{"id":166105,"date":"2026-04-15T04:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T04:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/166105\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T04:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T04:10:17","slug":"nonprofit-lifeline-for-pittsburgh-post-gazette-a-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/166105\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonprofit lifeline for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Tuesday it had\u00a0prevented an imminent shutdown<\/a>\u00a0because a nonprofit journalism operation had agreed to buy the struggling newspaper. It\u2019s the latest example of a news outlet turning to the nonprofit sector to\u00a0avoid closing<\/a>\u00a0as advertising and circulation revenues\u00a0continue to drop<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at a few other prominent newspapers that have made similar moves.\n<\/p>\n

The Salt Lake Tribune<\/p>\n

The Salt Lake Tribune was the first legacy newspaper in the country to directly\u00a0convert from a for-profit company<\/a>\u00a0to a nonprofit in 2019. The newspaper had to get IRS approval to make the precedent-setting conversion, which differed from other papers that were purchased by already-existing nonprofit companies.\n<\/p>\n

As part of the switch, the paper installed a board of directors and began relying on donations. A strict firewall was set up between reporters and donors to prevent influence or sway from tainting the news report, and the paper\u2019s editorial board stopped making candidate endorsements.\n <\/p>\n

The Salt Lake Tribune had gone through a number of different owners since its first edition was published in 1871 under the name \u201cThe Tribune & Utah Mining Gazette.\u201d As internet use became widespread in the mid-1900s, the Salt Lake Tribune and the rest of the newspaper industry faced worsening financial instability as more readers shunned the print product for online sources, and advertisers turned to digital media.\n<\/p>\n

Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund with a reputation as a\u00a0ruthless cost-cutter<\/a>, bought the Salt Lake Tribune in 2010 and saddled the company with\u00a0$278 million in debt<\/a>\u00a0it took on for the acquisition. A subsequent restructuring led to layoffs and a U.S. Department of Justice probe.\n<\/p>\n

Utah businessman Paul Huntsman bought the newspaper in 2016 and ushered in the company\u2019s switch to a nonprofit.\n<\/p>\n

Chicago Sun-Times<\/p>\n

In 2022 Chicago Public Media completed a deal to buy the Chicago Sun-Times, creating one of the country\u2019s largest\u00a0local nonprofit news organizations<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

The Chicago Sun-Times was created in 1948 by department store heir Marshall Field III. Field had founded the Chicago Sun newspaper a few years earlier, and he purchased the local Daily Times because he was looking for printing presses. The two newspapers merged, becoming the Chicago Sun-Times.\n<\/p>\n

The newspaper passed through a series of owners over the next several decades before the purchase by Chicago Public Media.\n<\/p>\n

The public media organization already owned WBEZ, the local NPR affiliate. The radio station and newspaper began sharing content across their platforms, expanding the reach of both platforms.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Tuesday it had\u00a0prevented an imminent shutdown\u00a0because a nonprofit journalism operation had agreed to buy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40997,73,75,74,25828],"class_list":["post-166105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-newspapers","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-post-gazette"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}