Blog / Trends

Public and Nonprofit Media are Facing Existential Threats

by Trish Abalo and Emily Doebler
Public and Nonprofit Media are Facing Existential Threats
11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2026 report coverThis article was first published in our 11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2026 report. Explore the full report here.

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Threats to journalism in the U.S. are clear and present. The field is grappling with declining public trust, long-standing financial instability, and continued digital disruption, all while disinformation makes reliable news more important than ever.

Now, the public media system — the hundreds of radio and television broadcasting stations that were supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) along with institutional and individual giving — is working to stabilize. As challenges and competition for funding intensify in the wake of CPB’s closure (Reuters, 2025), nonprofit news organizations (an ecosystem distinct from, though similar to, public media) are emerging as an anchor: average revenue has increased even as the number of new start-ups has declined, suggesting the field is maturing, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News (2025). Moving forward, philanthropic funding and nonprofit news models will be vital to journalism’s survival, especially in the movement to sustain public media.

High Trust, High Turnover

The growth in the nonprofit news sector is particularly significant given nonprofit news’ strong association with local journalism, which maintains considerably higher public trust than national outlets. A Pew Research Center survey polled Americans on their trust in news, with the results showing that local news maintains relatively high public trust: 70% of Americans trust local news organizations, compared to just 56% for national news (Eddy & Shearer, 2025).

However, this expansion is happening within a broader ecosystem in crisis — one that makes it difficult for news organizations to survive, as Martin (2019, 2023) tracked in prior Trends reports. Medill Local News Initiative calculated that more than 130 newspapers closed in 2025, while noting approximately 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have ceased publication over the past two decades (Metzger, 2025). Metzger (2025) also noted that while philanthropy has allocated $1.1 billion in journalistic grants over the past five years, this funding remains highly concentrated, reaching fewer than 1,000 out of 8,000 local news outlets nationwide, with most grants directed towards urban areas.

Public Media in Crisis

Especially endangered in this crisis is public media, which now faces an existential threat. In July 2025, Congress defunded CPB, narrowly voting to rescind $1.1 billion allocated for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. The decision ultimately forced CPB to close its doors entirely (Reuters, 2025).

“To understand the impact of the rescinded funds, it helps to understand how federal funding flowed through the system.”

To understand the impact of the rescinded funds, it helps to understand how federal funding flowed through the system. CPB served as an intermediary: it received federal appropriations and distributed them to the public media ecosystem. Seventy percent of CPB funding in FY25 went directly to local NPR and PBS member stations (Beroza, 2025). The remaining CPB funds supported national organizations: NPR received 1-2% of its budget from CPB, while PBS received 15% (Folkenflik & Langfitt, 2025).

Public media stations are fundamentally part of the broader nonprofit news field. Like other nonprofit news organizations, they operate under 501(c)(3) status and share the same mission: providing community-centered, mission-driven journalism. They are mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to provide non-commercial educational content. This moment is significant because defunding does not just affect public broadcasting but also threatens a major portion of the nonprofit news infrastructure that communities depend on.

The impacts are already visible. At the national level, NPR has announced $5 million in budget cuts, while PBS has cut 15% of its workforce. NPR is waiving programming fees for its network member stations, an effort to provide relief that simultaneously eliminates a revenue stream representing a third of NPR’s own budget (Folkenflik & Langfitt, 2025). Local stations face even steeper challenges. Many lost a third or more of their operating budgets overnight (Kim & Epps, 2025). Media Impact Funders has deemed the federal cuts a “critical moment” for funders to understand their role in supporting community news (Sachdev, 2025).

Meeting the Moment

Deepening Funder Collaborations and Commitments

Closing these funding gaps has become an urgent priority for philanthropy, especially for stations serving rural areas and tribal communities (Bell & Starks, 2025). The Alliance for Rural Public Media (2022) highlighted that community stations are often the only source of local news and emergency information for these communities, underscoring the harm of cutting off access to these stations. Recent moves include:

  • The Public Media Bridge Fund, the largest recent coordinated philanthropic response to public media attacks, aims to raise $100 million over two years, enough to support 115 of the most vulnerable stations (MacArthur Foundation, 2025).
  • The Knight Foundation made $10 million available for direct support to public media organizations (Fuller, 2025).
  • MacArthur Foundation awarded $1.25 million to the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, which supports 200 community radio stations serving two million people weekly (Fuller, 2025).

“[C]ommunity stations are often the only source of local news and emergency information for [rural and tribal] communities, underscoring the harm of cutting off access to these stations.”

Emergency Local Fundraising

Individual stations have launched emergency fundraising campaigns, rallying their communities to fill the gaps left by federal cuts. GBH, the largest producer of content for PBS, announced a $225 million “Fund the Future” campaign for the greater Boston area, a major market response reflecting the station’s scale and reach. Louisville Public Media experienced its largest 24-hour fundraising period to date, raising $400,000 in pledges, enough to cover the expected CPB losses for a single fiscal year (Falk, 2025).

Alaska represents a particularly urgent case. Over a quarter of all CPB funding went to the state’s public media, which serves as a vital communication system for rural communities (Alaska Community Foundation, 2025). For example, KYUK in Bethel, Alaska, the oldest Indigenous-owned and operated bilingual radio station in the country, broadcasts three times a day in English and Yugtun, the Yup’ik language. One of their programs features community members calling in to report ice conditions on the Kuskokwim River, allowing locals to warn each other about unsafe travel conditions in real time (Rosenthal & Bradley, 2025). Public radio serves as a lifeline in these remote areas, providing not just news but emergency alerts (Kim & Epps, 2025).

Alaska stations and the Alaska Community Foundation coordinated a statewide response. The Voices Across Alaska Fund raised $3.5 million in its first two months from 80 donors, including individuals, corporations, and foundations. However, sustaining funding remains uncertain, especially given years of gubernatorial vetoes of state legislative funding for public radio (Samuels, 2025).

Advocacy and Legal Action

At the 2025 Grassroots Radio Conference, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the Trump Administration for censorship, including threats of licensing revocation and costly investigations aimed at punishing critical news coverage (Loving, 2025). The nonprofit advocacy organization Free Press published an index analyzing how the 35 biggest American media conglomerates have responded to increasing pressure to curb reporting and commentary critical of the Trump Administration.

Additionally, dozens of college newspapers signed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit against the Administration targeting international students for political speech in support of Palestine, with legal representation from the free speech advocacy nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Church & Srivasta, 2025). These efforts underscore the role nonprofit and scholastic media play alongside philanthropic funding in defending press freedom and free expression.

Investments in Long-Term Infrastructure

Convenings like the Lenfest Institute’s News Philanthropy Summit and the Radically Rural summit are fostering collaboration and sustainability strategies (Jewell, 2025; Contant, 2025). Tracking tools like the Medill Local News Watch List (which identifies areas at risk of being news deserts) and Semipublic’s job loss tracker are bringing needed light to the issues (Curley, 2025).

Looking to The Future

The coming year will test the mettle of both news outlets themselves and the communities, funders, and donors that support them. Many organizations face difficult decisions — staff layoffs, coverage and programming cuts, or closure (Brown, 2025; Johnson, 2025) — even as the field navigates long-standing tensions between financial sustainability, editorial independence, funding to scale, and making fair choices about how resources are distributed. The loss of federal funding does not just create a budget gap. It raises urgent questions about who controls and benefits from journalism, placing increasing pressure on philanthropy to help answer.

Trish Abalo
Trish Abalo
Senior Research Associate
Trish Abalo joined the Johnson Center in September 2020 and currently serves as a senior research associate. In this role, she supports data collection, analysis, and storytelling for our consulting team. Alongside her applied research and evaluation work, her projects...
Emily Doebler, M.P.P.
Emily Doebler, M.P.P.
Research Associate
Emily Doebler (she/they) joined the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy in April 2023 as a research associate. Most recently, Emily completed her Master of Public Policy at Michigan State University where she focused her research on criminal legal reform,...

 

REFERENCES

Alaska Community Foundation. (2025, August 1). Alaska launches Voices Across Alaska Fund to preserve public media. https://alaskacf.org/alaska-launches-voices-across-alaska-fund-to-preserve-public-media/

Alliance for Rural Public Media. (2022, October). Connecting America: The essential service of rural public radio. https://ruralpublic.org/policy-and-research/report/

Bell, A., & Starks, A. (2025, July 29). 5 steps to save public media as federal funds vanish. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. https://www.philanthropy.com/opinion/5-steps-to-save-public-media-as-federal-funds-vanish/

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Brown, M. (2025, September 15). Can tiny nonprofit news outlets survive the current financial flux? Institute for Nonprofit News. https://news.inn.org/can-tiny-nonprofit-news-outlets-survive-the-current-financial-flux/

Church, S.A., & Srivastata, C.N. (2025, October 16). The Crimson signs amicus brief in suit claiming Trump Admin suppressed noncitizens’ speech in student papers. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/16/crimson-stanford-amicus-brief/

Contant, B. (2025, October 31). At Radically Rural, big ideas meet small town publishers. The Lenfest Institute. https://www.lenfestinstitute.org/solutions-resources/at-radically-rural-big-ideas-meet-small-town-publishers/

Curley, A. (2025, September 16). Introducing the Public Media Layoffs Tracker. Semipublic. https://www.semipublic.co/p/introducing-the-public-media-layoffs

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Free Press. (2025, July 29). Free Press ‘Media Capitulation Index’ reveals how the nation’s biggest media companies are responding to Trump [Press release]. https://www.freepress.net/news/free-press-media-capitulation-index-reveals-how-nations-biggest-media-companies-responding-trump

Falk, T. (2025, July 28). Donors ‘stepping up’ to bolster stations after CPB funding cuts. Current. https://current.org/2025/07/donors-stepping-up-to-bolster-stations-after-cpb-funding-cuts/

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GBH. (2025, October 1). On the day federal funding ends, GBH launches a $225 million campaign to invest in the future of public media [Press release]. https://www.wgbh.org/foundation/press/press-releases/2025-10-01/on-the-day-federal-funding-ends-gbh-launches-a-225-million-campaign-to-invest-in-the-future-of-public-media

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