Newspapers in the Digital Age: 

How the Gwinnett Journalism Fund Bolsters Local Reporting

In the last fifteen years, over 2,500 newspapers have closed, severing the link that bound communities together. In Gwinnett County, the Gwinnett Daily Post is taking action to ensure locals have a trusted news source for years to come.

Spearheading this initiative is J. K. Murphy, the Post’s publisher. He has worked in the newspaper industry since graduating from Indiana University in 1980 and in Georgia since 1998. As a publishing veteran, he’s seen a shift in newspaper consumption.

“The traditional print newspaper operates on two streams of revenue: advertising and subscriptions. The rule of thumb is two-thirds of the revenue would come from advertising and a third from subscriptions,” J.K. explained. “The digital world has changed that.”

What started as two streams of revenue has now become three legs of a stool. Advertising and subscriptions took two of those legs.

“That third leg, we decided, was going to be reader contributions,” J.K. said.

The Gwinnett Daily Post team modeled this decision on the Seattle Times. 

“They’ve raised 10 million dollars through grants and donations, and they are currently funding 28 people in their newsroom through those donations,” he said.

The first step in launching this new initiative began with the Gwinnett Daily Post’s sister paper, the Marietta Daily Journal. Last year, the Journal opened its own fund with the Cobb Community Foundation called the Cobb Journalism Fund. 

“We raised money that allowed us to hire an investigative reporter, and that reporter has been able to take a deep dive into issues that are impacting the community,” he shared. 

“One was sex trafficking that transpires less than a mile from million-dollar homes in Cobb County. He did a piece on pedestrian fatalities because we’d seen such a rise in the number of pedestrians being killed, and he’s taken a deep dive into homelessness.”

In 2024, this fund raised over $130,000 to support the local investigative reporter and the awareness he brought to important local issues. The success in Cobb County inspired the Gwinnett Daily Post to open its own fund.

This year, the Gwinnett Daily Post connected with the Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia to launch the Gwinnett Journalism Fund. 

Like the Cobb Community Foundation fund, J.K. wanted to work with an organization close to readers’ homes. “I felt it was very important to use the local group because people are familiar with it,” he said.

He and his team had also covered multiple stories about the Community Foundation’s outreach and witnessed the local philanthropy first-hand. “The Foundation causes a lot of good things to happen and brings us a lot of good news that we’d like to share with our readers,” he shared.

Once they decided on the best home for their fund, the Gwinnett Daily Post set a goal of raising $250,000 in two years to support an investigative reporter to investigate local news and report back to the community.  

Funded by the Gwinnett Journalism Foundation, veteran Georgia journalist Nate McCullough was recently hired to fill this role. Nate’s first assignment takes a deep dive into homelessness in Gwinnett. His first piece on this issue appeared in the April 19 edition of the Gwinnett Daily Post. 

“All the work done by the investigative reporter is accessible to everyone, whether you’re a subscriber or not,” J.K. explained. “We will continue to choose the stories, and I’ve already committed that we will be taking a hard look at homelessness throughout the year, how these people got there and what can be done to help them get back on their feet.

“We’re all about local news and that’s why people subscribe. They’re not buying our paper or subscribing to our website to find what’s going on in Washington. There are a million places you can go now to get that information.

“The newspaper’s role is to be a watchdog on the community, but at the same time you need to be a cheerleader when there’s something to cheer about,” he shared. “If you want to know what happened at the school board meeting or at your city hall or if you want to know whether crime is up in your neighborhood, that is our bread and butter.”

J.K. is thrilled to partner with the Community Foundation as the Gwinnett Daily Post pivots in this digital age. 

“When I got my degree, they had no courses in fundraising in the journalism school, so I’m in uncharted waters here. The foundation has been great in helping us get this set up and in offering advice. We couldn’t get that anywhere else,” he shared.

“We will still work at earning advertising dollars and subscription dollars, but this third leg is going to help us tremendously.”
To contribute to the Gwinnett Journalism Fund, click here!