By Michele McLellan, Jesse Holcomb and Emily Roseman

Oct. 5, 2022

Definition: National organizations focus on public affairs issues that affect the entire country. “National” in this context largely means the United States, except for three survey respondents that cover national news in Canada. Global organizations generally take aim at broad world topics or they produce news of distant places. This study covers 60 national and 21 global organizations, collectively making up less than one-third of the field.

The Landscape

National and global news organizations are the oldest and most established group of nonprofit news outlets. Their prominence and reach dwarfs the rest of the field, and as a group they enjoy a greater share of foundation funding than their counterparts.

Growth: More than half of the national and global outlets in this study have been operating for a decade or more. Additional organizations have launched at an average rate of about four per year since 2012. Three launched in 2021. Their bases of operations are heavily concentrated in the Northeast and in Washington, D.C.

• Examples: Two national outlets, The Appeal, based in Landers, California, and Public Health Watch, based in Austin, Texas, launched in 2021 along with one global outlet, The Climate based in Washington, D.C.

Mission & Impact: National and global outlets are most likely to produce analysis and explanatory reporting. Nearly half cover a limited number of related topics, such as environment, education or health typically under a common umbrella of policy. Well over one-third specialize in a single topic.

• In keeping with a primary mission of producing analysis and explanatory journalism, 85% of these outlets say building knowledge around a complicated topic is a top priority.
• Examples: The Daily Yonder, a national outlet, based in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and Circle of Blue, a global outlet based in Traverse City, Michigan, focus on explanatory journalism.
• Three-fourths (77%) employ at least one investigative journalist and nearly 70% employ two or more. The median number employed per outlet is 4. This group produced nearly 16,750 public records requests and nearly 2,300 databases in 2021. (One organization in our survey accounted for a lion’s share of both.)

Revenue

The majority of national and global organizations enjoy much larger budgets than their counterparts. Four in 10 generate revenue of $2 million or more and an additional three in 10  take in between $500,000 and  just under $2 million annually. Median revenue in 2021 was nearly $1.2 million, about the same as in 2020.

Revenue mix: National and global outlets enjoy strong support from foundations that provide well over half of all revenue for this group and from a mix of small donors and major gifts of $5,000 a year or more. Earned revenue from sources such as advertising, sponsorship or events plays a much smaller role in the revenue mix.

Share of foundation funding: Foundation support for national and global outlets outstrips the size of this group of outlets within the nonprofit news field. They employ just over half of the field in terms of staff size and represent about one-fourth of the total number of nonprofit outlets. Yet they bring in close to 70% of foundation dollars for nonprofit news.

Revenue outlook: With their prominence and reach, national and global organizations are well positioned to continue to expand their donor base. At the same time, it is possible that some of the national foundation support they enjoy could shift to resources for the expanding local nonprofit news ecosystem.

Staffing

The median number of personnel in this group is 13 and the number of paid employees per organization ranges from 0 to 170.

• More than three in 10 employees (36%) are people of color, about the same share as local organizations and higher than state/regional outlets. 

• Four in 10 organizations have 40% or more employees of color.

Audience & Distribution

About one in five of these organizations say serving communities of color is a primary mission, similar to state/regional outlets but lower than the locals. As a group, these outlets are much less likely than the rest of the field to cite specific target audiences, although one-third say elected officials and policymakers are an audience they want to attract.

• Examples: Shelterforce, a national organization based in Montclair, New Jersey, and Type Investigations, a global organization based in New York, are among organizations with a mission to serve communities of color.
• About half of national and global outlets say they reach most of their audience directly via their own platforms or newsletters. Three in 10 say third-party platforms are the primary way they reach their audiences and the rest say they use a mix of the two.
• As a group, national and global nonprofit outlets estimate their work was republished regularly by more than 3,000 third-party publications, primarily news websites and print newspapers. The median number of publication partners per outlet was 10.

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