The Toledo Free Press is a project of Toledo Integrated Media Education. Click here to learn more about the Toledo Free Press board and governance. We are a proud member of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN).

For those with a stake in Northwest Ohio, the Toledo Free Press is your essential source of information. Established in 2005 -2015, and then reestablished in 2024, we are deeply rooted in Toledo and its surrounding communities and dedicated to the betterment of society. Our mission is to engage, inform and enhance civic awareness through in-depth coverage of local news, government, economic development, education, health and wellness and arts and culture. We believe a free press that offers civic information is good for Northwest Ohio, and it’s good for our democracy. Learn more about local journalism by reading the American Journalism Project.

The Toledo Free Press recognizes that our mission to create impact through journalism and audience engagement can only be achieved by actively cultivating diversity, equity and inclusion in our work internally and externally. We acknowledge the richness of lived experiences that each person in our network brings to the TFP and commit to further promoting and leveraging that diversity in order to strengthen all dimensions of our journalism, education programs, and public outreach. Furthermore, we commit to actively expanding and diversifying our network. It is our responsibility to allocate our resources in support of journalists and institutions which reflect our diverse communities. Fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community is both a goal in itself and an integral part of carrying out our organizational mission.

The Free Press is financially supported by a diversified business model that includes our membership small donor program; major donations from individuals and foundations; corporate sponsors; and advertisers.

We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Editorial decisions are made by journalists alone and are not influenced by donors or advertisers.

As a nonprofit, nonpartisan and independent newsroom, the civic duty of the Toledo Free Press is to publish in-depth, explanatory and investigative stories that benefit our regional community. Because we do not have a paywall, your donation helps support a free press, and it’s vital to keeping all Toledo-area residents informed. Thank you for your donation! Every dollar we earn helps support our reporters, student interns and editors. Click here to donate! https://toledofreepress.com/support/

The Free Press is striving to create a robust subscription membership program we hope will support our work and our mission.

We are working to create a program that will offer perks, from receiving our weekly newsletter that will offer inside looks on how our stories were created, to special invites at a coffee shop with select members of our staff, to getting a really cool TFP t-shirt.

As a nonprofit organization, the Toledo Free Press does not have an owner and is instead governed by an independent, volunteer board of directors who believe deeply in our mission and in the importance of public service journalism. They approve budgets and oversee the editor-in-chief.