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A searing report by InvestigateWest and Spokane’s RANGE media outlet detailed internal clashes delaying and complicating The Spokesman-Review’s donation to a nonprofit.
Citing current and former Spokesman employees, the report described a growing tension between the newsroom and Rob Curley, its top editor and architect of plans to transfer Spokane’s historic daily newspaper to a nonprofit he founded.
That transfer is still happening but it’s unclear whether Curley will still be involved. Publisher Stacey Cowles, whose family is donating the paper and $2 million to the project, told InvestigateWest that they are now aiming to donate the paper on Oct. 30.
A handful of daily newspapers are now operated by nonprofits.
The Salt Lake Tribune operates as a nonprofit, and The Philadelphia Inquirer and Tampa Bay Times are owned by nonprofits but operate as for-profit subsidiaries.
Another nonprofit, the National Trust for Local News, has acquired dailies and weeklies clustered in Maine, Colorado, Georgia and Vermont.
These shifts are enabled by a surge of philanthropic support for local news in recent years, offering hope in some corners for sustaining the industry.
But nonprofits aren’t immune from the economic challenges facing all local media outlets nowadays.
Some face additional pressures, such as newsrooms being exploited by funders, according to research shared by the RQ1 newsletter produced by a group of journalism professors.
The research, an ethnographic study of a Rust Belt nonprofit news outlet by Jocelyn McKinnon-Crowley at the University of Memphis, found that constant fundraising concerns and administrative burdens stressed and distracted journalists and compromised their work. Her advice, according to RQ1’s report, includes providing grants that are recurring, unrestricted and longer-term.
Not mentioned is how those pressures might exacerbate other tensions in a newsroom, especially during exhausting news events like the Spokane fires in August. That’s when the Spokesman newsroom boiled over, culminating in a shouting match between a reporter and a staffer from Comma, the nonprofit Curley founded.
Curley told the managing editor to fire the reporter, she refused and Cowles then placed Curley on administrative leave and launched an outside investigation, per the report.
That appears to have further delayed the donation of The Spokesman to Comma.
When the transfer was announced in April 2025, the plan was to donate the paper in October 2025, if the community donated $2 million to support the nonprofit operation. The Cowles would then match that with a $2 million gift.
In December, Curley published an update in the newspaper saying the transfer would happen in the first half of 2026 and encouraged readers to donate.
Then in May, the paper published a story saying the fundraising goal had been met, with $1 million received and another $1 million pledged. It said that marked the start of a transition period lasting “at least 90 days” that would conclude with the Cowles family donating $2 million and the newspaper to Comma.
We’ll see if that resolves by Halloween. Meanwhile the saga is another reminder that there are still passionate journalists doing great work in Spokane.
Former intern buys newspaper: Columbia Journalism Review wrote about Evan Newton, a former intern who bought the Monticello News in Georgia and promptly grew print and digital subscriptions by 30%. “I would just tell people, if they had any interest, either in local journalism or if they wanted to go out and buy their local paper, just do it,” Newton, 25, told CJR. “I mean, it’s a lot of hard work, but just go out and do it. Be a part of what’s going on.”
America’s dictator mistreating media: The south Florida Sun-Sentinel editorialized against President Donald Trump’s dictatorial style and press attacks: “No other president in our history has ever banished entire news organizations … The arbitrary seizure of press credentials is where dictatorship begins. This is where it ends: Every morning in Hitler’s Berlin, correspondents and editors went to the propaganda ministry, to be told in writing what to publish and what not to publish.”
Pittsburgh battle ends: The epic legal fight between the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s union and its former owner, the Block family, ended Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. The Blocks will likely have to pay millions to the union, NPR affiliate WESA reported, but most of the reporters who went on strike for three years lost their jobs after the family sold the paper. The Blocks are also closing The Toledo Blade in December unless a buyer is found.
Sinclair startup: Broadcasting giant Sinclair, which owns Seattle’s KOMO, is launching a national news outlet on Substack that will draw on reporting from the company’s 60 local newsrooms, Axios reports. It will have a daily news show anchored by a former Newsmax host.
Wick buys Arizona papers: The Sedona Red Rock News reports that it and a sister publication in Arizona were acquired by Wick Communications, from a local family. Arizona-based Wick also owns The Wenatchee World.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.
