The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Tuesday that it avoided an imminent shutdown after a nonprofit journalism operation agreed to buy the struggling newspaper, a development the Associated Press framed as part of a wider pattern in the U.S. news industry. The Post-Gazette announcement comes as advertising and circulation revenue continue to fall for many legacy outlets, pushing some owners to look beyond traditional for-profit structures.
The AP also described other newspaper transitions into nonprofit models, each with its own governance and operating approach. While the deals vary in how the newsroom is funded and governed, the common thread described in the report is that nonprofit ownership is increasingly being used to keep local reporting alive.
One early example highlighted by the AP is the Salt Lake Tribune, which the paper said was the first legacy newspaper in the country to directly convert from a for-profit business to a nonprofit in 2019. The AP reported that the Tribune sought IRS approval for the conversion and, as part of the change, installed a board of directors and began relying on donations. The AP also said the Tribune created a strict firewall between reporters and donors to help prevent influence or sway over news coverage, and that its editorial board stopped making candidate endorsements.
The AP traced additional context for the Tribune’s finances, saying the newspaper had changed owners multiple times since its first edition in 1871 under the name “The Tribune & Utah Mining Gazette.” It added that as internet use spread in the mid-1900s, the industry faced worsening financial instability as more readers shifted away from print toward online sources, and advertisers moved to digital media.
For the Tribune’s more recent ownership history, the AP said a New York-based hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, bought the paper in 2010 and took on $278 million in debt tied to the acquisition. The AP reported that a subsequent restructuring led to layoffs and a U.S. Department of Justice probe, and later said that Utah businessman Paul Huntsman bought the newspaper in 2016 and helped guide the company through its switch to a nonprofit.
Another case in the AP rundown involved the Chicago Sun-Times. The AP said in 2022 Chicago Public Media completed a deal to buy the Sun-Times, creating what it described as one of the country’s largest local nonprofit news organizations. It also explained that the Sun-Times emerged in 1948, when department store heir Marshall Field III created the newspaper after founding the Chicago Sun and buying the local Daily Times for printing presses, with the two newspapers later merging into the Chicago Sun-Times.
The AP said the Sun-Times changed hands through several owners before Chicago Public Media’s purchase. It reported that Chicago Public Media already owned WBEZ, the local NPR affiliate, and that the radio station and newspaper began sharing content across their platforms, expanding what the AP described as the reach of both operations.
In Florida, the AP described how the Tampa Bay Times moved into nonprofit status through a journalism school. The AP said the newspaper began as the West Hillsborough Times, an weekly printed on a hand-cranked press starting in 1884, and that in 1912 Paul Poynter, a former Indiana newspaper publisher, purchased majority ownership. It said the paper remained in the Poynter family’s hands for decades until Poynter’s son, Nelson Poynter, died in 1978, at which point the newspaper was willed to a local journalism school, the nonprofit Modern Media Institute, effectively making the newspaper a nonprofit enterprise.
The AP reported that the Modern Media Institute was later renamed for Poynter, linking the organization’s evolution to the ownership structure that made the paper nonprofit. The AP’s broader takeaway from these examples was that nonprofit ownership and donor-backed models are being used as a response to financial pressure, including the challenge of maintaining newsroom operations as print-focused revenue declines.
The AP also widened the lens beyond U.S. ownership structures, saying the news industry’s stress is not confined to the United States and citing the Caribbean as one place where news organizations have faced layoffs, folded, or sought new revenue through donations or website paywalls. The AP added that even though it has long been not-for-profit, the Associated Press has not been insulated from industry financial woes.
In its own company context, the AP reported that it announced last week that it was offering buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as it accelerated away from a focus on newspapers and print journalism that had sustained the company since the mid-1800s. The report said the News Media Guild, which represents AP journalists, stated that more than 120 of the staff members it represents received buyout offers.