Community of Practice

Lenfest Institute and INN Index dashboard shows revenue and audience growth for statewide news publishers

The study examined revenue, audience, staffing, and coverage data across 48 statewide, nonprofit news outlets

By Tyler Machado

December 18, 2024

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Institute for Nonprofit News partnered in 2024 on a data project to give statewide news organizations deeper insights into their operations and growth. This collaboration was driven by needs identified within The Lenfest Institute’s Statewide News Collective Community of Practice.

To achieve these goals, I integrated data from the Statewide News Collective’s annual survey with the INN Index, the annual survey INN conducts with the hundreds of independent, nonprofit newsrooms that are members of its network. The result is a dynamic data dashboard tailored to the specific needs of these organizations, which was made available to members of the Statewide News Collective.

The dashboard provides anonymized visual insights into key operational metrics around audience, revenue, diversity, and coverage topics, enabling organizations to identify patterns, benchmark against peers, and better understand their performance and potential.

Data in the study is based on 48 news organizations serving statewide audiences that participated in the 2024 INN Index study. Not all are members of the Statewide News Collective, a community of 37 outlets in 29 states.

Here are some of the key findings from the dashboard:

Audience trends

Survey data reveals that web traffic and email subscriber numbers for statewide outlets are fairly tightly clustered with medians of 57,500 monthly users for web traffic and 9,510 email subscribers, respectively. Close to two-thirds of participating organizations have web and email audiences within 200% of the median values — the outliers are mostly high-revenue organizations that have bigger audiences.

The statewide newsrooms did not invest significantly in marketing or audience development. The median newsroom spends just 2% of its budget on marketing and 7% on audience development, according to the study. 

Social media and engagement trends

Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram continue to dominate the social media landscape for statewide organizations in the cohort, serving as the primary social platforms for audience engagement. Beyond being used by nearly all organizations in the cohort, newsrooms are posting to Facebook and X on a daily basis in most cases. LinkedIn and Instagram, while still widely used, tend to see less frequent posting from these organizations.

YouTube is used by about two-thirds of the respondents, which is twice as many as said that they’re using TikTok. Among the platforms that are using these video-first platforms, they’re posting at a much slower rate, generally reporting that they upload new videos only “Sometimes” or “Infrequently”.

Looking ahead, it’s worth considering how other social platforms like Reddit and Bluesky can (or already are) driving traffic and engagement to news organizations. Additionally, opportunities for slower-paced social publishing — such as monthly deep dives, episodic content, or videos with more intensive production schedules — could fill an increasingly large slice of the pie for social outreach.

Revenue trends 

The average statewide publication in the study has annual revenue of $2 million. Foundation funding was the largest source of revenue for publishers, with an average of 52% of their budget coming from foundations. The second highest source was individual giving with 35%.

Across the statewide news organizations, 95% of individual gifts were from small dollar donors of less than $1,000, however they only brought in 40% of revenue. Major donors of more than $5,000 accounted for 52.5% of revenue.

Earned revenue is a growing focus for statewide publishers as they look to diversify their revenue sources. Among the participating statewide publishers, advertising and sponsorship were the biggest sources of earned revenue.

The data also showed that statewide news organizations based in ZIP codes with higher median incomes tended to have higher total revenue. Publications in more populated states also had higher total revenue, on average, and also had more email subscribers and monthly users.

However, the strongest predictor of revenue was the age of the news organization as older publications tended to make more money.  

What this all means: 

We hope the members of the Statewide News Collective will use this tool to better understand their audience and revenue performance. Overall, we do see many similarities across this cohort in terms of revenue, audience, and staffing. We believe these shared characteristics allow this group to work together and swap strategies.  

What’s become clear, though, is that characteristics like the state’s population size and median income have an influence over the news outlet’s total revenue. (Perhaps that’s obvious, but it’s good to confirm it in the data.) And we know revenue and news outlet capacity is often interlinked with the outlet’s ability to expand and grow audiences. 

Our takeaway: Benchmarking data can help fine-tune an outlet’s goals and how it sets its strategy. The data can also be a useful way to validate your experience and compare yourself to peers, but the data is just a first step — there is immense value in sharing insights and experiences with colleagues face-to-face to share lessons, ideas, and opportunities for improvement.

For more on audience trends and tactics across nonprofit news, see INN’s Audience & Distribution Index Report. Eligible news organizations that serve a statewide audience and want to join the Statewide News Collective can apply to join here.