NY Non-Profit News Deserves Fair Funding in State Budget
February 25, 2026
Kathy C. Hochul
Governor of New York State
Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins
New York State Senate
Speaker Carl Heastie
New York State Assembly
Re: NY Should Support Non-Profit News Equally with Commercial News
Dear Governor and Legislative Leaders,
We urge you to provide the same state support for non-profit news outlets as you already do for commercial news outlets.
There are dozens of independent, non-profit news outlets spread around the state producing high quality journalism that is helping to keep the public informed following the collapse of the legacy news media.
When you approved the Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program in April 2024, you excluded non-profit journalism from state subsidies. This is clearly not fair or consistent with the state’s stated logic for subsidizing commercial outlets because they are “vital to the health of our democracy.” We urge you to remedy this omission. If commercial news outlets deserve state subsidies, so do non-profit outlets.
Creating an equal funding program for non-profit news should be easy and straightforward. The Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program established detailed eligibility criteria for commercial news outlets and the journalists they employ, as well as an application and approval process which can be largely mirrored for non-profit outlets. The only significant legislative change required to fund non-profit news is providing a different source of funding. Non-profit news is not eligible for the reimbursable tax credits – which are functionally grants – the state is using to subsidize commercial news. However, the state has many sources of funding to choose from and can and should find a mechanism to fund nonprofit news that does not threaten editorial independence.
We know there are robust arguments for and against government funding of the news media, but as long as New York State has decided to subsidize commercial news, it must find equal funding for non-profit news.
Thank you,
Reinvent Albany
Association of Foreign Press Correspondents
Citizens Union
Common Cause New York
Freedom of the Press Foundation
League of Women Voters of New York State
The Media and Democracy Project
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)
PEN America
Society of Environmental Journalists