthly visitors
Last week, McDuffie shared these figures with a full room at the Online News Association’s annual conference. Attendees had gathered to hear when — and how — to revive a legacy brand, or start something new in local news. The Trust has done both.
Something new
The Macon Melody launched in June 2024 as a digital news site and weekly print newspaper with an eight-person newsroom. In its press release, the Trust said it was building “a newspaper in a news desert” with the Melody. The city, however, is home to the 198-year-old Macon Telegraph — part of the hedge fund–owned McClatchy newspaper group.
McDuffie, who worked at Lee Enterprises and McClatchy before coming to the Trust, noted there are “hard-working and very talented people that work tirelessly on behalf of local journalism” in newsrooms owned by hedge funds. (A quick look at the Telegraph shows there is local reporting — including a recent piece with local election officials responding to new hand-counting rules — taking place, even if the coverage is outnumbered online by stories about out-of-state lottery winners.) Macon “deserves an obsessively local news brand,” McDuffie argued, and “the incentive structure” of hedge fund-owned newspapers is “broken.” The Trust’s market research also showed the community was “deeply disillusioned” with existing media options.
“The challenge is, in my 15 years doing this, I have very rarely seen the decisions that need to be made to maximize shareholder value — or provide return on that investment — ever align with what that individual community needs,” McDuffie said. “What we’re trying to solve for is not necessarily a business model problem. We’re trying to solve for an ownership incentive problem, which, in many ways, is the biggest challenge that local news faces.”
Philanthropy alone is not going to save local news
The Trust has raised $38 million in philanthropic support, Poynter reported in July. But McDuffie said the goal of the National Trust for Local News is to build community news organizations that don’t rely on institutional philanthropy.
“Being mission-driven does not mean that we can be business-blind,” McDuffie told the crowd at ONA. “The nonprofit tax structure does not mean that you can lose money in perpetuity and expect that you’re going to get a bailout from institutional philanthropy or some affluent person that has the goodwill to support local news.”
Still — institutional philanthropy remains “a very important part” of the Trust’s business model. (McDuffie clarified in an email that 2% of “subsidiary operating revenue” at the Trust comes from institutional philanthropy.) The nonprofit has focused on raising funds specifically to acquire news brands and to make what McDuffie calls “catalytic investments” designed to “future-proof” the newsrooms.
When acquiring 18 newspapers in Georgia earlier this year, for example, the Trust said it had received support from the Knight Foundation ($5 million), Robert W. Woodruff Foundation ($1 million), and the Marguerite Casey Foundation. The Macon Melody, too, was founded with a “landmark investment” from the Knight Foundation. The philanthropy-backed “catalytic investments” often tackle “deferred maintenance” from previous owners. They range from new content management and human resources systems to a new printing press.
The Trust’s newsrooms earn revenue from traditional sources: advertising and reader revenue, with events, commercial printing jobs, and branded content in the mix as well. Membership programs — and the small-dollar donations that hopefully come with them — “take time to build,” McDuffie acknowledged, but the Trust sees them as playing an important long-term role in diversifying revenue.
National Trust for Local News CEO Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro has said the Trust shifted its focus from making direct investments to being focused on “execution” for a simple reason: the local news industry “doesn’t need more coaches.” McDuffie echoed the sentiment and said the Trust sees itself as offering buying power, management, and other benefits that’ve not been available to local news outlets “outside of corporate media.”
“I’d say we’re very hands-on operators,” McDuffie added. “We are not consultants.”
The printing press in the room
The Trust has launched The Macon Melody with a weekly print edition and has invested in printing presses and legacy newspapers in three states. A recent subscription benchmark report for news publishers found that “despite digital-only subscriptions outpacing print (66% vs. 33%), print still drives nearly 75% of total revenue.” Still, the moves raised some eyebrows in a nonprofit local news industry that has often focused on digital distribution.
“I’ll give you the cleaned up version [of what I hear]: ‘What are you thinking?’” McDuffie said. “I think the print product is a really important part of the local news identity. Is it going to be a part of that local news identity 50 years from now? I don’t know. But do I think it’s going to be a part of the identity 10 and 20 years from now? I think it will be.”
Who is next?
The Trust has plans to expand to more states. The nonprofit news organization has heard from dozens of interested local news organizations. McDuffie sketched a few of the factors that the Trust has learned to look for when deciding whether to make an acquisition:
- Would there be a news desert without the Trust’s intervention? The overwhelming majority of local news brands in the Trust’s portfolio serve communities with fewer than 50,000 people. None serve a community larger than 200,000. The Trust sees “serving communities that are very hard to serve with a true startup” as part of its mission.
- Are there foundations and individuals willing to support local news in the state? “Philanthropy is not going to be able to save local news on its own. I think that’s pretty clear,” McDuffie said. “But we do need an ecosystem of philanthropic support … that understands how important this is.”
- Has the news organization made “progress toward a more digital future”? “Are you thinking about how your audience is evolving? Have you been an effective communicator of your mission and how important it is? Have you been able to prevent brain drain?” McDuffie asked. “Frankly, that is one of many things this industry can’t afford — having talent leave.”
- Does the newsroom have the trust of the communities it serves? McDuffie said the Trust looks at “the mix of stories” being produced, social presence, participation in the broader news ecosystem, and subscription trends to evaluate trust. “I’m not going to sit here and say that we have, like, a Trust Barometer that we take everything through,” he said. “But you do get a little bit of a spidey sense on this sort of thing.”
“Small-j” journalism builds trust
McDuffie said trust “is the most valuable thing on any balance sheet we have across our three states.” He encouraged ONA attendees to remember the work that helps build it:
“Small-j journalism, which we just call community journalism, may not be at the top of the Pulitzer list every year, but it sure does build a lot of trust,” McDuffie said. “I think that if you want your audience to pay attention when you’re holding the powerful accountable, or you’re giving a voice to the voiceless, or you’re shining a light in dark corners, then you sure as hell better show up when they’re celebrating things that are going well in their community, or, God forbid, they’re mourning a shared tragedy.”
Midjourney
