The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced April 14 it had prevented an imminent shutdown because a nonprofit journalism operation had agreed to buy the struggling newspaper. It’s the latest example of a news outlet turning to the nonprofit sector to avoid closing as advertising and circulation revenues continue to drop.
The resolution to a months-long worry in western Pennsylvania about the paper’s shutdown comes at a difficult moment for the American newspaper industry, which has shed jobs, resources and sometimes entire companies due to the upending of the traditional revenue model by the internet at the beginning of this century.
The Post-Gazette dates its ancestry to 1786, the first newspaper to open west of the Allegheny Mountains, and its closure would have left Pittsburgh as the nation’s largest community without a city-based paper.
The Post-Gazette‘s owners, Block Communications, said the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which publishes the digital Baltimore Banner, had agreed to buy its assets. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Post-Gazette said the new owners would continue to print the newspaper on two days, Thursday and Sunday, and would operate a website on the other days.
The newspaper had been due to close on May 3.
Here’s a look at a few other prominent newspapers that have made similar moves.
The Salt Lake Tribune
The Salt Lake Tribune was the first legacy newspaper in the country to convert directly from a for-profit company to a nonprofit, in 2019. The newspaper had to get IRS approval to make the precedent-setting conversion, which differed from other newspapers that were purchased by already-existing nonprofit companies.
As part of the switch, the paper installed a board of directors and began relying on donations. A strict firewall was set up between reporters and donors to prevent influence or sway from tainting the news report, and the paper’s editorial board stopped making candidate endorsements.
The Salt Lake Tribune had gone through a number of different owners since its first edition was published in 1871 under the name The Tribune & Utah Mining Gazette. As internet use became widespread in the mid-1990s, The Salt Lake Tribune and the rest of the newspaper industry faced worsening financial instability as more readers shunned the print product for online sources, and advertisers turned to digital media.
Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund with a reputation as a ruthless cost-cutter, bought The Salt Lake Tribune in 2010 and saddled the company with $278 million in debt it took on for the acquisition. A subsequent restructuring led to layoffs and a U.S. Department of Justice probe.
Utah businessman Paul Huntsman bought the newspaper in 2016 and ushered in the company’s switch to a nonprofit.
Chicago Sun-Times
In 2022 Chicago Public Media completed a deal to buy the Chicago Sun-Times, creating one of the country’s largest local nonprofit news organizations.
The Chicago Sun-Times was created in 1948 by department-store heir Marshall Field III. Field had founded the Chicago Sun newspaper a few years earlier, and he purchased the local Daily Times because he was looking for printing presses. The two newspapers merged, becoming the Chicago Sun-Times.
The newspaper passed through a series of owners over the next several decades before the purchase by Chicago Public Media.
The public media organization already owned WBEZ, the local NPR affiliate. The radio station and newspaper began sharing content across their platforms, expanding the reach of both platforms.
Tampa Bay Times
The Tampa Bay Times got its start as the West Hillsborough Times, an weekly newspaper printed on a hand-cranked press starting in 1884.
In 1912, Paul Poynter, a former Indiana newspaper publisher, purchased a majority ownership, according to the St. Petersburg Museum of History.
The newspaper remained in the Poynter family’s hands for the next several decades, until Poynter’s son Nelson Poynter died in 1978. He willed the newspaper to a local journalism school — the nonprofit Modern Media Institute — effectively making the newspaper a nonprofit enterprise.
The Modern Media Institute was later renamed for Poynter.
A tough financial landscape remains
The United States isn’t the only place the news industry is struggling. News organizations elsewhere — including in the Caribbean — have faced layoffs, folded entirely or attempted to bring in new revenue by soliciting donations or adding paywalls to websites.
The Associated Press is one of the world’s oldest news organizations, started in the mid-19th century by newspapers looking to share the costs of reporting outside their immediate territory. AP has been a not-for-profit organization for decades, but that hasn’t kept the company insulated from the industry’s financial woes.
The AP announced last week that it was offering buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspapers and print journalism that sustained the company since the mid-1800s. The News Media Guild union, which represents AP journalists, said more than 120 of the staff members it represents received buyout offers.
The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion’s share of AP’s revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income.
“We’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time,” said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP, in an interview.
Despite changes — the company has doubled the number of video journalists it employs in the United States since 2022 — remnants of a staffing structure built largely to provide stories to newspapers and broadcasters in individual states have remained.
Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. AP Media Writer David Bauder contributed.
See also: Nonprofit news media leaders struggle to stop leaning on foundations
Atlanta Journal-Constitution to stop printing as it transitions to all-digital news
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