Toledo Free Press returns as nonprofit newsroom
TOLEDO – Like so many Toledoans, I was heartbroken when the Toledo Free Press announced it would close its doors in April 2015.
During its tenure, the Free Press published independent, award-winning local journalism that never failed to give our city something to be proud of. While maintaining a “glass half-full” outlook, the paper still engaged in important investigative work and facilitated deep conversations on crucial topics, acting as a lively town square for Toledo.
It was some time in 2018 when I noticed the TFP website was gone – and with it 10 years of local news. The ethereal nature of important information in our much-heralded information age struck me, and I felt something had to be done. Through my friend Sarah, I was able to reach out to Tom Pounds, founder and publisher of the Toledo Free Press, who agreed to embark on a project of restoring the Free Press archives with me.
After a few conversations at The Blarney (and a few beers), we decided to use my nonprofit Toledo Integrated Media Education to put the Free Press archives back online. Thanks to a team of volunteers, we succeeded in creating a new website in 2019 that restored public access to much of the paper’s content spanning an entire decade. Writers could once again share links to stories they had written, and citizens could once again share our articles through social media.
Naturally, this led to deeper conversations about the state of journalism and what we could do about it. Approximately 1,800 communities across the U.S. no longer have local newsrooms, and thousands of others operate with a skeleton crew producing little of substance. This decline has been a crisis for our citizenry, resulting in increased polarization, lower voter turnout, higher rates of corruption, and more government waste. Is this a state of affairs we can accept for Toledo?
Our civic patriotism led us to decide it was necessary to revive the Toledo Free Press – not simply as a museum that houses the news from years past, but as an active, muckraking pillar of the community.
What followed is several years of planning and fundraising that has brought us to the moment we now find ourselves in. Through our 501c3 nonprofit, Toledo Integrated Media Education, we are prepared to ensure that Toledo has a quality local newsroom for years to come.
We’re proud to stand at the precipice of a new Toledo Free Press; one that understands and takes advantage of digital publication, embraces multimedia content delivery, and leverages the emerging model of nonprofit journalism as a way forward. Our mission, then as now, is to provide high-quality independent local journalism that is accessible to the public. That means no paywalls, no partisanship, and an exclusive focus on local news.
We are committed to being Toledo’s independent news outlet – one that can provide comprehensive coverage with an editorial staff that has the freedom to speak truth to power. We believe, as the authors of the First Amendment did, that a free press is vital to the preservation of our democracy.
If you share our beliefs, please help us carry out our mission by signing up for our newsletter, and by supporting us financially.
Our future – and our independence – depends on you.https://toledofreepress.com/tfp_returns/
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