Back to School

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A couple of years ago, Chris Jennewein, the owner and editor in chief of the Times of San Diego, headed east to Arizona State University for a conference on the future of journalism. He was nearing seventy, with a fifty-year news career under his belt, now running a small staff that hustled on stories about everything from the development of affordable housing to the demise of the San Diego Loyal Soccer Club; he also juggled bookkeeping and ad sales. At ten years old, the Times was successful, had been recognized by the News Sustainability Project, and turned a modest profit. Still, the operation depended heavily on Jennewein’s multitasking. He’d gotten some offers from buyers, but none appealed: “It was going to be turned into something that was more community entertainment and business focused, not really local news,” he said. “I didn’t want to let people down.” In Phoenix, he swung by a session on “succession,” featuring a speaker named Nicole Carroll. “At some point, I’m going to need a long-term strategy,” he reasoned. 

Carroll had recently stepped down as the editor in chief of USA Today, and taken on the role of executive director at ASU’s local journalism initiative. She noticed Jennewein, too, when he spoke at a session about what it takes to run a small news organization. “I went and I sat and I listened,” she said. “I got to know him.” Afterward, they struck up a conversation, and realized they had similar ideas about how to infuse the news industry with a sense of endurance. “Well, maybe we should work together,” Carroll told him. “If you’d find it helpful, I want to help.”

It was fortuitous timing: Carroll had spent the past few months talking with the heads of regional newsrooms, kicking the tires on their business models. All were passionate about their work, but confessed their outlets had probably just a few years of life left, for lack of resources. She’d come up with the idea that some could donate themselves to ASU, turning the organizations into nonprofits (if they weren’t already); the school could then centralize their administrative and legal support, and help them raise money. The program would allow for collaboration among different parts of the university—from the banal to the AI—and give journalists more time to focus on their communities. For months following the conference, Carroll and Jennewein kept their conversation going. Last June, he became the first to donate his outlet to NEWSWELL, as the endeavor became known.

Jennewein became an ASU employee; he and his staff received all the attendant university benefits. NEWSWELL took over payroll, HR, and tech support for the Times. “We want all the journalists to have a living wage and be able to send their kids to school, buy a house, all the things that have not been the case,” Mi-ai Parrish, a media professor at ASU and member of the NEWSWELL board, told me. “It’s an off-ramp that creates a ramp up.”

Soon, word got around. NEWSWELL acquired two more prototypes: Stocktonia, a nonprofit that has served California’s Central Valley since 2022, and the Santa Barbara News-Press, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning operation that closed in 2023 after filing for bankruptcy. Starting with three outlets in California made a certain sense, Carroll said, since ASU has a presence there, including a journalism program based out of the Cronkite News Bureau, in downtown Los Angeles. Last month, NEWSWELL made its official debut, announcing a five-million-dollar grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. There are a couple more newsrooms in the pipeline.

The Times, Stocktonia, and the News-Press have all been working with NEWSWELL to develop business plans that suit their needs and tap into their local markets—through advertising, fundraising, and memberships. “We’re teammates, partners with them,” Carroll said. “It’s not a top-down thing.” NEWSWELL does not get involved in the newsrooms’ editorial operations—except insofar as its back-end support has freed up cash for other investments. Today, the Times has more than twice as many staff members as it did: three full-time, two part-time, thirteen freelancers, and four paid interns—two of them local and two students working remotely from ASU. The paper is more responsive to news, producing more than thirty stories a day, and reaches an audience roughly half the size of San Diego’s population. Jennewein was particularly proud of a recent story about the city’s overnight bus service, produced by Kira Caspers, a junior at the Cronkite School. “To me, what I did over the last, almost eleven years now, was not just a business, it was a commitment, it was a calling,” he said. “I think that’s important.”

Carroll and Parrish would love to see other universities replicate their program, in support of local newsrooms across the country. “I don’t actually think we can solve this by ourselves,” Parrish said. “I do think the model we are working on serves the communities. I’m not sure there’s a better way to do it.” As for Jennewein, she said, the arrangement opens new possibilities: “I think his wife would like him to retire at some point, you know?”

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Lauren Watson is a Delacorte fellow at CJR.