Last summer, interim executive director Max Reinsdorf knew Growing Community Media (GCM) needed to find a more sustainable path forward. The financials simply weren’t adding up.
GCM, which includes four newspapers in the west suburbs and West Side of Chicago, already had converted these titles from commercial to nonprofit status six years ago, but that wasn’t enough.
Now he believes he’s found a pathway to sustainability: NEWSWELL, a nonprofit associated with Arizona State University. On February 25, GCM officially donated its four publications — the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest, the Forest Park Review, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark and the Austin Weekly News — and they’re the first outlets to join NEWSWELL’s network from outside of California.
NEWSWELL launched publicly in January 2025, and its goal is to provide enhanced backend support for news organizations donated into its portfolio. That includes help building membership programs, upgrading technologies, fine-tuning business strategies and more. GCM’s properties join the California-based Times of San Diego, Santa Barbara News-Press, Stocktonia, Beach & Bay Press, La Jolla Village News, La Mesa Courier, Mission Times Courier, Peninsula Beacon, San Diego Uptown News and San Diego Downtown News as part of the network.
“They are very well respected in their communities,” said Nicole Carroll, NEWSWELL’s executive director, about the GCM publications. “They have good journalism. They have strong business-side operations, and they were just looking for a little more stability, just something to give them a little more support as they head into the future.”
Meanwhile, Reinsdorf said he was similarly enthusiastic about how NEWSWELL could bolster GCM’s prospects for the future.
“My belief first and foremost is that community journalism is essential to a healthy and vibrant community and a healthy and vibrant democracy,” said Reinsdorf, who’s now the general manager Chicago for NEWSWELL. “For community journalism to survive for the long term, it needs scale and, in a lot of cases, small independent publishers like us struggle to find scale and the resources that come with scale. NEWSWELL has a solution for that.”
Those solutions include significant backend support, both editorially and operationally. The four publications will have access to an investigative editor who will help lead longer-term investigative reporting projects, experts in membership programs and newsletters and more.
NEWSWELL also has a staffer who will help place interns at the four publications, expanding their reporting capacities. In many ways, this model mirrors local news networks that are becoming more common as smaller newsrooms look for more efficient ways to run their businesses.
But while NEWSWELL will be providing quite a bit of help, the organization isn’t infusing these outlets with cash. It’ll still be up to them to locally source sustainable revenue streams.
Along those lines, both Carroll and Reinsdorf noted that one of the top priorities now is establishing a membership program.
“That’s something we’re adamant is key to our success,” Reinsdorf said. “I strongly believe we need to develop a robust reader-revenue program that allows us to generate new revenues, new income and then ultimately we get to reinvest that in the newsroom. We do not have, on staff, real expertise in building, developing and maintaining a membership program. We just don’t have it, and we struggle to find the funds to out and get those resources.
“NEWSWELL has it. They have that kind of resource on staff that they can deploy to us. They have the tools and technology at hand to share with us that allows us to generate those revenues which I think are so critical to our future.”
Another area where NEWSWELL’s muscularity could come into play: fundraising. In the past, Reinsdorf said, he’s had difficulty getting national philanthropic organizations to consider GCM for support.
Now with NEWSWELL, far more doors can open.
“I’m in a much stronger position to go to the big institutions and say, ‘You should fund us, you should fund us in a really serious way,’” Reinsdorf said. “And I think that’s something the other [NEWSWELL] pubs are enjoying, and I hope to enjoy that as well.”
This transaction also comes as a big milestone in NEWSWELL’s growth, as the organization expands into its second state. This growing network not only offers opportunity for cross-publication collaboration, but it brings NEWSWELL into the Windy City where a recent Medill study highlighted nearly 250 different sources of local news and information serving audiences.
Might there be more Chicago-area publications added to the NEWSWELL portfolio?
“We go where we’re asked, where we’re wanted and where we’re needed,” said Carroll, who previously was the editor-in-chief of USA Today. “So far, that’s been in California and Illinois. I think what we’ll do right now is continue to build out in California and Illinois, rather than go to too many other states because part of our efficiency is economies of scale, so having properties within a certain geographic area helps them be more successful.”
And for the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest, the Forest Park Review, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark and the Austin Weekly News, this partnership couldn’t come at a better time.
“I am deeply excited by this opportunity,” Reinsdorf said. “I’ve spent my career in this line of work. There have not been a lot of models out there that have given me the kind of hope that I have now for these publications, and I think our future is very bright. The outcome for our staff is exceptional under NEWSWELL. They are excited about this. And I hope that all of the messaging we put out conveys how confident I am in our future.”
