“A Hard Road With Personal Costs”: How Digital-First Nonprofit News Founders Navigate Precarity

Abstract

As the journalism industry descends further into economic collapse, precarity has become an increasingly useful concept in studies of newswork. While a growing body of literature has begun to consider how founders of startup journalism outlets navigate their own precarious self-employment, the existing scholarship pays little attention to journalists working at digital-first nonprofit newsrooms. This study draws on a political economic framework and in-depth interviews with founders of nonprofit news organizations in the United States to understand how these newsworkers experience and navigate various forms of precarity. Findings from this research confirm that precarity is ubiquitous among nonprofit news founders, and that financial precarity is particularly acute. Founders rely heavily on their personal and professional communities for support in navigating their precarious working conditions, and find great satisfaction in providing high-quality news and information to their communities. This study adds to growing calls for a labor turn in journalism studies and contributes to the literature on journalistic precarity by extending the concept to examine nonprofit newsrooms and their founders. Additionally, these findings provide insight into specific ways in which the burden of precarity on founders can be reduced.