Frequently asked questions about The Spokesman-Review's nonprofit plan

Community is our great unifier. It transcends political trends, thriving on what we have in common rather than accentuating our differences. Community helps us build trust. That’s the foundation of the nonprofit Comma Community Journalism Lab. Comma is committed to telling the stories that matter most to local readers, while educating and mentoring the next generation of journalists.

The Spokesman-Review will be owned and operated by a local 501(c)(3) nonprofit, building a “hybrid” funding strategy different from what most other news nonprofits use. Comma is joining forces with nonprofit newsrooms, universities and public school districts across the region, while partnering with the Black Lens and reviving small-town weekly newspapers that readers have sorely missed.

More than two newspapers in the U.S. are shutting down every week, caught in devastating economic headwinds caused by the shift from bricks-and-mortar shopping to online retail and the collapse of once lucrative local advertising sales.

Making matters worse is that most newspapers surviving in this day and age are owned by hedge funds or corporations carrying massive debt, which bleed newspapers to death through extensive layoffs and other cuts. These papers are shells of themselves, and can no longer serve their communities in the meaningful ways they once did.

Comma’s mission is nothing less than saving community journalism by shifting to this nonprofit model, which gives our organization access to new funding, as well as the ability to work with new partners and education institutions.

From the moment we learn to read, we’re taught that commas connect different ideas within a sentence. When we’re reading, commas also give us a chance to pause and take a breath. If ever we needed a time to pause a moment to rediscover our common ground, this is it. A comma also is not like a period; it doesn’t represent the end of something. A comma tells you something else is still coming.

This not only explains the simple and powerful role of an often-overlooked piece of punctuation, it also tells us why Comma was the perfect name for this new nonprofit organization. Comma builds on Spokane’s strong support for this newspaper’s Northwest Passages Book Club and Community Forum, the foundation of the newspaper’s reader engagement and grants programs.

No. This newspaper’s name will forever be The Spokesman-Review, with the opening capital T and the fancy hyphen.

This is the question most often asked by readers. The creation of Comma is the culmination of nine years of community-building, planning and fundraising by the newsroom’s leadership. It was proposed as a way to have our community even more involved with our newspaper, while enabling us to work on new ways – outside of just advertising and subscriptions – to help fund the tremendous expense of running a local news operation of this size.

The Cowles family agreed this would be a better way to find sustainable solutions for the long-term health of The Spokesman-Review. These types of alternate funding options also give this newspaper the best opportunity to try to avoid future staff layoffs, as well as a further reduction of the number of days this newspaper is printed. Publisher Stacey Cowles and the Cowles family generously agreed in April to donate the 142-year-old newspaper to the nonprofit.

In the interest of full disclosure and transparency, please be aware that any contributions to Comma, Northwest Passages and the First Amendment Club membership program are solely in support of community journalism as well as literary and literacy programs. Donors have no control or influence over the newspaper’s editorial decisions. There is a hard firewall between funders and our journalism.

We have had philanthropic-funded journalists in our newsroom since 2019, and have shown since then that we have some of the industry’s toughest standards in regards to keeping the independence of our journalists sacred. In most cases, our community-funded beat reporters don’t even know who funded their positions. We plan to keep it that way.

Comma is building a culture of transparency and integrity in journalism by promoting accuracy, impartiality, and balance in news reporting for the public good. Through a foundational system of accountability and ethics-focused oversight, we believe the key is for a local news organization to remain answerable to its community by creating a vibrant and open dialogue with readers.

That includes new ways of having our community directly involved in the checks and balances of our journalism, through a new advisory council, open news meetings, random source- and factchecks for stories and monthly meetings with readers. We also are creating a new ombudsperson for our organization. We believe if The Spokesman-Review is truly going to be the people’s paper, then our community also deserves to have the people’s editor – an editor focused on answering our readers' questions about our journalism and how it is reported.

Since April, readers have responded by pledging donations from $5 to $500,000. The deadline to complete the $2 million fundraising match is April 2026. We’re about 75% of the way there, but we have a ways to go.

Yep. Our goal is to have our match secured before the end of 2025, which would trigger a 90-day transition window for the ownership of The Spokesman-Review from the Cowles family to the Comma Community Journalism Lab. Let’s call that April 1.

But that’s not set in stone. Especially since that’s April Fool’s Day, and everyone knows you don’t purposely schedule anything of real substance that day.

The original memorandum of understanding between the Cowles and Comma was signed on April 4, 2025, and stipulated one year from that date to raise the matching funds. There are real complexities in shifting to new accounting and payroll systems, not to mention employee benefits, or even just making sure things like email and phones continue to work on new software. Regardless of the exact transition date, it will most certainly be in the first half of 2026.

The newspaper will continue to publish six days a week in print and every day online. Some stories will appear behind a paywall, while stories reported and written by reporters whose positions are funded at least partially by outside grants will remain free to all online readers.

The current reporters, editors and staff members will be asked to join the 'new' newsroom.

It will remain under the ownership of the Cowles family, and The S-R newsroom will continue to be located there for the foreseeable future.