By Michelle McLellan
By the numbers
• Local organizations increased in both numbers and as a share of INN membership, making up 54% of outlets, even as growth in other types of outlets slowed.
• More than half (54%) of INN members cover a broad range of topics, and 48% prioritize news and events over in-depth coverage such as investigations or a single topic. The number of organizations with a generalist approach has increased with the growth of local coverage.
• One-fifth (19%) of INN members focus primarily on serving communities of color. Local organizations remain the majority in this segment: 6 in 10 (58%) outlets primarily serving communities of color are local organizations, followed by national organizations (18%).
• INN members reported publishing a median of 25 stories a month. The numbers vary depending on the editorial mission.
Growth in the number of new nonprofit news organizations within INN membership has slowed considerably amid funding cuts and growing uncertainty in a polarized political environment.
Only nine new organizations began publishing in 2025 compared to a growth spurt in 2019-2020 when about 20 outlets launched each year.
Overall, startups, which we define as organizations that began publishing within the prior three years, made up 15% of INN’s membership in 2025, down from a peak of 27% of members in 2020.
The median age of all outlets increased, from seven years in 2024 to nine years in 2025, reflecting a field that remains relatively young.
New growth in INN membership continues to skew local. All nine outlets that became members and began publishing in 2025 covered local beats, consistent with recent years: 10 of 12 outlets in 2024 and 11 of 15 in 2023 were local. That trend holds across early-stage members: Of the 62 outlets in their first three years of operation, 77% are local.
In 2017, only 23% of member organizations identified as local. Today, local organizations make up about 54% of INN membership. Local organizations have made up more than half of 1NN members each year since 2024.
The slowdown in new outlet growth was also evident among organizations whose primary mission is serving communities of color1.
Of 62 INN members that are startups, only four (6%) primarily focused on communities of color, compared to 19% of all outlets across the age spectrum. At the same time, 31% of start ups said covering communities of color was a core priority compared to 36% among all outlets.
The geographic scope often correlates to the mission and coverage priorities of member outlets.
Local outlets are more likely to focus on news and events, covering a broad range of topics — from the police blotter to the city council or school board meeting to a community picnic. In 2025, local news organizations accounted for three-quarters (76%) of outlets that cover a broad range of topics and two-thirds (67%) of those covering current news and events.
Coverage Priority
For this report, INN members are classified into three categories based on their self-reported coverage priorities.
Investigative outlets focus primarily on enterprise, original accountability reporting. INN members in this category include Pro Publica, The Marshall Project, Injustice Watch, and InvestigateWest, among others.
News and events outlets prioritize daily news reporting. INN members in this category include The Texas Tribune, Resolve Philly, Baltimore Beat, Lexington Observer, among others.
Explanatory and analysis outlets focus on contextualizing and explaining topics in the news rather than breaking stories. INN members in this category include Colorado Sun, SJV Water, EcoRI News, and Honolulu Civil Beat, among others.
As local outlets have increased as a share of INN membership, the percentage of outlets that cover news and events has more than doubled to 48% in 2025 from 19% in 2017. The share of outlets covering a broad range of topics (as opposed to single-topic outlets) also increased: from 39% in 2018 to 54% in 2025. The percentage of outlets that cover a single topic has dropped by nearly half, from 21% in 2018 to 11% in 2025.
The shift reflects the changing composition of INN membership over time: the number of single-topic outlets has remained relatively stable in absolute terms, but as general-topic outlets have grown, single-topic outlets now make up a smaller share of a larger field.
Editorial Focus
For this report, INN members are classified into three categories based on their self-reported primary editorial focus:
Single-topic outlets cover one specific subject area, such as education, environment, or criminal justice.
Multi-topic outlets cover several related topics under a common thematic umbrella, such as a range of issues that fall under government or politics.
General-topic outlets cover general news or a range of topics that are not necessarily closely related to each other.
Unlike local outlets, news organizations with a state, regional, national or global scope of coverage are more likely to specialize in investigative or explanatory reporting, and to cover a single topic such as health or environment or a narrow range of related topics such as policy issues.
INN members published a median of 25 stories per month in 2025, up from 20 in 2024. In total, that output adds up to more than 21,000 stories published across the membership each month. Rather than reflecting a fieldwide increase, this change is largely attributable to increases by a few members that either substantially upped their production or participated in the survey for the first time.
The shift reflects the changing composition of INN membership over time: the number of single-topic outlets has remained relatively stable in absolute terms, but as general-topic outlets have grown, single-topic outlets now make up a smaller share of a larger field.
Outlets that prioritize news and events reported a median of 42 stories a month. Investigative and explanatory-focused organizations published far fewer: 12 and 15 stories a month, respectively.
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