Chapter 2: Third-Party Audiences And Republication Strategy
By Ha Ta
In our first chapter of this report, we examined how nonprofit news outlets are setting audience goals and distribution strategies based on their missions. We noted that, for 2024 and beyond, most nonprofit news outlets aim to grow their audiences through their own, direct platforms.
Data from the annual Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Index and INN’s work in the field points to a second, major way nonprofit news outlets reach audiences: by allowing and encouraging other outlets to republish their stories. We refer to this kind of distribution as “third-party distribution.” The majority of nonprofit news outlets – 84% of outlets surveyed – allow other news outlets to republish their content for free – and the number of third-party distribution partners is growing.
In 2022, 7,100 partner outlets republished INN members’ stories. In 2023, that number doubled to 15,500. This increase, though primarily driven by a handful of larger nonprofit outlets growing their republishing partners in 2023, represents a long-term sector-wide trend: The network effect of nonprofit news is growing over time. That trend will be discussed later in this chapter.
This chapter will cover the major drivers behind the substantial growth in third-party distribution partners, how outlets handle republishing their work and tracking third-party reach, and the most common platforms to do so.
Third-Party Republication
Growth in third-party republication partners of nonprofit news outlets
Some types of nonprofit outlets prioritize third-party distribution more than others. For example, investigative and single-topic outlets, whose longer-form storytelling styles aren’t conducive to the high publishing frequency required to draw consistent direct traffic, take advantage of third-party distribution to reach a wider audience.
The geographic scope of coverage also plays a role in an outlet’s distribution strategy. Redistributing coverage via third-party partners is a key way larger state, national and global nonprofit outlets expand the reach of their journalism while local outlets tend to focus on reaching audiences through their direct platforms. National and global outlets, which are often investigative and explanatory news powerhouses, tend to have a mission and more resources to reach audiences beyond their platforms.
An outlet’s editorial focus also affects its third-party redistribution numbers. Outlets that concentrate on a single topic reported a higher median number of partners per outlet, at 13, while those focusing on multiple related topics have a median of eight partners. Outlets covering general news reported a median of four partners. The fieldwide median is six partners.
About 13% of INN members surveyed identify themselves as single topic outlets. These outlets include Chalkbeat, which focuses on covering education, and The Marshall Project, which provides in-depth reporting on the U.S. criminal justice system. The outlets’ specialized content fills a gap in the media landscape by appealing to a broad range of partners, including general topic outlets and smaller news outlets that do not have reporters or resources dedicated to specific beats and want to supplement their reporting with trusted content.
Across the nonprofit sector, up to 15,500 media outlets republished or aired coverage from the INN network in 2023, more than double the 7,100 counted in the 2022 survey. The large increase came mostly from a few large state, regional and national outlets that reported a significantly higher number of third-party publishers in 2023 compared with 2022, accounting for a net of about 7,500 additional third-party publishers.
National and global outlets garnered the highest total number of third-party distribution partners, about 9,600, accounting for 62% of all partners, despite representing just 26% of the field. Local outlets, which make up nearly half of INN's membership, reported a total of 1,100 distribution partners. State and regional outlets reported approximately 4,800 partners.
Outlets that republish nonprofit news content include other nonprofit news organizations as well as for-profit media partners that distribute content across various platforms, including websites, newspapers, commercial or public radio and TV, newsletter, and podcasts.
With newspaper partners in particular, state/regional and national/global outlets also reported the highest redistribution numbers, citing about 2,300 and 1,600 newspaper partners in 2023, respectively. In contrast, local outlets reported 250 newspaper partners.
INN’s work in the field suggests that nonprofit outlets are likely a key source of news for these newspapers, especially at the state level, where traditional newspaper coverage of statehouses has significantly declined. Filling this gap was a primary mission for many state nonprofit outlets when the field began to grow in 2009.
Drivers of third-party republication growth
What’s driving significant growth in third-party distribution partners? INN Index data and reporting with 16 outlets reveal these primary drivers: a broader distribution capability provided by syndication platforms like the Associated Press, Public News Service, Stacker Media; more one-to-one outreach; and expanded tracking efforts.
Utilizing syndication platforms for a one-to-many content distribution approach
Nonprofit outlets that have seen steep year-over-year growth in the number of outlets that republished their content said syndication platforms like Public News Service and Stacker played a major role in driving that acceleration. These organizations tend to cover state, regional, national or global issues. These platforms may charge fees for content distribution, but some nonprofit outlets that have used the services say their work is getting introduced to a wider audience.
The Hechinger Report, a national nonprofit news outlet that covers inequality and innovation in education, reported about 500 third-party outlets republishing their content in 2023, a substantial jump from a few dozen outlets reported in the previous year’s survey. Nichole Dobo, Hechinger's director of audience engagement, said the increase is a direct result of a partnership with Stacker Media. The partnership, which began in 2023, has provided Hechinger a new avenue to reach local audiences. “Stacker allows us to gain additional partners after the first-round partners that we typically have for the majority of our stories,” Dobo said in an email. “This new distribution channel increases the opportunity for us to reach key priority audiences including local TV stations, rural communities and middle America.”
Besides a wider reach, nonprofit news outlets want to distribute information and engage audiences beyond traditional news consumers or the typical nonprofit news audience. “The goal has always been that we just want to reach people where they are. We have a TikTok account, and we're on all the third-party news apps. We just want people to see our stories no matter where they get their news,” said Rachel Glickhouse, partnership director at Grist. “The goal of this approach is, we want our work to be as accessible as possible. And so partnerships are just one piece of that as part of our overall audience strategy.”
The Daily Yonder, a nonprofit news outlet that provides news, commentary, and analysis about and for rural America, has found such success with their radio distribution strategy. With the syndication platform Public News Service, the outlet has been able to distribute newscasts and stories to radio stations nationwide. Their work could be picked up by hundreds of stations, or in rare instances, thousands, said Adam Giorgi, The Daily Yonder’s director of planning and program development. The radio stations, which are often small, locally operated stations with fewer resources, do not have to pay to air content redistributed to them, Giorgi said.
“Definitely part of what animates our thinking is we don't want to reach just the same old affluent news consumers, people who are already pretty prone to high news consumption,” Giorgi said. “We're wanting to get stuff out to folks who maybe aren't in the nonprofit news bubble. We feel like our radio strategy definitely helps with that.”
Giorgi said he has also been encouraged that several stations have consistently carried The Daily Yonder’s weekly radio newscast, which has been in production for many years — a signal that the outlet’s product is valued and serving a real need.
The Daily Yonder also recently partnered with Stacker Media to distribute their stories and get republished by a mix of mainstay newspapers and smaller metro publications, such as those in college towns, and midsize metro areas, further expanding their reach.
In 2023, The Daily Yonder reported more than 3,700 redistribution partners, of which 3,200 were radio partners.
“If we had to try to manually reach out to all the organizations that show up in our databases via Public News Service and Stacker, it just wouldn't be possible. So those partners are pretty vital,” Giorgi said. “If we had infinite resources, we would be reaching out to people all the time and saying, ‘Use our stuff.’ But it'll eat away at your capacity really quickly. So it's a matter of finding ways to get our work out there without totally exhausting ourselves. We're trying to cover rural America at large, so it's a matter of how do we get our arms around that?”
Leaning into one-to-one outreach to distribute content
Many nonprofit outlets are building relationships with other newsrooms to broaden their story distribution, often reaching out directly to potential republication partners to pitch stories.
For example, Andrea Lopez-Villafana, managing editor of Daily News for Voice of San Diego, a local nonprofit investigative outlet, said she sometimes personally reaches out to outlets in the area that might be interested in republishing certain stories.
“I have done that in the past, just sort of reaching out to outlets saying, ‘Here's our content sharing policy. We dropped this investigation. If you'd like to republish, here it is. You can use it. You don't have to pay for it.’ And then, out of that, getting some sort of analytics on how many people read the story,” Lopez-Villafana said.
Rest of World, a nonprofit publication that “challenges expectations about whose experiences with technology matters,” serves a global audience. Head of Audience Gabriel Boylan said the outlet seeks to reach the audience it aims to serve via partnerships with publications outside of the U.S. that publish in native languages, especially in countries or regions Rest of World regularly covers.
“It's essentially the same as why a lot of us nonprofits are partnering with local news outlets, right? Because it's a way of distributing the information,” Boylan said. “And it's also a way of saying, even if a law isn't changed, even if nothing concrete happens in the world, the impact is that the local community was able to see itself reflected in our reporting and learn something about what's going on in their community.”
Embracing and expanding third-party distribution tracking efforts
Several nonprofit outlets we interviewed attributed some of the growth in their republication numbers to a more concerted and systematic tracking effort. Outlets who have found value in monitoring their third-party republication metrics are investing more time and using emerging tools for this purpose. Some of the methods these outlets use include the WordPress Republication Tracking Pixel, Google Alert, Parse.ly, Truescope, a media monitoring platform, republication buttons, and manual tracking through staff awareness, among others.
Outlets said they use third-party republication metrics and direct reach in internal audience reports, presentations to their board, impact reports, and pitches to funders.
One reason tracking efforts are so important: Many nonprofit outlets we talked to agree that a broader audience reach can be an effective pitch to funders and donors. Outlets said they can strengthen their case for support and funding by showing that their content is being disseminated widely across various channels or reaching extensive geographical areas and audiences.
“If someone's looking to fund our work, we can tell them not only are we reaching all these people through our platforms, but we're also getting reach across the country through radio and through newspapers and through other organizations,” Giorgi of The Daily Yonder said. “It makes us feel like we have a much stronger base to stand on when we're talking to funders and when we're really making the case for our work.”
The Daily Yonder uses a republication tracking pixel developed by INN and managed by NewsPack to track who’s republishing their stories. The outlet also uses a combination of Google News Alerts and staff awareness.
Giorgi also devised a tracking system to remove duplicates from republication data provided by third-party platforms to get the number of unique media outlets that republish The Daily Yonder’s stories.
“The other thing that we ended up being able to do is just look at engagement rates,” Giorgi said. “Once I have that table that shows me all the unique outlets, I can then also look at their pickup rate. So I can say this radio station picked up our stuff 80% of the time. This station picked it up 20% of the time. That's going to inform our ability to deepen a relationship with people who are using your stuff a lot … or look at someone who's taking it 20% of the time and say, ‘How can we potentially re-engage this person and get them to be used at 40% of the time or 60% of the time?’”
Republication Terms And Practices
Nonprofit news outlets use two primary approaches for republication: terms and/or permission required and designated partnerships. In practice, these approaches are often flexible, open to exceptions, and tailored to align with each organization’s business model and mission. Under these approaches, while some outlets charge for republication, the majority — 84% of INN members — do not. Our data and reporting show that within each primary approach, outlets make individual decisions about when to charge and how much.
Outlets primarily rely on third-party distribution, which tend to be national or global in scope and often focus on explanatory and investigative journalism, are less likely to charge for the republication of their work. About $3 million in revenue came from syndication across the field in 2023, accounting for 0.6% of the field’s total revenue.
Most outlets try to make republication accessible and easy by referring partners to general terms on their website or asking for explicit permission to republish. Almost a third, or 31% of outlets, require explicit permission before stories and coverage can be republished, and nearly 40% of outlets allow their stories and coverage to be republished fairly easily and for free under “general terms defined on their website.” Those general terms tend to specify requests such as crediting the original author and publication for content and images used, including links to the original website or newsletter signup forms, not making significant changes to the original content, and not reselling stories.
Other outlets try to establish more guidelines, largely to keep track of who is republishing their work and to build more reliable republishing partnerships. About a fifth, or 21%, of nonprofit outlets allow only designated partner organizations to share their coverage.
These findings track with what we’ve heard from members during interviews. Besides the benefit of stories being seen by more readers when redistributed, many nonprofit news outlets view their work as a public service and seek to generate greater exposure for their reporting. As a result, they prioritize making their reporting more accessible for republication, especially by less-resourced outlets or fellow nonprofits that serve the information needs of local communities.
Republication practices
Setting general terms or requiring explicit permission
Lopez-Villafana said Voice of San Diego’s content sharing policy is made simple and easy so that papers with fewer resources don't have to go through a bunch of hoops to republish their stories. Unless specifically restricted, Voice of San Diego allows other outlets to republish articles for free as long as they adhere to specific conditions listed in the outlet’s sharing policy.
Media outlets often don’t have to ask for permission to republish. They can pull content from Voice of San Diego’s website if they’re following republishing policy, Lopez-Villafana said. “I don't vet who is publishing. They just have to follow these guidelines. The only reason I will know if someone's republishing our work, aside from seeing it somewhere else, is that some may reach out” and ask for permission to use photos.
Voice of San Diego is approaching its 20th anniversary, but it is still relatively young compared to other news outlets in the area. This makes partnerships with other local outlets highly valuable for gaining exposure to new audiences, Lopez-Villafana explained.
One example of such partnership is with El Latino, a Spanish only news outlet in San Diego that republishes stories by Voice of San Diego and translates them into Spanish, broadening the outlet’s reach within Latino communities. Much of Voice of San Diego’s work is investigative journalism focusing on holding the government accountable and encouraging civic engagement, so working with smaller outlets that already have established trust with specific communities, like El Latino, has been particularly beneficial to their mission.
Republication buttons automate this process for many nonprofit outlets. The Daily Yonder places prominent republish buttons in their stories. Their stories are licensed under Creative Commons and may be republished for free, online or in print. Grist, which highlights climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices, uses a similar approach.
Establishing republishing or collaboration partnerships
Republication partners tend to be outlets that share a similar mission or geographic scope of coverage and could be a part of a formal collaboration, like INN’s Rural News Network, or individual partners the outlet has built a relationship with over time.
INN Index indicates that local outlets found republishing through established partnerships more effective than distributing their work through syndication platforms — a strategy that works well for larger state, national and global outlets.
Local news outlets, which tend to focus on specific geographic areas that might not always be relevant to a broader audience, typically have fewer third-party republishing partners. Despite representing nearly half of the field, they account for only 7% of partnerships. On the other hand, local outlets usually target a more specific, concentrated audience, so syndicating their content to national platforms might not help them reach their target audience.
Instead, local nonprofit outlets prioritize engaging in smaller, localized collaboration efforts with outlets covering neighboring areas or similar topics. They see these partnerships as better suited to their goals of expanding their reach to audiences they’re not engaging through direct channels and connecting with communities.
Mariann Martin, co-founder and operations, development, and community engagement director of Canopy Atlanta, said they hope to grow their audience through republication. One reason why the outlet has not maintained regular partnerships with syndication platforms, however, is because it is not aware of any that would be a good fit.
In place of using syndication platforms to distribute their work, Canopy Atlanta, a nonprofit with a mission to bring journalism to more neighborhoods across metro Atlanta, partners with a few outlets sharing similar coverage areas including 285 South, Atlanta Civic Circle, and Capital B to co-publish content fairly regularly. “From a distribution standpoint, that feels like a really good fit, a manageable fit, and definitely getting the work out to more folks," Martin said.
Martin also pointed to a specific audience group that Canopy Atlanta is hoping to grow, readers who are the community the outlet is working in.
“Our audience definitely tends to be the Greater Atlanta area’s more white, higher income bracket versus the communities that we work in, where we struggle to really build an audience,” Martin said, “and that’s probably just because they don't see newsletters as a sort of part of their daily news habits.”
Martin said this challenge of building an audience in the outlet’s coverage area while serving their existing audience is not unique to her organization. Instead, it is a challenge faced by other small, local news outlets working in lower income communities or communities of color.
Voice of San Diego started building two collaborative initiatives aimed at enhancing local journalism and pooling resources, Lopez-Villafana said.The first initiative involves a partnership between Voice of San Diego, KPBS and inewsource called Public Matters, focusing on resource and content sharing for election coverage. These outlets bring different news coverage expertise, with Voice of San Diego and inewsource focused on investigative reporting and accountability, while KPBS focuses more on general news. For this election cycle, they’re delivering comprehensive general ballot guides alongside more in-depth analyses of key races.
This collaboration enables participating newsrooms to optimize resources and ensure that their reporters can focus on their areas of expertise without duplicating efforts. Voice of San Diego is also part of a California news partnership where participating outlets display a banner on their homepage, highlighting stories from other California-based outlets. This initiative not only broadens participating outlets’ audiences by leveraging each other's reach but also fosters collaboration within California-based news organizations, Lopez-Villafana said.
Charging for republication
Often, outlets do not have a one-size-fits-all approach to charging for republication. Instead, they individualize republishing or licensing agreements based on the request they receive from potential partners. These paid partnerships tend to apply to commercial operations.
Almost all outlets we talked to, whether they charge for republication or not, indicated that their content is mostly free for fellow nonprofit news outlets to republish and mentioned the desire to be a good community member and support their peers.
“We weren't thinking of [charging for republication] as a revenue generator necessarily, but more as a fair way to gatekeep a little bit of who was republishing our stuff,” Boylan said. “If we get a request from a for-profit publication, we'll probably take it case by case.”
Some of the determining factors, Boylan said, are whether the original publication was fairly recent and how much time and resources went into it compared to the offered fee.
“We're a lot more open just to be a good community member and support our peers in the nonprofit world,” Boylan said. “But also, having access to an audience that we can be fairly certain will value our work, and potentially take the steps that we would want somebody to take, which is maybe go to our website or follow us on social media or sign up for our newsletter. There's not as much of a doubt, I think, as there might be with some for-profit institutions or places that are just trying to license millions of things to get lots of clicks and impressions, which are going to be a lot less useful for creating relationships with an audience.”
The Food & Environment Reporting Network, which focuses on long-form investigative and explanatory reporting, exclusively produced stories through paid partnerships. “We only produce in partnership, and those partnerships are always paid, even if it's a nominal fee,” Founder and Executive Director Tom Laskawy, said, “and the reason is that this industry is fundamentally still a for-profit industry, and people use content to raise revenue in all sorts of ways. The partners that we work with all have budgets for these freelance projects, and our belief is that in the kind of context of a co-pay, that partners should pay what they can.”
The outlet almost always charges for third-party republication of their work, even if for a nominal fee, with some exceptions for government or educational use, Laskawy said.
“Our experience, by and large, is that content that is given away for free tends not to go as far, it tends not to generate as much interest, and it tends to be a little bit more scattershot,” Laskawy said. “And so we don't release our work under Creative Commons, very consciously, for example, and to some extent, it's because our partners have varying exclusivity windows where no one can republish.”
The Food & Environment Reporting Network website states that the outlet’s content cannot be reproduced without permission.
“Our baseline belief is content has value, and that you pay for things that have value. I think it also is a little bit of a gating factor so you don't get inundated potentially with requests,” Laskawy said. “There are a lot of unethical people out there in this world, and if you don't provide some sort of required interaction before someone can scrape and use your content, you have very little control over how it's being used.”
Challenges In Tracking Third-Party Audience Reach, And What’s Next
What’s next for third-party audiences? Overall, we anticipate seeing higher rates of republication again in 2024 as the focus on building third-party partnerships gained momentum amid a presidential election year.
INN has been investing in republication opportunities for its members, too. Earlier this month, INN launched a collaboration with The Associated Press to help member newsrooms expand their reach, bringing crucial, local election stories to wider audiences across the U.S. INN members’ politics and elections coverage is available via AP’s third-party distribution service called APT, allowing thousands of AP member news organizations in the U.S. to freely republish nonprofit stories. This collaboration extends the reach and impact of On the Ground, INN’s politics and elections republication service.
During this growth spurt, a key challenge for nonprofit news outlets will be quantifying and tracking third-party audiences’ reach. Newsrooms across the board recognize the benefits of tracking third-party reach but lack human resources and appropriate tools to do so.
Tracking third-party republication is complex. More tracking tools are becoming available, but there is no single solution that effectively monitors all avenues for republication. As a result, the ability to thoroughly and accurately track third-party republication tends to favor larger nonprofit outlets with more resources. Many organizations still depend entirely or in part on manual recordkeeping. Several outlets cited time, human resources, and infrastructure as the top hurdles for tracking third-party reach.
Overcounting duplicates is another common issue outlets face when tracking the number of unique republishers. Tracking metrics also vary across republication mediums like web, radio, or print, presenting another serious challenge.
A major dilemma many INN member outlets have is how to accurately track third-party audience reach and donor conversion, and the impact of investing in third-party distribution.
“That's like the million dollar question, right? Is there any way to connect the dots between these third-party distribution arrangements that we're doing and the traffic and the audience on our first party platforms?” Giorgi of The Daily Yonder asked. “There are some hypothetical or anecdotal reasons to believe that those two are correlated in some fashion, that getting out there into the world more is going to improve your traffic. But at this stage, unfortunately, it's really hard to be able to actually say with any certainty whether that's happening.”
It can’t hurt to have more name recognition and reach, Giorgi said.
In the next chapter, we will explore major trends and tactics nonprofit news outlets are using to grow direct audiences.
