Between restoration and transformation in Pennsylvania’s nonprofit news ecosystem

Amidst the contraction of for-profit newspapers across the United States, nonprofit journalism has emerged as a widely endorsed alternative for sustaining local news. Drawing on 11 semi-structured interviews with nonprofit news leaders in Pennsylvania, we examined how people working in the nonprofit news sector envision its role in addressing the journalism crisis and rebuilding local journalism. Based on a thematic analysis of these interviews, we identified two distinct visions animating nonprofit news in Pennsylvania: the restorationist vision of nonprofit journalism, a more conservative approach centered on filling market gaps and restoring newsrooms to their pre-crisis form and function, and the transformational vision of nonprofit journalism , which is oriented toward building a structural alternative to for-profit news media. Additionally, we calculated the cost of implementing each of these visions in Pennsylvania. Based on these estimates, we found that it is unlikely that either the restorationist or transformational vision can be achieved through existing revenue sources. We conclude that if nonprofit journalism is to move beyond a small-scale corrective, public funding will be essential to sustaining nonprofit local news at scale.