(2025-07-30) Why More And More Journalists Are Launching Workerowned Outlets

Why more and more journalists are launching worker-owned outlets. When staff at the Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal decided to unionize in March, they were almost immediately hit with layoffs.

The paper’s parent company, a nonprofit called the Long Beach Journalism Initiative, laid off nine of the 14 staff involved with the labor union drive just four days after their unionization attempt. Undeterred, those nine workers — along with three others who had gone on strike in protest — decided to start their own publication: a worker-owned cooperative called the Long Beach Watchdog.

I think a big part of the (Long Beach Journalism Initiative’s) downfall was the consolidation of power that took place. … We wanted an organization that was run democratically by the people who were doing the work.”

Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal CEO Melissa Evans disputed Dean’s characterization of events in an email and said, “The Long Beach Journalism Initiative had to do layoffs in March due to the same financial challenges that every publication across the country is contending with. This had nothing to do with a union effort or labor issues; in fact the staff was informed of the cuts before they unionized.

Similar scenes have played out across the country in recent years as financially beleaguered media companies shed staff and workers chafe under controversial management decisions

Defector, a sports and culture site founded in 2020 by former Deadspin employees, is perhaps the most well-known, but many others have followed in its wake. At least six worker-centered outlets launched in 2024 alone.

In the 20th century, a number of newspapers including The Hartford Courant, The Cincinnati Enquirer and the Chicago Tribune were fully or partially employee-owned, according to Nathan Schneider, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. By the digital age, however, most of those outlets were sold and landed under a different form of ownership or shut down as the news industry grappled with challenges brought about by the rise of the internet.

News is an industry that really depends on being mission-driven and being centered on employees or on communities, and any way you can find to ground news institutions in those communities is appealing for people in that industry,” Schneider said.

Many of the new worker-led outlets have business models that hinge on reader subscriptions for revenue

“Right now, I’m very adamant against on-site advertising,” said Pop Heist founder Brett White, explaining why his business plan centers on subscriptions. “Just as much as corporate interests and the Google-algorithm-notification-of-everything has ruined pop culture journalism, I think ads have as well.”

The worker-owned outlets of today differ from those of the past in that focus much more on worker governance, Schneider said.

“Not having to deal with a lot of the bureaucracy that comes along with any big company is a big deal,” Dombal said. “If we decide to do something editorially, it’s just decided amongst us, and if we decide to not do something, it’s decided amongst us.” (small world)

For journalists who have spent their entire careers focused on editorial matters, switching to a worker-owned model can mean devoting extra time to learning about the business and completing administrative tasks

The major downside of worker-owned models is the lack of access to startup capital.

As a result, most worker-owned outlets start small, unable to sustain full-time salaries for their employees. Defector, which reported a profit of $100,000 on revenues of $4.6 million during its most recent fiscal year, is an outlier among worker-owned outlets.

Nobody’s gonna get rich,” said Maria Bustillos, the lead editor of Flaming Hydra, a collective of 60 writers that launched January 2024. Each writer contributes at least once a month in exchange for an equal share of subscription revenue. Subscriptions are $3 a month, and Bustillos hopes to soon hit 10,000 subscribers.

Recognizing the challenges that come with fundraising, the founders of The 51st, a local news site in Washington, D.C., opted for a different approach. Instead of creating a worker-owned cooperative, they established a worker self-directed nonprofit. Workers make up the board of the organization, and its nonprofit status allows it to raise money more easily since donations are tax deductible.

In some ways, the growing interest in worker-led newsrooms can be seen as the next evolution of the labor movement in journalism. Early in the pandemic, newsrooms across the country unionized in droves. Many of them were reacting to the layoffs that hit the industry in the late 2010s and continued into the pandemic.

layoffs persisted. More than 90 outlets cut staff last year, and hundreds of union journalists have lost their jobs

Beyond layoffs, this past year has highlighted the risks of having so much of the media concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy individuals

Still, the ownership model is not a cure-all, and these outlets face the same challenges as others in the media industry. Ley said that Defector has started to see subscriptions plateau, and finding new subscribers while retaining existing ones is one of its biggest challenges.