The Black press is 199 years old and it is thinning fast. Of the roughly 250 member papers in the National Newspaper Publishers Association, 200 say they are struggling financially. Nationwide, 170 local newspapers closed or merged in the past year. Your $25 goes to work for the ones still standing.
The Press Wire pulls every Black paper's public feed hourly, puts the headline on tuepac.com, our TV tickers, and the reader digest, and links straight to the publisher. Every visit is counted on a report the publisher can verify in their own analytics.
See the wire →Advertisers walked away from the Black press. The coalition walks in. Member dues fund a standing ad budget that is placed across the papers by state, on their rate cards, with one insertion order per outlet, so the money lands in newsrooms and not in a middleman.
How coalition ad buys work →Most closures are small, family-owned papers whose founder retired or died without a successor. A share of the network Fund is reserved to carry those titles into community ownership, archive intact, masthead intact.
The legacy fund →"Of the papers that have closed over the past year, the majority of those were the smaller independents or members of smaller chains."
Zach Metzger, director, Medill State of Local News ProjectCounts update hourly from the Press Wire. Every outlet can see its own report and confirm or remove itself in one click.
Dues are dues: they fund the coalition on the published split, and the Press Wire, the ad pool, and the legacy fund all draw from it. Anything above $25 is recorded as a gift to the mission.
Split shown is the published dues split. See where every dollar goes →