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

The economic headwinds hitting local newspapers are bad enough that at least two papers close every week across the nation. Local news organizations – especially newspapers – are struggling, mostly tied to changes in advertising strategies and a local retail apocalypse tied to online shopping.

But the economics are much more complicated than what can be answered in a few sentences, which is why we asked Charles Apple to build a Further Review full-page infographic to help explain.

Along with notable cost savings associated with being a 501(c)(3), the transition to nonprofit also allows the newspaper to have access to other funding options simply not available to for-profit entities, including philanthropy from foundations, businesses and individuals, tax-deductible membership programs and other community contributions.

This structure allows us to more easily work with other nonprofit news organizations, including sharing resources, content and even expenses, as well as being able to partner much more closely with academic institutions to help discuss the value of media literacy and explain the essential role of local journalism within a community. And, of course, it allows us to work with student journalists at all levels.

The Cowles family is donating the newspaper and a $2 million matching grant to the Comma community journalism lab, which would become the owners of The Spokesman-Review, contingent upon the community matching the $2 million financial gift within the next 12 months.

Though much more fundraising needs to happen, let’s pretend Comma already had the matching funds – which it doesn’t. But if it did, the transition would still take months to complete. New back-end office systems need to be implemented, and key hires related to being a nonprofit need to be made.

None of these things happens quickly.

If everything goes right, and relatively quickly, the best guess might be as early as October, but likely later. Until that time, The Spokesman-Review will continue to be owned and published by Cowles Publishing.

This was essentially answered in the original news story. The name will stay the same, and it will continue to publish as it does: six days a week in print and always online, with some stories continuing to be 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.

We looked at using the name “New Coke,” but it’s pretty hard to compete with a name that’s been in continual operation in Spokane for well over a century. This newspaper’s name will forever be The Spokesman-Review, with the opening capital T and the fancy hyphen. No comma.

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.

All members of the current newsroom will be asked to be a part of the “new” newsroom, which is really just going to be the same Spokesman-Review newsroom that we have. Well, kind of.

The First Amendment Club, a membership program of the new nonprofit, has already raised considerable money, but is aiming to raise even more to create $1 million worth of new journalist positions in Spokane.

Then add in even more student journalist positions, and you get a newsroom that’s not only the biggest Spokane has seen in decades but also one of the biggest in the nation for a regional newspaper.

Most local news nonprofits, and even national news nonprofits, rely mostly on philanthropic dollars to survive.

The “hybrid” funding model is the single-biggest difference point between how most news nonprofits operate and how the future Spokesman-Review will operate as a nonprofit. A significant portion of The Spokesman-Review’s current annual revenues (nearly 70%) is tied directly to subscriptions. Ad dollars are down, as they are in every newspaper across the nation, but advertising in this newspaper still generates serious amounts of revenue ... significantly more than most local news nonprofits raise annually.

The way that Comma has been structured allows for both of those things to continue, along with being able to add nonprofit fundraising to the mix. Annual subscription dollars and millions in advertising are the exact things that most news nonprofits don’t have.

Because of this, the philanthropic dollars we bring in are augmentative but not central to our existence. Having multiple legs that support this and help fund local journalism is the key to this hybrid model.

The best way to answer this is to explain a little bit from the past.

The Spokesman-Review’s first grant-funded position came in 2019, when our newspaper received a Report for America grant that would pay for half of that reporter’s position salary in the first year, 40% in the second year and 20% in the third year. The rest of the funding each year had to be covered by local philanthropic dollars. That health reporter position is now 100% covered by local philanthropic dollars.

We have since had a total of four Report for America reporter positions, and all of those are still a part of our newsroom and 100% paid for through local philanthropic dollars. In total, our newsroom has six grant-funded reporter positions.

That history helps set up the story behind a meeting that was held last fall to update our newsroom on the current status of our newspaper working toward becoming a nonprofit-owned news organization. This exact question came up from one of our reporters, as it should.

At that point, one of our grant-funded reporters was asked if he knew who funded his position, and he said he did not. Then the next reporter was asked, and she said she did not. None of them knew. And none of them will.

There is a hard firewall between funders and our journalism. The reporters typically don’t know who has funded their position, and the organizations or individuals who help fund positions sign an agreement outlining that they can not reach out to our newsroom in anyway.

The “typically” in that last sentence refers to things like Bank of America funding our high school interns, or multiple foundations coming together to fund our racial and social equity reporter position. In those circumstances, stories by those reporters include a sentence at the end that outlines how their position was funded.

A funder can suggest a new topic be funded – which is exactly how both our rural counties reporter position and our D.C. reporter position began – but cannot suggest story ideas or have contact with our reporters or editors.