The Local News Initiative is raising money to support your local news outlets.
In the last two years, the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona’s Local News Initiative has awarded $500,000 in grants to outlets such as Arizona Luminaria, Tucson Spotlight, Tucson Sentinel, Somos Tucson, and more.
On Friday, March 6, 2026, Advisory Board Chair Nancy Sharkey was honored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson for her contributions to the local media landscape. Several reporters and news outlet founders were also recognized for their many years bringing YOU the information you need to be an informed member of Southern Arizona.
During Nancy’s stirring acceptance speech, she asked the community to help the Local News Initiative continue to support the reporters who ask the hard questions and publish the answers.
Please follow their work and consider supporting the Local News Initiative.
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From Nancy Sharkey
“Throughout my career as a journalist, I’ve believed in the news profession’s simple, sturdy, first principle:
Seek truth and report it.
Not opinion. Not outrage. Not speculation.
I spent 25 years as an editor at The New York Times and also taught future journalists first at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, then here at the University of Arizona. In newsrooms and classrooms, the foundation was the same: Seek truth and report it.
But today, that foundation is under strain. Social media posts that spread misinformation —and reinforce our own opinions—have increasingly replaced civic news and information. These posts also stimulate our endorphins, which makes them addictive. For every meal, we’re choosing dessert over spinach.
The results are visible across the country. As the “tech bros” monetized our attention and emotions, local news outlets starved. Ads and subscriptions plummeted. Reporters lost their jobs. And so-called news deserts grew. Communities are losing the watchdogs who covered school boards, courtrooms, town councils. In their place is a torrent of partisan social media posts optimized not for truth, but for engagement. Platforms reward speed. They reward anger. They reward exaggeration and excess. Why let the facts get in the way of that post?
The consequences are serious. When communities no longer share the same basic facts, studies show that democratic decision-making becomes much harder, civic participation falls, public spending rises. And, man, is it a great time to be a corrupt public official or what?
That’s the lament. But it’s not the end of the story.
Something surprising happened just last week. A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, recorded his first-ever advertisement—not to urge people to subscribe to the Times, but to encourage them to support any news organization dedicated to original reporting.
Think about that for a moment. The publisher of one of the most successful digital news organizations in the world using his platform to say: Don’t just support us. Support real reporting wherever you find it. Support newsrooms that send human beings—not algorithms—to sit in meetings, verify information, ask questions and hold power to account.
He recognized that as legacy newsrooms are shrinking, something else is rising.
Here in Southern Arizona, we are part of that story. Our Local News Initiative has helped build community support for new, nonprofit, community-centered news sites. Some of the founders of these organizations are being honored today—Irene McKisson, Dianna Náñez and Becky Pallack of Arizona Luminaria, and Caitlin Schmidt of Tucson Spotlight.
These startups don’t have printing presses or advertising empires. Instead, they have trust, transparency and an understanding that journalism is a public service. In the past two years, our Local News Initiative has helped them add reporters to their staffs, and we’re about to embark on a third round of fundraising for our next grant round.
You see, the need is still enormous. Since I moved fulltime to Arizona, about 15 years ago, the newsroom at the Arizona Daily Star has lost dozens of reporters and editors to corporate financial cuts. Our grants have helped add about 6 reporters to the region – but it’s far short of the 40-plus journalists we’ve lost. Many important beats remain uncovered.
We’ve also supported innovative ideas like training citizen journalists in Patagonia to add boots-on-the-ground coverage along the border.
We’re exploring public policy initiatives to support local news. Perhaps tax credits for subscriptions or advertising. Perhaps tax incentives for news organizations to hire more reporters. Already, about 20 states have some kind of publicly funded support for journalism. We’d like to see similar efforts here.
And we’re going to be encouraging the new digital startups to scale up. The audience development strategies these folks are developing will help their organizations become sustainable.
So, yes, there is a great deal of work still to do.
But there is also real momentum.
When communities invest in local journalism, they invest in themselves: in better governance, stronger civic ties, and a healthier democracy.
And today, philanthropy has become an important financial pillar for journalism, alongside subscriptions, sponsorships, events and advertising.
So my ask today is simple— it’s the same one A.G. Sulzberger made.
If you care about facts, support the fact-gatherers.
If you care about the community, support the reporters who ask the hard questions and publish the answers.
Subscribe to Arizona Luminaria, Tucson Spotlight, Tucson Sentinel, Tucson and Arizona Agenda, and the Arizona Daily Star. Donate to our Local News Initiative.
Look, shared truth is not inevitable. It is built—story by story, meeting by meeting, newsroom by newsroom. And it survives only when communities decide that it matters. Today, I hope you’ll make that decision. Support the people who show up. Support the people who ask questions. Support the people who seek truth and report it!”
