Non-Profit News Publishers Are Growing Quickly in 2023
I’ve talked often about the work of INN (Institute for Nonprofit News) regularly here on PublishhPress.
INN is a fascinating organization because they're building a community of innovative publishers including many start-ups. And those publishers almost all use WordPress. In fact, INN has long encouraged their members to move to WordPress, even running their own WordPress hosting service at one point.
For six years now, INN has produced an annual report on the nonprofit news sector. We covered their 2022 report here.
I believe there's an exciting new publishing movement in the US. INN has the best data to back that up.
INN has just published their 2023 report. Some highlights of the report:
- Growth: INN membership saw 17% growth and members saw 19% revenue growth.
- Revenue: Median revenue per outlet is about $475,000, up form roughly $370,000 in 2022.
- Focus: Local news is the main driver of growth. 46% of outlets surveyed in 2022 focused on local news (up from 42% in 2021).
- Staff: The median staff size is is five people. Overall, there was a 15% increase in workforce size compared to the previous year.
- Traffic: Web traffic was flat. Newsletter-focused outlets showed the most growth.
- Overlap with public broadcasting: INN is starting to sign up a lot of public broadcasters whose mission often overlaps with these newer publishers.
Here's a key chart showing the growth in INN membership:
