States Newsroom

States Newsroom is a network of affiliates and independent partner news sites. Every newsroom is led by a veteran local journalist with deep knowledge of the state’s political history and media landscape who oversees a staff of experienced capital reporters. Our Washington, D.C., bureau reports on congressional delegations and key Supreme Court and administrative decisions that affect the states. Read our ethics policy.

State policies directly affect people’s daily lives, and state-level political battles shape the national landscape. But in many state capitals, too many stories go underreported or unreported. There’s a void in our news ecosystem and it’s only growing.

While traditional news coverage of national politics has increased in recent years, those successes are isolated to a few major outlets. State coverage continues to shrink:

• Newsroom employment in the U.S. fell 25% between 2008 and 2018, with a 47% decline at newspapers, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report. 
• Only 30 percent of newspapers have anyone assigned to cover their statehouses, and students working part-time account for 14 percent of those covering the capitals, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study. 
• And, The Boston Globe reported that the newspaper industry has lost an average of one thousand jobs per month in recent years. 

As a result, there are fewer eyes on state government, with real consequences for real people. 

States Newsroom is bucking that trend: we now employ more than 70 full-time editors, reporters, and support staff in 18 states across the country. States Newsroom has established a new, philanthropic business model that focuses on state politics and policy. Our model is different: it is entirely made possible by donors of all sizes and unlike virtually every other for-profit and nonprofit media outlet, we don’t run ads of any kind or accept corporate donations or underwriting. Read more about our funding.

We believe that no matter who you are or where you live, you need access to high-quality, non-partisan reporting on the crucial issues of our time. We provide leading reporters and editors with the resources they need to cover their communities. 

States Newsroom is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit with offices in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Washington, D.C. All donations to States Newsroom affiliates and partners are tax-deductible.