Jeremy Halbreich jokingly remarks that the media company he leads — AIM Media Management — will do anything that is legal to grow the organization’s readers and subscribers. The longtime media executive is serious, though, about applying an entrepreneurial approach to the newspapers his organization owns through its subsidiaries in Texas, Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio. “We need other means of revenue to offset organic print decline,” he says of the newspaper industry in general.
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism’s 2025 report on the state of local journalism underscores that reality. The school’s annual survey reveals that 3,500 newspapers have disappeared across the United States in the 21st century. About 5,400 papers remain, along with a growing number of digital sites. But, the report says, 88 million Americans live in counties with either one or no local news source, which often means one newspaper or no newspaper..
In Indiana, Halbreich’s company uses its two printing presses in Greenfield, Indiana, to do a robust commercial printing business. Sales representatives even go out to local publications across Indiana and surrounding states to solicit business. The commercial operation helps offset any revenue losses from AIM’s Indiana newspapers, which include four daily operations and four weekly papers.
In Texas, where Halbreich once served as president and general manager of the Dallas Morning News, the company owns newspapers in Rio Grande Valley communities such as McAllen, Brownsville, and Harlingen. AIM Media Texas created the MyRGV.com website to put on one site stories from the papers in those three cities. And it owns the Odessa American in West Texas.
AIM Media operates Digital AIM Media as well. The latter has helped the Rio Grande Valley papers make inroads in selling digital ads through their websites. Data analytics have been critical to reaching local audiences. Halbreich notes that the company’s detailed geographic, demographic, and psychographic data about its online audiences help prospective advertisers reach people through AIM’s sites. He also says that digital ad revenues in Texas exceed retail and legal advertising revenues. “This shows what you can do with aggressive digital sales,” he says of providing subscribers hyper-local advertising that major national newspapers cannot offer.
As chairman and CEO of AIM Media, Halbreich has drawn upon his experience as the former head of the Chicago Sun-Times’ parent organization to seek out investors. He has sold them on the idea that they could earn returns equivalent to a corporate bond. The return might be lower than that of some other investments, but it provides a nice cash flow. The concept has sparked interest from investors with an interest in supporting local journalism, Halbreich says.
With intense pressure on their business model, largely from technological advances, for-profit journalism organizations need to be entrepreneurial if they are to sustain themselves. That’s why AIM’s strategies matter. It is not the only journalism organization offsetting losses through strategies like commercial printing and aggressive digital sales. But that approach shows how entrepreneurialism can sustain local news operations.
New revenue streams
The search for sustainable cash flows is a daily reality for both for-profit and non-profit media organizations. One emerging alternative is the role of sponsored content, which arose as an alternative to digital banner ads that advertisers and news sites found less lucrative over time.
The Texas Tribune, a non-profit journalism organization, has used sponsored content for several years. The pieces, which a trade association or company usually write, are labeled “paid post.” The sponsoring organization pays the Tribune a fee and then gets to explain its work or position on an issue. The Texas Methane Network, for example, ran a paid post this fall urging the state to adopt new rules governing methane production.
In essence, these posts are like advertisements except they promote a point of view as well as a product.
Spotlight Delaware, another non-profit journalism outlet, regularly uses sponsored content to bolster revenues. Some days the site will have multiple posts on its homepage. One recent piece told how the Delaware Health Information Network uses clinical data to help patients get the right care for traumatic brain injuries. During the last two weeks of October, five paid posts appeared on the site.
Mississippi Today, a Pulitzer Prize-winning digital non-profit, received a grant from JPMorganChase this summer that allows the bank to publish sponsored content on the site. The pieces, which JPMorganChase wrote and are marked as such, largely have focused on financial literacy. (The grant included funding for an All In on Mississippi economic development seminar, which JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon attended.)
The Mississippi grant is one of eight that JPMorganChase is making to non-profit news organizations. It is doing so through the bank’s longstanding partnership with the American Journalism Project (AJP), a leading investor in non-profit journalism. Part of each grant funds the bank’s sponsored content on the recipient’s site.
Subscriptions are another way non-profit models develop new revenue streams. That may hardly sound novel since subscriptions long have provided for-profit news organizations a key revenue source. But the non-profit digital journalism world has depended more on philanthropic funding as it has emerged over the last two decades. They need to expand and diversify sources of income.
Subscriptions or memberships are now another part of the revenue stream for some non-profit digital operations. According to its site, The Texas Tribune has more than 13,000 paying members. The Washington Post reports the non-profit Baltimore Banner has 65,000 subscribers. And CalMatters has more than 400,000 members, according to Arizona State University’s “Confronting the Future of Local News” report.
The Daily Memphian, an online non-profit site that covers Tennessee’s second-largest city, has bet big on subscriptions. The daily news outlet provides readers three free articles per month. By contrast, subscribers, who pay $17 a month for monthly subscriptions or $14.83 a month for yearly subscriptions, receive unlimited access to the site.
Launched in 2018, the site has drawn notice from national news organizations like The Washington Post and Forbes. Its innovations likewise have drawn attention from journalism organizations such as the Poynter Institute and Harvard University’s Nieman Lab.
At the Online News Association’s 2025 annual meeting, The Daily Memphian’s Eric Barnes and Mary Cashiola discussed their organization’s approach to developing sustainable revenues. One challenge is determining which articles go behind the subscription paywall. In a city with a high-poverty, low digitally connected population, the paywall carries risks. Will enough of the population read the Memphian, which strives to be the city’s leading news source?
So far, the bet on a subscription-driven model is working. The move takes pressure off the Daily Memphian from having to constantly raise philanthropic dollars.
Philanthropic financing is not limited to non-profit sites. For-profit newsrooms have ventured into foundation funding, too. A 2023 report from Media Impact Funders, the Lenfest Institute, and NORC at the University of Chicago found that 38% of funders surveyed had given to for-profit news organizations over the last five years. The study termed this a growing trend.
The Dallas Morning News draws from local philanthropies as well as individuals to fund special coverage areas. The newspaper’s Education Lab, Arts Access collaboration with public radio station KERA, and Future of North Texas series are among the projects that have received funding from donors with no editorial control over the reporting.
Thomas Huang, the newspaper’s assistant managing editor for journalism initiatives, explains that it takes about 18 months to develop the relationships and raise the contributions for a project. He reports a high renewal rate among funders. “People see the results as they read the stories,” says Huang.
Having the right partner matters. In the Morning News’ case, that means the Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT). The foundation is the repository for contributions, which allows supporters to take a tax deduction for their support of the for-profit Morning News. Huang also credits the foundation for connecting the newspaper with other donors and even funding the paper’s projects. At the same time, Huang says, CFT holds the news organization accountable for its spending on the initiatives.
Similarly, the Seattle Times — the Pacific Northwest’s largest newspaper — receives funding from philanthropy and private donors for aspects of its coverage. The organization’s digital site reports that the newsroom has received $13 million in community funding for particular coverage areas such as the impacts of climate change in the region, strategies to improve mental health care, and ways to ease Seattle’s traffic gridlock.
For-profit newspapers also search for investments to offset the expenses of their news operations. This requires ensuring that the investment doesn’t conflict with their reporting standards, but some news groups are pursuing interesting endeavors. As one example, the Hagadone Newspaper Media Group, a family-owned company, publishes 16 newspapers in Idaho, Washington, and Montana. The hospitality division of the larger Hagadone Corporation also owns resorts in Idaho and two magazines in Hawaii. On a smaller scale, Sycamore Media in eastern Iowa publishes two farm journals to supplement the work of the for-profit organization’s newspapers.
Shared services
For years, for-profit newspaper chains like USA TODAY Co. (formerly Gannett) have shared services like a common legal team across all their newspapers. Now, some non-profit news operations are applying the strategy. A prime example is Newswell, which is affiliated with Arizona State University’s Media Enterprises.
Nicole Carroll, who once served as editor of USA TODAY, is Newswell’s executive director. She saw how USA TODAY Co., which owns USA TODAY and 298 newspapers, provided local news operations business assistance. Newswell employs that approach by offering back-office assistance to the 10 California papers that owners have donated to the organization. That includes operations like accounting services and best business practices.
Local editors run the journalism work in Newswell’s papers, unless they seek assistance in areas like investigative reporting and social media. Otherwise, Newswell helps with operating systems as well as offering benefits such as 401(k) matches.
Applying this approach to non-profit digital sites creates what Jim Brady, former vice president of journalism at the Knight Foundation terms a “plug-in and play” approach. [Acknowledgement: The Knight Foundation provides funding for the George W. Bush Institute.]
By this, he means providing local journalists with the business tools to do their work. They can plug into a system, Brady says, which frees them to concentrate on the core work of reporting.
The American Journalism Project provides a similar approach to the local news sites it funds. Unlike Newswell, AJP doesn’t own the organizations. But it helps them with such business operations as developing an organizational structure.
In September, the Medill School of Journalism launched a shared services hub that will provide local news organizations in the Chicago area assistance in product development, audience strategy, legal services, and other areas. The goal is to strengthen the media ecosystem in a city with more than 100 news outlets.
The initiative started with a seminar on the uses of artificial intelligence in local journalism. AI experts worked with Chicago media organizations on how to use tools without compromising their work.
Blue Engine Collaborative works with the Fort Worth Report, Lookout Santa Cruz, and other non-profit sites to grow their audiences. A common thread among the “bright spots” that Medill featured in its 2025 annual review of local journalism is an intense focus on the news consumption habits of their audiences.
In the case of the Fort Worth Report, Blue Engine helped the news site test ways to get people to connect with its newsroom. Sonya Cisneros Wierzowiecki, the Fort Worth Report’s development director, explains that Blue Engine also helps her organization test messages to reach existing donors as well as future contributors.
Understanding AI
What is unknown about artificial intelligence’s future is greater than what is now known about its capabilities. The unknown, however, is not keeping some news organizations from using AI as one tool to sustain their work.
Using artificial intelligence to write news reports should be off-limits, especially given the lack of trust many Americans place in the news media. Relying on machines to produce reports could only exacerbate the trust deficit.
But it’s possible to use AI to augment reporting work. Michigan Public, the state’s public radio network, uses AI to cover public meetings beyond the reach of its limited number of reporters. The network uses the technology to transcribe audio recordings of meetings of school boards and other public bodies. It then puts the transcription into the “Minutes” database that Michigan Public created. As Editor & Publisher reports, “Through the Minutes website, Michigan Public, as well as other newsrooms, can search the database of thousands of transcripts from more than 100 city, county and school board meetings.”
In terms of growing audiences, the Institute for Nonprofit News reports that one of its members, the New Bedford Light, uses AI to translate articles into the community’s six languages. News consumers can click onto their preferred language on the site to hear a story read through an AI digital voice.
The American Journalism Project has launched a Product and AI Studio to help non-profit news sites within its portfolio use this new technology. AJP makes grants to its sites so they can experiment with AI. It also offers coaching on how to do so.
Conclusion
These are just some of the many ways local news organizations are trying to sustain themselves through innovation and entrepreneurialism. What’s important is that their leaders should not fall in love with an idea. If it doesn’t work, then drop it and move on. As Jim Brady says, they need to know how to “fail fast.”
Still, the examples in this study show how innovators and entrepreneurs in both the for-profit and non-profit journalism worlds are seeking new ways to sustain their important work. Turning around the culture of an organization, or launching a site without a proven culture, is not a simple task. But America’s democracy depends upon the reliable flow of information that local journalism organizations provide their communities.
How to innovate and practice entrepreneurialism
- Be creative in broadening revenue streams
- Use existing assets like printing presses to develop income sources
- Experiment with financial opportunities like sponsored content
- Attract philanthropy to fund reporting projects
- Find partners to share back-office services like accounting
- Use data to discover and reach new audiences
- Use AI to serve audiences and augment reporting
- Crack through a resistant culture but don’t fall in love with a wrong idea
Samuel Rodick, a SMU senior and Tower Center Scholar, contributed research for this case study.
