Our Model Explained

As America’s local newspapers wither away, over 400 nonprofit news sites have sprung up to take their place. It is an admirable yet woefully insufficient response. Today’s nonprofits spend less than 2% of what newspapers once invested in news gathering.

The enormity of the remaining shortfall—roughly $25 billion a year—means the existing nonprofit news model, with its reliance on perpetual philanthropic funding, is only one part of the solution. Inventing more cost-effective and scalable models must be another.

LA Reported is just that: a three-year experiment to test a new editorial and economic model for covering local news. In those three years, we intend to prove that it is possible to produce the independent, investigative local journalism that is critical to our society’s health while simultaneously eliminating the need for any ongoing philanthropic or government support.

If we fail to prove our hypothesis in three years, we will go out of business. If we succeed, our self-sustaining model can be replicated in cities across the country, offering a scalable solution to the crisis in local news.

A century ago, in 1923 New York, two young journalists dreamed up a publication so peculiar that they had to coin a word to describe it: “the news-magazine.” At first Henry Luce and Briton Hadden titled their creation Facts, to underscore its commitment to accuracy. They soon settled on a different name, Time magazine, expressly to highlight their commitment to rewarding readers’ valuable time.

A century later, LA Reported envisions a similar opportunity to create an entirely new model of journalism, based on the same put-the-reader-first philosophy.

Today’s local nonprofit news sites operate with a different mandate: to cover the important news stories that local papers no longer can. Making the stories fun to read is usually an afterthought.

By flipping those priorities, LA Reported aims to do a better job of achieving both goals. Putting the reader experience first does not mean publishing fluff or clickbait. For-profit publications in the 20th century perfected a mix of quality journalism and high-quality storytelling. They did so precisely because it was a proven recipe for attracting readers and fattening their bottom lines.

Our local newsmagazine will recreate this dynamic—engaged readers willing to pay for substantive journalism—by remixing elements of three existing models: