Report

America's newspapers would like a word with journalism philanthropy

By David Grant

December 11, 2025

This article originally appeared on Blue Engine Collaborative’s LinkedIn.

Research from our friends at INMA and Mather on the state of print publishers’ business transformation comes to this powerful conclusion:

“Business transformation today must move beyond the traditional print-to-digital shift, which too often centers on the defensive game of cost-cutting, toward a more offensive strategy.”

With that in mind, Blue Engine Collaborative and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism surveyed 49 American newspaper executives in our first Newspaper Executive Insights poll with a simple question:

Where are you investing to “go on offense” in 2026?

The answer?

Program officers at philanthropies large and small are about to hear from a lot more newspaper leaders.

A third of respondents said they were going after philanthropy as their major move of 2026.

That was followed by just under 20 percent who are prioritizing digital advertising and digital subscriptions, respectively.

Fifteen percent said they’d be doubling down on print advertising and around 10 percent are looking at new business lines.

Would you like to weigh in? Take the public version of the poll here Would you like to weigh in? Take the public version of the poll here

What’s got newspapers interested in greater philanthropy dollars?

Leading players like Georges Media, The Post & Courier and the Salt Lake Tribune have already shown great success driving support from national and local funders alike. Programs like LMA’s Lab for Journalism Funding have generated positive results for print players that never dreamed of pitching their local community foundation.

Those early wins are turning into a more solid belief among newspaper leaders that philanthropy can play a major role in their future.

“Philanthropy is the area that seems (1) most certainly a part of the future of local news and (2) where we can accelerate aggressively,” as one Southeastern newspaper executive put it.

Why might newspaper publishers be able to accelerate aggressively here? Perhaps because they’re increasingly comfortable telling their story as a vitally important civic institution – one worthy of support alongside other major causes in their region.

“We serve a community that’s accustomed to giving to support all manner of causes and organizations, but asking them to support community news in a meaningful way is new,” said an executive at a Northeastern newspaper. “That said, we’ve seen all kinds of early indicators that they’re ready for it.”

Our poll turned up dozens of ways assertive publishers are dialing in their philanthropy approach, including:

• Several organizations have already hired or will soon hire a director of development.
• Many are making core infrastructure investments in customer relationship management (CRM) systems with an eye toward wealth screening and automated communication.
• Some are building marketing outreach to thousands of potential donors in their community and reaching out to them digitally as well as via mail.

Finally, several publishers noted a strong – and perhaps counterintuitive – relationship between philanthropy and digital subscriptions.

Merging a statewide nonprofit newsroom into The New Mexican Public Service Journalism Fund, as Patrick Dorsey of The Santa Fe New Mexican explained, “is part of our overall strategy to increase reporting capacity and impactful projects to increase overall traffic and help drive more audience … which we believe will also help to drive more philanthropic giving as well as paid subscriptions as readers experience more of our content and capabilities.” Dorsey continued “All philanthropic content is free to consume, but we feel the positive image impact will also lift the paid parts of our business and further augment our capabilities.”

Beyond philanthropy goals

Digital subscriptions and digital advertising, the next most common responses on the Newspaper Executive Insights poll, also had a symbiotic relationship in the mind of several respondents.

“We believe that digital subscriptions will substantiate about 25% of revenues in a sustainable digital model and is important to digital ad sales,” said Isaiah Buse, publisher of The Houston Herald. “We are investing heavily in social media advertising and newsletter funnels to turn engaged non-members into paying subscribers.”

Together, digital subscriptions and digital ad sales, are about “skating to where the puck is going,” as Keith Hammonds, publisher of The Boulder Monitor put it. “It’s where readers are headed, bit by bit. And there’s not enough advertising support in our communities to sustain quality news. We’re launching a newsletter strategy, supported by targeted social media marketing, to bring people in.”

Several are making investments to continue expanding print opportunities.

“Eighty percent of our revenue comes from print even as we invested heavily in digital,” said Matthew Adelman, publisher of The Douglas Budget. “We recently purchased updated production equipment for speed and quality, hired more staff in the press department, and expanded our color page availability, reduced color charges to encourage more runs and larger ads (which has worked well, by the way!).”

As for new business lines, keep your eyes peeled for expanded shared service offerings from Cherry Road in 2026.

“Our organization is focused on using the staff, infrastructure and systems we have built for our own operation to bring services to the industry that can help others be more efficient,” said Lee Bachlet , SVP of growth and innovation at Cherry Road. This generates “new revenue and offsets expenses while helping others save expenses and make their own operations better.”

The Lenfest Institute offers free resources related to philanthropy and print reduction for local news organizations.

For resources related to fundraising, join the Lenfest News Philanthropy Network email list or join us at the 2026 Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit, happening May 18-20 in Philadelphia.

For details on how your organization can transition away from print, check out the Beyond Print Diagnostic, a self-assessment that recommends resources from the Beyond Print Toolkit.