INN Index Report shows broadened demand for public service journalism
Nonprofit news is driving sustained, multi-year growth, and the number of outlets providing local coverage has rapidly increased over the past four years, a report from the Institute for Nonprofit News finds.
According to the 2022 INN Index Report (22 pages, PDF), two-thirds of news outlets in the INN Index trend set increased their revenue, with a median of 25 percent growth during this four-year time frame. The report also found that two-thirds of outlets in the cohort saw their web traffic increase between 2018 and 2021 (measured by the average number of unique monthly visitors) and more than three-quarters of outlets in the cohort reported gains in newsletter list size. More than half (55 percent) of the news outlets that have launched since 2017 are local, and the growth of local newsrooms has increased year over year, according to the report.
“The trend data are telling us that there is a demand for the kind of nonpartisan, in-depth news coverage that nonprofits provide,” said INN executive director and CEO Sue Cross. “When you see news organizations attracting both revenue and readers year over year, and you see more nonprofits launching at the local level, you know that people are hungry for trustworthy news that is relevant to their lives.”
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