Guide

Want to fund journalism? Here are key lessons from experienced funders — and a newsroom leader

September 9, 2026

Kara Meyberg Guzman accepts two LION Awards for Santa Cruz Local in Sept. 2025. Photo: Fig Media for LION

This post is part of “Building a Thriving News Ecosystem,” a series from Knight Communities Network, a Lenfest Institute community of practice for local funders creating thriving news ecosystems.

Thanks to the efforts of the Press Forward funding coalition more recently, and Knight Foundation for many years previously, more local funders have been starting to support journalism in their communities. But as these newbies get started, they might wonder: What’s the best way to approach funding newsrooms, what are the pitfalls, and what have other funders learned as best practices?

This guide includes some of those hard-earned lessons from funders, along with some thoughts from a grantee who has filled out an application or two, Kara Meyberg Guzman, CEO and co-founder of Santa Cruz Local. Meyberg Guzman’s pet peeve is when a funder makes a small newsroom jump through hoops and participate in a time-consuming program for a small-dollar grant.

“There are a lot of funders who require participation in a nine-week cohort or something like that to access a relatively small amount of money,” she said. “But really, the most valuable resource for an entrepreneur in their first or second year is their time, and too many early startups end up spinning their wheels chasing these things.”

While accelerator programs and their ilk can be effective, they need to take newsrooms’ limited time and energy into account. That’s one of the pushbacks from newsrooms who seek grant funding: Programs should be crafted with newsroom leaders in mind. What do they need most? What will help without diverting them from their mission? Shared-power relationships between funders and newsrooms help immensely.

Some basic ground rules for funders of journalism include:

Make sure there’s a clear alignment between funder goals and newsroom capacity. A custom approach can work best when working with smaller news outlets.
Don’t expect to shape editorial direction. Yes, you are funding journalism, but the news organization must retain its editorial freedom to cover the topic in ways that might make powerful local entities uncomfortable.
Pay close attention to long-term sustainability. Consider how your grant might seed business growth and financial stability in a difficult digital transition for newsrooms.

Here are some key best practices and tips for new funders so they don’t make the same mistakes as others before them.

1. Do the necessary research and set strategy before making grants.

Before jumping into funding journalism, make sure you have a recent landscape analysis so you know the strengths and weaknesses in the news ecosystem. This can help you understand where the gaps are, and which outlets are showing promise in serving key audiences. Then consider how the ecosystem’s needs align with your own goals and focus areas to help set a funding strategy.

An illustration from Ink Factory Studio showing MacArthur Foundation’s local news program’s strategic approach.

Silvia Rivera, director of the local news program at MacArthur Foundation, says that clarifying your strategy based on research is crucial for new funders. “Start with being clear on the type of change local news can create,” she said. “Are you entering this work to build civic engagement? Hold power accountable? Help with news deserts? That clarity helps shape everything else. Listening first, understanding the space you are entering and asset mapping is fundamental.”

Conversely, not having a plan could unintentionally harm news organizations, according to Jordan Reese, director of media relations at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which focuses on health issues. Reese says that funders need to know not just what they want to support now, but whether they can sustain support over time and what happens when a newsroom grows dependent on that funding. Journalism funding should strengthen organizations, not create instability or false expectations.

“You should have a good strategy in mind before you start,” Reese said. “Knowing not just what you want to do right now, but where you might be headed is important. Because, especially in this field, the last thing you want to do is harm. Having a strategy in advance means you’re following the doctors’ credo: ‘first, do no harm.’”

2. Listen to newsrooms about needs, and streamline grant processes.

As mentioned above, funders must do their homework before sending money out the door, including research along with conversations or roundtables with local newsrooms to understand what they need most. When setting up grant programs, make sure to be transparent about timelines and expectations, offer meaningful support, and collaborate with grantees to define goals and success, according to Meyberg Guzman. She says that the best grants align with a newsroom’s mission rather than pulling them away from it.

“I think the best case scenario is a funder giving a grant for something the newsroom would have done anyway, and is aligned with the funders’ causes,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea to do whatever you can in the application process to make sure you are aligned and share the same priorities.”

Reese concurs that funders need to do more than simply cut checks, and can learn a lot by having ongoing conversations with newsrooms — so they can learn from each other without compromising editorial independence. For instance, funders can share research, policy insights, and field knowledge, while journalists help funders understand audiences, impact, and emerging needs.

Eli Flournoy, project, program, and research manager for the Rural News Fund at Press Forward Central Appalachia, says that programs need to reflect the reality of time scarcity in newsrooms. The local chapter’s recent investments in eight newsrooms included one-on-one coaching from “Navigators” and peer learning opportunities, but they were designed to fit into newsroom workflows instead of adding an administrative burden.

“We designed the Navigator program to be a support that is inserted into their process as opposed to taking them out of their process and training them on something,” Flournoy said.

3. Collaborate with infrastructure partners and treat newsrooms as businesses.

Knight Foundation created a graphic showing how various local news infrastructure programs fit together

Newsrooms need more than just support for editorial coverage; they need seed money that will help them create internal resources to become financially sustainable. But how can funders better understand underlying business challenges (and solutions) for newsrooms? There are a growing number of local news infrastructure players, from associations to technology firms to intermediary funders. While there have been complaints about intermediaries taking funding away from newsrooms, the best ones act as “multipliers” by helping more outlets succeed.

Rivera says MacArthur can access robust data on newsroom businesses through associations such as LION Publishers and the Institute for Nonprofit News (e.g. the INN Index). Plus, Listening Post Collective (LPC) and Tiny News Collective (TNC) helps MacArthur understand more about the work and needs of smaller newsrooms. “LPC and TNC tell us about the work being done on the ground, like nascent newsrooms starting off with smaller civic projects,” she said. “TNC can help give us a sense of what kind of investment can give those newsrooms a leg up.”

Flournoy believes that journalism funding should be treated more like a small-business investment instead of a grant. Press Forward Central Appalachia has been at the forefront of using “catalytic investing,” with its recent grant program including a $50,000 grant in year one and a $50,000 flexible, low interest loan in year two.

“This is a business investment, not programmatic funding,” he said. “There is a tiered process, starting with some level of access to free money and coaching, and then catalytic capital later. You have to understand that most small businesses don’t have land or tangible assets so you need to participate in a way that de-risks the investment by using loan guarantee pools or partnering with a financial institution that can lend at a lower interest rate.”

4. Consider collaboratives, creators, and other community partnerships.

The 2026 Philadelphia News Creators Network fellows (Photo by Azella Gardens)

Not only is there power in funders collaborating on programs through Press Forward local chapters; newsrooms can also amplify their work through local news collaboratives and special partnerships with local creators on social media. There’s been a growing trend toward the latter type of collaborations, including in Philadelphia as highlighted in the recent Creators Summit — including a fellowship program supported by The Lenfest Institute (pictured above).

Jim Brady, a principal at Spirited Media Consultant and former VP of journalism at Knight Foundation, believes newsrooms can gain a lot working with trusted creators who can amplify reporting, sustain attention on important issues, and potentially create shared revenue opportunities. “News organizations still struggle with audience growth,” he said. “So why wouldn’t they partner with creators who’ve already figured that out? If someone with millions of followers is willing to help distribute quality journalism, that’s an opportunity newsrooms should embrace.”

Likewise, he believes that news collaboratives, such as the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, which often include local nonprofit organizations as partners, can help newsrooms succeed beyond just co-publishing stories. They can also coordinate distribution, impact, and revenue strategies across newsroom partners. “The future collaboratives that are really going to kill it are going to be the ones that can drive some revenue growth for newsrooms too,” he said.

Rivera concurs that collaboratives are “super smart” by helping newsrooms share resources, collaborate on stories, and solve problems together. “That’s what’s encouraging about this era,” she said. “People are collaborating in ways that were unheard of 10 or 20 years ago. There’s a real spirit of working together, not about competition, but about serving the community. We can’t provide resources for civic information around the country unless we work closely together.”

Final takeaways & next steps

Consider supporting startups as well as established players. Funders tend to take the path of least resistance by supporting newsrooms that already have proven themselves and have worked with other funders. However, Meyberg Guzman suggests not to overlook the newer players who often fill gaps missed by larger newsrooms. “Don’t be afraid and don’t ignore the smallest news organizations,” she said. “A lot of innovation is happening there. A lot of these news founders just need that first investment. We need to prioritize community-focused news outlets led by founders from underrepresented backgrounds because it’s harder for them to access that capital.”

Track metrics that matter to newsrooms and communities instead of one-size-fits-all measurements. While newsrooms and funders have been caught up in digital growth metrics such as pageviews, unique visitors, and social media followers for years, there’s been a movement toward impact metrics that measure deeper engagement and cultural change. “Spending more time on a story that can drive positive change in a community has to be something supported by the business model and by philanthropy,” Brady said. “But that can only happen if we prioritize driving change, not driving page views. I think we all benefit if newsrooms have more time to work on deeper stories that can more deeply engage audiences.” Meyberg Guzman said she is working together with a potential funder on success metrics. “Be open to qualitative metrics that are realistic such as building trust in the community, listening to residents, experimentation,” she said. “Those are necessary steps to innovation and sustainability.”

Supporting rural journalism requires a different mindset than urban philanthropy. Most large national journalism funders have a very urban focus, according to Flournoy, leading to a misunderstanding of rural news ecosystems. He thinks rural news funders should take an economic-development angle, not traditional grant-making, especially in more conservative parts of the country. “We have to take a small-business development approach,” he said. “That’s the most constructive way to partner with both state and federal governments.” That approach could lead to partnerships with local economic development agencies to support local newsrooms as small businesses alongside others they traditionally invest in.

Think long term with funding that helps rebuild the news ecosystem. One-shot programs rarely make a difference in communities, especially those that have hollow news ecosystems. Collaboration is very important, whether it’s with other funders, journalism support programs, community organizations, or other stakeholders. “It would be detrimental if we did not look at the place-based ways we can foster collaboration and take stock of unique assets that exist in a community to rebuild the infrastructure that’s been lost,” Rivera said. “Some communities might have university infrastructure, some have healthy philanthropic support with many assets in place. It’s important to take a careful approach in each place.”