How do you save local journalism? How do you take a legacy newspaper and ensure it continues for the next 140 years? These are questions that Rob Curley — executive editor at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington — has been pondering for more than a decade. Curley may have found the answer with the help of some news industry veterans, a local entrepreneur with a passion for nonprofits, and the counsel of one of the largest business consultancies in the nation.
The Spokesman-Review was founded on June 29, 1894, when two papers in Spokane merged — the Spokane Falls Review and the Spokesman. W.H. Cowles acquired the paper in 1897, and it has remained a Cowles family-owned daily since. The news media publisher is headquartered at the Review Building, a prominent antique on a main street running through the city.
Like all newspapers in the U.S., the past 20 years have been tumultuous for The Spokesman-Review. According to Curley, the paper had a thriving 650-person newspaper at the Millennium. Today, that number hovers around 150.
Print subscriptions declined 39% from 2019 to 2022, and in April 2020, the paper reluctantly stopped printing a Saturday edition.
Still, in that same 2019 to 2022 period, circulation revenues increased by 13%. “Eight years ago, when I arrived, circulation was maybe 20% of our revenue. Now, we’ve gone from a couple million in circulation dollars to $14 million. That is a mind-blowingly large number for a market our size,” Curley said.
But it’s still not enough to sustain the newsroom in the years ahead. Something had to change.
The nonprofit era
“The business model for newspapers in the United States has basically been the same since the Revolutionary War,” Curley said. “We sell subscriptions, and we sell advertising. A few years ago, we started seeing events and philanthropy become a bigger part. Well, we realized that once you solidify the philanthropy part, it really changes how people view you.”
And so, The Spokesman-Review is becoming a nonprofit.
The Cowles family intends to gift The Spokesman-Review to Comma Journalism Lab, an independent, nonprofit 501c3. Rob Curley will become Comma's president. Scott de Rozic, a local entrepreneur and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Gonzaga University, will head up strategy. Tyler Pisani, the audience and consumer marketing director at The Spokesman-Review, will lead circulation initiatives. General Manager and Chief Operating Officer Aaron Kotarek will continue to oversee revenue and operations.
De Rozic came up with the name “Comma” for the new nonprofit — a punctuation mark that connects clauses or ideas in a sentence. It perfectly describes the new organizational structure, which will connect the legacy newspaper with local businesses, local schools and universities and other local news outlets, like the Black Lens.
Scott de Rozic explained how Comma engaged the counsel of Bain Capital’s nonprofit arm, The Bridgespan Group, to “pressure test” the model.
“They work with the biggest foundations in the country,” de Rozic said. “And they also work with four to six of the most promising startups every year. They have a careful selection process, where they are trying to find things that have a national scale. If we address the problem we’re going after, it can have legs and spread across the country. So, Rob and I embarked on a six-month engagement with them. It was pretty extensive. … We did some deep modeling and tightened the entire business plan under development.”
Bridgespan studied a handful of existing nonprofit news organizations’ structure and revenue models — The Salt Lake Tribune, Moab Times-Independent, Lancaster Online and The Philadelphia Inquirer — to create a best-of-breed model.
Kotarek was appointed general manager in 2024 and relocated from Hawaii to Spokane. “The potential transition to this hybrid nonprofit model and the opportunity to work with Rob were the two largest factors in the decision to move,” Kotarek said. “It was a super-exciting opportunity. Spokane is an underrated mid- to major-metro market with all the big-city amenities without many big-city problems. … This property has always been forward-thinking, award-winning, best-practicing and on the cutting edge. I expect the aforementioned to continue as we move into the nonprofit space.”
The paper’s current publisher, William Stacey Cowles, will become a member of Comma’s board. Curley and de Rozic will also maintain their board positions, and local community members — representing the legal, business, academic and philanthropic fields — will join the 11-member board.
The Cowles family has pledged a $2 million fundraising match for the first five years.
“One of the main reasons the family has decided to go this route is to have the brand live on for decades to come, and you can only do that with a sustainable financial model,” said Kotarek. “The ability for us to continue with our legacy revenue-generating channels and to parlay that with philanthropic dollars on top gives us enough funds to maintain the mission.”
According to Publisher William Stacey Cowles, the timing for the transfer to Comma is dependent on hitting fundraising goals and establishing independent accounting and human resources infrastructure. In an April 15, 2025, press release, Cowles cited a period of three to 12 months.
Diversifying revenue
“For most news nonprofits, the business model is: We’re out of money. Can we please have more? That is not going to be our model. It is going to be a hybrid model, based on circulation, advertising and sponsorships, and philanthropy,” Curley explained.
Subscribers will be invited to join “The First Amendment Club,” a tiered membership model starting at $1,000 and reaching upwards of $10,000. With each level comes additional perks and access to content and events.
Corporations and local businesses will be invited to become a “Founding Partner” — a $100,000 commitment for five years. It entitles them to free Spokesman-Review subscriptions for all company employees. They get 12 full-page ads expressly to tell stories about how they’re benefiting the community. And they’ll be a sponsor of a special content section or event of their choosing, with all the marketing and social media promotion that comes with it.
Kotarek uses the analogy of a four-legged stool to explain the new revenue model.
“One of the legs is maximizing print’s long tail. We still believe that print has a future in some form, fashion and frequency,” Kotarek said. “We have award-winning essential content, and they’re willing to pay us for that. We don’t want to do anything to damage our relationship with our print customers. And even though traditional, legacy advertising revenues are declining, we still want to maintain as many of those print advertiser relationships as possible.
“One of the other stool legs is new revenue streams — continuing to grow digital advertising and digital subscriptions. Our digital subscribers make up almost 65% of our home delivery base at rates much higher than the industry average — almost two times the industry average — because we don’t charge by platform. We charge for content, and no matter which platform our content resides on, it has the same value,” Kotarek said.
The third leg of the stool focuses on cutting extraneous expenses. They plan to renegotiate contracts with solutions providers and eliminate credit card transaction and processing fees.
Comma also intends to build its philanthropic fundraising efforts with dedicated staff to woo major donors, such as corporate funders and local and national foundations.
“With this hybrid model, we’ll continue to generate revenue like we do today, but having access to those philanthropic dollars on top of that, we believe, is a sustainable financial model moving forward,” Kotarek said.
By 2028, Comma projects revenues of between $18 million and $31 million.
But this transformation is about more than revenue. It’s about building community.
Engaging educators
Lindsey Treffry was born in Spokane. She grew up reading the newspaper, graduating from the funny pages to the news articles and opinion columns as she got older. “We always had a newspaper in our house,” she recalled.
Her career in journalism began in high school. She went on to study at the University of Idaho and worked for a couple of family-owned papers after graduation. When she learned about a copy desk opening at The Spokesman-Review, she seized the opportunity to work for her hometown paper. She was later promoted to copy desk chief and, in 2023, was named managing editor. Liz Kishimoto serves as the managing editor, too. “She handles more of the photography and operations, and I handle more of the copy design and people management,” Treffry explained.
The Spokesman-Review’s Teen Journalism Institute is the nation’s only paid high-school journalism internship program.
Comma is negotiating partnership agreements with several local colleges and universities, including Gonzaga University, Spokane Colleges, Eastern Washington University, Whitworth University and Spokane College. Though none of these institutions offer a journalism degree, they all have campus newspapers. Each will provide Comma with office space on campus, and members of The Spokesman-Review newsroom will act as advisers and mentors to their student presses. Students studying business and technology may intern at Comma, providing them with real-world experience.
Comma’s staff will also be able to audit any course for professional development or personal enrichment.
The new structure will also allow Comma to provide publishing services to other local, independent news organizations, such as The Black Lens, which Comma helped relaunch in 2024. It is a long-term goal for the Comma team to help resurrect some of the more rural local papers that have been shuttered across the state in recent years. In addition, all content will be published under Creative Commons licensing, which allows Comma to retain the copyright while others may republish it.
A next-gen newsroom
Comma’s journalism model is community-centered and solutions-based. And that aligns with the newsroom culture Curley has been fostering since his arrival in Spokane. He believes the paper can be a force for good.
“One of the big changes we made when I got here was to redefine how we picked stories for the front page,” Curley said. “First off, it had to be all local.” And rather than “if it bleeds, it leads," the newsroom implemented an “if it seeds, it leads” mantra.
“Will this make our community better? Sometimes, negative stories are important because they make the community better. But you have to be a mirror of the community,” Curley said, noting that positive news outnumbers the negative.
The Spokesman-Review’s subscriber base skews older; only 12% are under 50. A sustainable future for the paper partly depends on compelling that younger audience. They plan to do that in a number of ways, including developing partnerships with local high schools and universities, and creating journalism, events and social sites that appeal to young people.
In 2023, E&P spoke with Rob Curley about the remarkable way he’s positively impacted a newsroom and an entire community. When he first landed at the paper, he found his inbox deluged with negative feedback — and some outright hate mail. Today, it’s not unusual for Curley to get hundreds of emails from readers each week who express gratitude for the paper and its particular approach to news.
Curley inspired this cultural shift by literally bringing the community together through public forums and the Northwest Passages speaker series, which draws as many as 700 attendees. What he’s discovered is that a community that comes together for conversation will be engaged in other ways, too.
Citing statistics from Pew Research, Curley noted the correlation between local news consumption and civic engagement. “They are 66% more likely to vote in local elections. Two times more likely to feel attached to their communities, and 25% more likely to be highly active in local groups and political activity,” he said.
Drafting the blueprint
In speaking with the Comma team, one senses the passion and eagerness they share, but there’s also a hint of anxiety. They want the plan to succeed, not only for the people of Spokane but potentially for other mid-market communities around the country. “First, we have to prove that it works here,” Curley said. Citing data from America’s Newspapers, he listed 22 metropolitan areas “at risk” of losing their newspapers. However, what these communities have working in their favor are “sizeable philanthropic and retail bases.”
“This was built from the beginning to roll out across the country,” Curley said of the new model. “Developed in Spokane, but built for the nation.”
Asked for her thoughts on The Spokesman-Review’s future, Managing Editor Lindsey Treffry said, “I think my confidence comes from the community reaction. Seeing people on the tours that Rob provides here and being in the room when people say, ‘I want to donate money to this cause,’ it’s mind-blowing to see how much the community wants to back this. But, it’s not mind-blowing to me that Spokane wants to keep the newspaper around. This city understands how vital having a newspaper is.”
“As we look to the future, uniting our time-honored revenue streams with the power of philanthropic giving opens the door to a bold new era for The Spokesman-Review,” GM and COO and Comma board member, Aaron Kotarek reflected. “This transformative path ensures our trusted brand not only endures but flourishes — continuing to illuminate, inform and inspire our communities with journalism that is local, award-winning, credible and truly essential. Through the vision of the Comma Journalism Lab, we embrace this moment as a powerful opportunity to reimagine what’s possible and to carry our mission forward for generations to come.”
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
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