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 invaded 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.  

To bring news back to news deserts and other underserved communities, mostly rural and suburban, Banyan has created a new kind of consumer cooperative.  These are businesses owned and democratically controlled by members who are end-users; best known are credit unions, food co-ops and rural utility co-ops, which together have more than 100 million members in the U.S.  Banyan-model news co-ops would be owned and democratically controlled by hundreds or thousands of reader-members, depending on community size.

How Banyan Nourishes Local News Co-ops

The Banyan Project’s core is a hub of expertise and resources whose mission is to 1) coach founders as they seed independent Banyan-model news co-ops, 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 it to nourish civic energy through a digital public square that’s integrated into Banyan’s publishing platform — leveraging the web’s inherent interactivity to inspire greater community engagement than analog-era news models ever could, either in print or digitally. 

After a strategic analysis based in the grassroots information needs of a withering democracy, Banyan adopted the consumer co-op form and then identified three foundational goals:

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 paying members to ensure that the co-ops are self-sustaining.

Prove to be easily replicable in communities of all kinds, coast to coast — the way our country’s 6,000 credit unions and 1,000 food co-ops were born.

Banyan’s board, working with volunteers in Haverhill, Mass., has created a comprehensive business plan for a co-op to serve a community of 50,000.

Building Trust Is the Secret Sauce 

In this era of rampant disinformation, deception and manipulation, poll after poll finds trust in almost all institutions, including the press, at historic lows and declining.

But other research shows that the public trust in cooperatives is far greater than trust in other businesses.  Co-op experts attribute this to the integrity built into their structure — by law, all co-ops are governed by one-member/one-vote democracy.  This means that news co-op editors are ultimately responsible to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of member-owners right in their community.

Building on more than a century of co-op success, Banyan has taken great care to weave integrity and 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.  And, in our culture, trust has gone missing.  Banyan is devoted to helping to bring it back.

We don’t just monetize news.  Quality news coverage is the bedrock value our model offers, but because our co-ops are grassroots community institutions, Banyan sites present their news coverage for free to all in the community to read.

To convert readers into paying co-op members, Banyan’s policies and publishing platform are designed to win their trust so they can be comfortable exploring their civic interests in our digital public square; this boils down to monetizing readers’ caring for their community.  Further, co-op members each get 1) a modest share of equity and a sense of pride in ownership in a major community institution; 2) a vote in board elections, and 3) a special voice in crowdsourcing news coverage.

Public Square Stirs Civic Juices and Inspires Co-op Membership

The public square offers deep reader engagement through a welcoming and trustworthy environment. In digital forums people can find others 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. The square will offer readers tools to invite friends who might be interested in joining a digital conversation — and thus it is a petri dish for membership growth.  And in the square, trust is protected by a pledge of constructive behavior and a system for flagging offensive behavior that editors review and address.

The public 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 trust-fueled volunteer energy can significantly enrich news coverage — it’s the same kind of interactive civic energy that the web can unleash to fuel Wikipedia, only on a community scale. 

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

Need for Initial Capital and Continuing Funding Is Limited

As is common in the world of co-ops, the bulk of startup capital for Banyan-model sites comes in small chunks as founding members enroll and make their initial payments before the business launches. Annual membership fees, renewed like subscriptions, are the primary source of operating revenue.  This removes or diminishes the need for continuing grants, as nonprofit news models tend to require; food co-ops and credit unions require none.

Our model has attracted interest from people in more than 60 communities from coast to coast and we have drafted 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.

In the spirit of democracy, each Banyan-model 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 revenue structure takes this expense into account.  And no matter who the member is, the one-member/one-vote governance that’s central to co-ops bespeaks equality.  

Of the Community, by the Community, and for the Community

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 public square invites all members to engage. 

Banyan support for aborning news co-ops includes a comprehensive co-op organizing guide, templates for business planning, and help with plans for enrolling founding members, plus its digital platform, which is specifically designed for Banyan-model co-ops, not for analog models adapted for the web that now dominate news sites but rarely thrive at the community level.  

Nonprofits have had great successes with news sites for national and state reporting; Banyan aims to bring trustworthy news back to many of the 1,800 communities that have lost theirs, following the community-to-community example of food co-ops. Democracy’s need at the grassroots, unserved and underserves communities, is vast. 

In short, independent news co-ops that use Banyan’s model will be democracy-strengthening community institutions of, by and for their communities.  If 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.