Rob Curley: Your generosity on Giving Tuesday will fuel storytelling, civic engagement and local journalism

Hi friends,

Spokane has a long tradition of stepping up for the institutions that make our region stronger, more connected and more compassionate. That includes our community newspaper.

I’d like to share an update on the future of The Spokesman-Review and ask for your support on Giving Tuesday and in the months ahead.

By now you may have heard The Spokesman-Review – one of the last independent daily newspapers in the United States – is transitioning from more than a century of family ownership to one of the nation’s first community-owned dailies. This is groundbreaking stuff that feels perfectly in line with how Spokane has never been afraid of doing things our own way.

The Cowles family made a historic decision in April to donate The Spokesman-Review to the people of Spokane. We’ve entered a new chapter powered by community support and unprecedented partnerships.

The Cowleses are contributing a $2 million matching grant to the Comma Community Journalism Lab, a local nonprofit founded in 2023 to specifically operate the newspaper. Comma also serves to work with other local journalism organizations to keep local news vital across Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Comma received its official tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service in fall 2024.

Comma’s roots date back to the launch of our incredibly popular events series, Northwest Passages, eight years ago. These events set the groundwork for our region to have some of its first community-funded journalists – from in-depth health reporting to being the only newspaper in the Northwest and the smallest in the United States with a D.C. bureau. Now, we’re counting on your contributions to match the Cowles family’s incredibly generous $2 million gift.

Here’s what’s happening, why it’s happening and how to get involved.

Why are we building a community-owned nonprofit newsroom?

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.

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.

Why is this change happening now?

More than two newspapers in the U.S. are shutting down every week, caught in devastating economic headwinds caused by the shift from brick-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 then bleed the newspaper 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 its nonprofit model, which gives our organization access to new funding, as well as the ability to work with new partners and education institutions.

Why Comma?

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, it 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.

Are you changing the paper’s name?

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

Why is the Cowles family donating the paper?

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.

How will The Spokesman-Review remain impartial if there is funding by outside organizations?

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 for 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.

In this highly polarized era, how can Comma help to ensure trust in local media?

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 fact checks 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.

What’s next?

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.

Is there a timeline?

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 Cowleses 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.

How can I help?

Please contribute on Giving Tuesday. You can read more about how to give at comma.cm. And, yes, the Comma website is comma.CM, not dot com. It’s a long story, and I’m glad to share it with you the next time you see me in person.

Here are four ways to support Comma and local journalism:

1. Advocacy: Help spread the word. Get others engaged. Stay involved. Learn more at comma.cm.

2. Contribute: Your donations are tax-deductible.

3. Get tickets: Attend a Northwest Passages event and join the conversation. We go beyond the headlines to get Spokane talking – about ourselves, our ideas and our collective future.

4. Join the First Amendment Club: Become a community benefactor.

Your generosity fuels the storytelling, civic engagement and local journalism that helps Spokane thrive. And with every gift being matched up to $2 million, your impact goes twice as far.

Thank you for believing in this mission, and for being part of a community that shows up every day.

With deep appreciation,

Rob Curley