We are pioneering a new model
for community-energizing journalism.   

Community newspapers have been dying at the rate of two per week for years, and the trustworthy news coverage needed for local civic and economic health is dying with them.  Papers are dying far faster than digital news sites are being born, and the 2025 Medill State of Local News Report says 1,800 communities that once had their own paper now have no source of news at all.  The report, not unreasonably, calls this a “festering problem.”

We are watching a crucial pillar of our beleaguered democracy crumble.  And it gets worse.  Politically deceptive “pink slime” websites have rushed into this news vacuum — and now outnumber legitimate online news efforts.  Further, as the November midterm elections bear down on us, swarms of slick AI disinformation bots are rushing to infest social media.  These developments crank the volume way up on democracy’s cry of distress for trustworthy new models for community journalism that can thrive and nourish democracy in our digital future.

The Banyan Project’s entirely new model is a robust response to democracy’s cry.

The project is a hub of expertise and resources whose mission is to 1) coach founders as they seed independent news cooperatives in their communities using Banyan’s tailored digital tools, then 2) provide the co-ops a wide range of support to help them succeed.  

What’s success? First, restoring lost news coverage, then using this news to nourish civic energy through a digital public square that’s integrated into the publishing platform — leveraging the web’s inherent interactivity to inspire greater community engagement than analog-era news models ever could, print or digital. 

Three Foundational Strategic Goals

After a strategic analysis based in the grassroots information needs of a withering democracy, Banyan began by identifying three foundational goals for news co-ops:

Deliver trustworthy and timely news coverage under professional editorial leadership whose bedrock responsibility, buttressed by sophisticated digital tools, is to insure that their sites’ content not only delivers vital information but also nurtures community-wide trust.

Leverage this trust to stimulate and facilitate exceptional levels of civic engagement, community spirit and people helping one another — and to attract enough paid members to ensure that the co-ops are self-sustaining. 

Prove to be easily replicable in communities of all kinds, coast to coast.

Banyan’s foundational value proposition is that readers will experience Banyan-model news sites as relevant to their lives, respectful of them as people, and worthy of their trust.

In this era of rampant disinformation, deception and manipulation, poll after poll finds distrust of almost all institutions, including the press, at historic lows and declining.  But other research shows that the public trusts member-governed cooperatives — credit unions and food co-ops are most widely known — far more than other businesses.  Banyan has taken great care to build trustworthiness into every aspect of its model and platform.  Trust is foundational — not just to Banyan-model news co-ops but also to the health of their communities.

Where the Revenue Comes from

We don’t just monetize news, like standard digital news sites.  Quality news coverage is the foundational value our model offers, but co-ops are grassroots community institutions and so they present their news coverage free — for all in the whole community to read.  

To attract paying co-op members, we focus on monetizing the trust and civic engagement — scarce assets in today’s world — that are built into our model; this boils down to monetizing readers’ caring for their community.  Further, co-op members each get 1) a modest share of equity in an important community institution; 2) a vote — by law, the members of all co-ops elect their boards by one-member/one-vote democracy — and a special voice in crowdsourcing news coverage.  All this makes editors ultimately accountable to their readers, not advertisers.

Co-ops have long succeeding where other business forms failed.  Example:  People formed more than 10,000 credit unions during the Great Depression, when many banks failed, creating credit deserts.  Now news deserts abound, and it’s time for news co-ops to proliferate.

The Banyan model’s digital public square offers deep reader engagement through a welcoming and trustworthy environment for people to find others in forums who care about the same issues, learn from each other and other resources, and even organize for constructive community change; a co-op’s original reporting will nourish these conversations.  

Further, the square will offer digital tools for people to invent ways to help one another — a tool library, perhaps, or a forum for swapping job leads. Thus, the digital public square will inspire members to invite friends to join a digital conversation — and thus a petri dish for membership growth.  And in the square trust is protected by a pledge of constructive behavior, plus a system for flagging offensive behavior that editors can review and address.

The square also invites members to offer feedback and news coverage ideas, helping the editors make coverage decisions from the bottom up, not just from the experts down.  Readers are also welcome to take part in crowdsourcing of reporting projects.  All this’ volunteer energy can significantly enrich news coverage — it’s the same kind of civic energy the web can unleash to fuel Wikipedia and much open-source software, only on a community scale. 

Other revenue will come from selling sponsorships to business members of co-ops, from crowdfunding major reporting projects, and from occasional grants.

Deep Engagement Leads to a Virtuous Circle

Depth of engagement sets the Banyan news co-op model apart from current local news models, which work primarily to create relationships between readers and their sites, with donations the goal.  Banyan’s co-op model creates relationships among a community’s people as well, with civic vitality the goal. This richer engagement strengthens civic health and creates far greater value to attract people with civic hope to sign up as paid and voting co-op members.

A classic virtuous circle is the logical result: The more a news co-op engages people in building hope for community advancement, the more paying members it should attract; the more paying members it retains, the more members should be inspired to choose premium fee options at renewal time.

The more revenue a co-op thus generates, the more staff it can hire, the more impactful its journalism can be, and the more its community should advance — which should generate still more hope and attract still more paying members.

Our model has attracted interest from people in more than 60 communities from coast to coast and we have drafted specific approaches for the particular needs of small cities or large suburbs, for clusters of small rural towns, and for the Black communities of big cities.  If you are interested in exploring a Banyan-model news co-op where you live, check out this page.

Fairness Baked into Co-op Structure

In the spirit of democracy, each independent news co-op’s editors will aim news coverage to serve the broad public of their community, taking care to meet the information needs of the less-than-affluent everyday citizens we call the Banyan public, not just the upscale people most newspapers, public broadcasters, and current digital sites aim to cultivate.  

To this end, Banyan’s model offers not only standard and budget membership fees but also free scholarship-memberships for people who receive means-tested benefits such as food stamps; Banyan’s self-sustaining revenue structure takes this into account.  And no matter who the member is, the one-member/one-vote governance that’s central to co-ops bespeaks equality.  

The model’s grassroots nature and invitation to engagement through the digital public square opens the door wide to the diversity of each co-op’s community.  And the digital public square invites all members to engage. 

Banyan support for new news co-ops includes a comprehensive guide for organizing a co-op, templates for business planning, and help with plans for enrolling founding members.

In short, independent news co-ops that use Banyan’s model will be democracy-strengthening community institutions of, by and for their communities.  In you’re intrigued, learn more on our Starting a News Cooperative page. 

— Tom Stites

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See the master metaphors that governed conceptualization of this project from the beginning.