When saving journalism pays better than doing journalism

I started looking at nonprofit journalism salaries because I'm trying to answer a larger question for myself.

I'm preparing a TEDx Point Park University talk about what happens to a city when the old machinery of local journalism breaks down. In Pittsburgh, that question is not theoretical. We've lived for years with a weakened daily newspaper, a strike paper, a collection of nonprofit and independent outlets, public media, newsletters, student journalists, freelancers, foundations, intermediaries and civic leaders all orbiting the same problem: Who is going to pay for the journalism a city still needs?

That question sent me into some tax filings.

At first I was thinking locally. What do Pittsburgh's nonprofit newsrooms depend on? How much comes from readers? How much from foundations? How much goes to reporters? How much goes to executives, fundraising, administration and the machinery that now surrounds the work?

Then I widened the lens. If Pittsburgh is trying to imagine its journalism future, it helps to know what the national models look like.

One detail from The Texas Tribune stopped me.

In the organization's 2024 tax filing, the highest-paid employee wasn't the editor in chief. It wasn't even the chief executive. It was the chief revenue officer.

That fact doesn't prove a scandal. The Texas Tribune is one of the most successful nonprofit statehouse journalism experiments in the country. A newsroom that raises millions of dollars a year needs someone who can keep the money coming in. But as an x-ray of the nonprofit journalism economy, the salary table is hard to beat: The public mission is reporting. The business model is fundraising. And in at least one of the field's flagship institutions, the person responsible for revenue was paid more than the person nominally running the place.

According to the Tribune's 2024 filing, the organization reported about $15.25 million in revenue and $14.75 million in expenses. Its chief revenue officer, April Brumley Hinkle, received total compensation of $357,605. Its chief executive, Sonal Shah, received $355,030. The difference is small. The symbolism is not.

The Tribune also had one of the more diversified revenue profiles in the sample — about $1.23 million in program-service revenue, more than many of its peers. Still, contributions and grants accounted for nearly 90 percent of total revenue.

That is the pattern I kept seeing.

From there, the question gets bigger and more uncomfortable.

ProPublica reported $64.27 million in revenue, $45.74 million in expenses and $98.06 million in net assets in its 2024 filing. Its co-CEO and editor in chief, Stephen Engelberg, received $518,182 in total compensation. Its president and co-CEO, Robin Sparkman, received $499,645. Several other senior editors and executives appeared high in the compensation rankings.

There is an easy version of this story, and I don't think it's the honest one. The easy version is to point at high salaries and declare hypocrisy. But ProPublica complicates that. Some of the best-paid people in its filing are journalists and editors — not administrators hovering above the work. They are part of the work.

Does nonprofit journalism pay some elite journalists well? Yes. Is that automatically a problem? No.

But it raises a harder question: What happens when nonprofit journalism succeeds?

ProPublica was created to help rescue public-interest reporting from the collapse of the commercial market. It has produced extraordinary work. It has also built an institution with reserves that many local newsrooms could only dream of. That may be prudent. It may be necessary. But it reveals how unevenly philanthropic security is distributed across the journalism world.

Some nonprofit news institutions now measure their cushion not in weeks or months, but in years.

Then there is the American Journalism Project, which is not mainly a newsroom. It is an intermediary. It raises money, invests in local news organizations and provides support meant to make them more durable. (For a cogent look at the work of intermediaries and the questions surrounding them, read this excellent piece from former ProPublica president Richard Tofel.)

In 2024, AJP reported $38.10 million in revenue, $30.26 million in expenses and $64.71 million in net assets. It paid $12.29 million in direct grants to downstream newsrooms — about 41 percent of total expenses. The rest went to internal program work, salaries and benefits, fundraising, management and operations. Internal salaries and employee benefits totaled $7.83 million.

AJP's defense would likely be straightforward: Local news organizations don't need only checks. They need infrastructure, coaching, strategy, revenue help, finance systems, hiring support and the kind of institutional knowledge that tiny newsrooms often lack. That argument deserves to be taken seriously.

But so does the concern.

If nonprofit journalism now requires a parallel class of fundraisers, investment strategists, capacity builders and consultants before money reaches reporters, the industry hasn't escaped overhead. It has relocated it.

This is where the debate over executive compensation becomes a debate over journalism itself.

For two decades, the argument for nonprofit journalism has been clear: Commercial newspapers were collapsing. Advertising could no longer support accountability reporting. Local papers were being stripped by chains and funds more interested in margins than civic obligation. Philanthropy would step in where the market failed.

That argument remains powerful. It is also incomplete.

The filings show a sector overwhelmingly dependent on contributed revenue. In the organizations I reviewed, contributions and grants often accounted for more than 90 percent of total revenue. Some were near total dependence. Reader revenue, program-service revenue, events, sponsorships and consulting fees exist, but for many organizations they remain secondary.

That dependence matters because philanthropy is not just money. It creates a labor market. It creates jobs, titles, incentives and internal hierarchies. It rewards people who can speak the language of foundations, design strategic plans, manage boards, cultivate major donors, write grant proposals and translate messy journalism into clean institutional outcomes.

Those skills are useful. Some are essential. But they are not the same as reporting.

I say that as someone who has spent much of his professional life trying to keep reporting alive by doing everything around the reporting. I have written the grants. I have pitched the projects. I have built the decks. I have tried to explain why some strange, stubborn, expensive piece of journalism deserves to exist before anyone knows whether an audience will show up for it.

I don't romanticize the old newsroom. Reporters should make more money, not less. Editors should be paid seriously. Fundraisers who can bring in millions may be worth real money. Running a newsroom is hard. Building a sustainable institution is hard.

The problem is not that people in nonprofit journalism are paid.

The problem is that the sector often talks about mission in public and management in private. It asks donors and readers to support reporting, but the public filings frequently make it difficult to tell how much money actually reaches reporting labor.

Not program services. Not capacity. Not impact. Reporting labor.

How much goes to reporters? How much to editors directly editing stories? How much to freelancers, photographers, data journalists, local bureaus and reporting collaborations? How much to executive leadership, fundraising, brand strategy, consultants, offices, travel and the expanding priesthood of sustainability?

The Form 990 cannot answer that cleanly. Organizations classify expenses differently. Some editorial management counts as program service. Some compensation figures include benefits, deferred compensation or consulting payments. Some organizations are publishers. Some are training shops. Some are intermediaries. Some are hybrids.

The honest conclusion is not that nonprofit journalism is corrupt.

The honest conclusion is that nonprofit journalism has matured into something more institutional, more professionalized and more managerial than its origin story suggests.

That maturation has produced real journalism. ProPublica has exposed abuses that commercial newsrooms often lacked the time, money or nerve to pursue. The Texas Tribune created a durable statehouse model in a state where public-affairs reporting matters enormously. The Marshall Project, CalMatters, States Newsroom, Inside Climate News, The Trace and others have filled gaps left by shrinking newspapers.

These are not fake newsrooms. They do the work.

But the filings also show that nonprofit journalism is building a class structure of its own. At the top are executives, presidents, chief revenue officers, chief development officers, chief strategy officers and senior editors making salaries that can look startling inside a profession where many reporters earn modest wages or survive on freelance rates. In the middle are foundation-facing managers who translate journalism into grant deliverables. At the bottom are the people whose work gives the whole system its public legitimacy: reporters, photographers, producers, freelancers and local editors.

The key measure is not outrage. It is opportunity cost.

A $400,000 compensation package represents more than five $75,000 reporting jobs, or four $100,000 reporting jobs. That doesn't mean one executive should automatically be replaced by four reporters. Institutions need leadership, fundraising, legal review and finance systems. But the tradeoff should be visible.

Every budget is an editorial statement. Every compensation table is a theory of value.

This is especially important for intermediaries. A publisher can point to the journalism it produces. An intermediary has a harder burden. It must show how much money reaches newsrooms, how much reaches reporting labor and how much is consumed along the way by its own staff, consultants, convenings and grantmaking bureaucracy.

That doesn't make intermediaries illegitimate. Small newsrooms often need the very services they provide. But if the public pitch is that local journalism is in crisis, the public should be able to see how much of the rescue money arrives at local journalism.

That is the standard journalism applies to everyone else. It should apply it to itself.

In Pittsburgh, this is the part I keep coming back to. We don't have the luxury of abstraction. If the old daily newspaper model is broken and the new system depends heavily on philanthropy, we need to know what kind of replacement we are building.

Are we building reporting capacity? Civic infrastructure? A nonprofit version of the old prestige economy? A grant-funded managerial class that talks about journalism while reporters remain precarious? Or some complicated mixture of all of it?

I don't have a clean answer. I am suspicious of anyone who does.

But the numbers suggest that the future of journalism will not be decided only by newsrooms. It will be decided by boards, foundations, intermediaries, development officers, executive-compensation committees and the quiet assumptions embedded in budgets.

That is why salary data matters. Not because a high salary is automatically shameful. Not because nonprofit journalism should run on poverty. Because money reveals what institutions actually believe.

If there is money for presidents, chief revenue officers and strategy executives, there should be money for reporting jobs. If there are reserves large enough to protect institutions for years, there should be a public explanation of how that security is being converted into coverage. If intermediaries raise money in the name of local journalism, they should be able to show how much reaches local journalists.

The nonprofit journalism movement began as a rescue mission. It has become an industry.

That doesn't make it a failure. It means it deserves the same scrutiny it asks readers to apply to everyone else.

As I work on this TEDx talk, that is the thought I cannot shake. The collapse of the old newspaper business didn't end the need for journalism. It changed the question from "Who owns the press?" to "Who funds the press?" And now, increasingly, to "Who manages the press?"

Those are not side questions. They are the story.

If journalism is supposed to hold power accountable, it has to be able to look honestly at the power structures forming inside its own rescue.