But with your support, BINJ can push through the next four years intact and stronger than ever
Incoming President Donald Trump has made it quite clear over the years that he’s not a big fan of journalists and the institution of journalism. As for the First Amendment, he likes it when it might benefit him and attacks it when it might benefit political opponents.
Here at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, we have good reason to be concerned that his second administration will target our entire profession. Making it more difficult for us to serve our primary function as guardians of democracy.
It has hardly been smooth sailing for US journalism in the current era. For over a quarter century, news organizations have been beset by a perfect storm of technological, cultural, and economic changes that have made it more and more difficult for journalists to raise the money we need to do our jobs. Which is why 130 news organizations shut their doors in 2023 alone—and fully 3,200 outlets have gone out of business since 2005, according to the 2024 State of Local News Report by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Moreover, jobs in journalism continue to be eliminated at a swift pace. The Medill report also confirmed that “[from] 2022 to 2023, newsroom jobs—mostly reporters and editors—decreased by almost 2,000 positions while newspaper employment overall shrank by more than 7,000 jobs, compared to the few hundred lost in the previous year. There are now fewer than 100,000 people employed in the newspaper publishing industry overall, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Happily, BINJ has raised enough money thus far this year to be financially stable for the next several months. Which is good, to be sure, and a testament to the growing support for our work.
Yet stable is hardly secure … not by a long shot. BINJ staff are still scraping by on much lower salaries than we need to make ends meet personally and be able to save for retirement—at a time when the new administration could very well put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.
And while BINJ pays our freelance talent and interns better than current industry averages, the average industry pay for freelance journalists remains pathetically low. So we want to increase our reporting rates across the board to make it easier for our freelancers and interns to keep doing what they do so well.
We also need to expand our staff. To achieve financial security for our nonprofit, we must do more fundraising and community outreach. To increase our capacity to produce ground-breaking news and views and do our part to shore up our collapsing industry, we’re going to need staff reporters, too.
Further, we haven’t been able to afford a new office since the pandemic economy forced us to shut down our old office in 2020. It would be really helpful to have a physical center for all our efforts once again. Desks and shelves and physical archives and a conference table. A place to meet and greet sources and peers and funders and fans. A place to organize the big investigative articles we’ve become known for. A place for our statewide news operation to call home.
For all these reasons and many more, we’re asking supporters old and new to take advantage of matching funds that will give us two dollars for every one dollar you kick in until the end of the year, and donate whatever you can spare to BINJ.
We’ve been raising just over $50,000 during each of our big year-end fundraisers for the last two years. So, it would really help us continue to produce journalism in the democratic interest if we could top $70,000 in donations during this giving season. That kind of upward funding trajectory would catapult us through our upcoming 10th anniversary next June—a major milestone, to be sure–and give us a chance of continuing to grow for another ten years … and beyond.
On behalf of the entire BINJ staff and board, thank you for anything you can do to help us survive and thrive. In return, we pledge to redouble our efforts to produce the best independent reporting we possibly can, continue to train the next generation of journalists, and work harder than ever with like-minded news outlets around the nation to help restore the public trust in journalism that mainstream news brands have clearly lost.
We look forward to the challenges to come.
