Our 2024 Diversity Report

Local news is essential to informed communities and civic life. At the American Journalism Project, we see rebuilding local news as a meaningful opportunity to create a media landscape that better reflects and serves the full range of voices, experiences, and perspectives in our country. This work isn’t just about sustaining journalism — it’s about ensuring that every community feels seen and has access to the information they need to thrive.

Below, you will find our fourth diversity report: a transparent accounting of our diversity statistics, including our staff, leadership, board, and grantees. By being intentional about the decisions we make and the partners we support, we aim to help build a local news landscape that strengthens trust and connection in communities. Our hope is that this report contributes to broader conversations across the industry about what it takes to create local newsrooms that truly serve their communities.

 

Our People

Our staff 1

Our staff is 68.8% female and 31.3% male. This is similar to the philanthropic sector overall: In 2024, according to the Council on Foundations’s 2024 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report,  76% of philanthropic foundation staff identified as female, 23% identified as male, and less than 1% identified as nonbinary.

Our staff by gender identity

Forty-seven percent of American Journalism Project staff identify as people of color, compared to 34 percent of philanthropic foundation staff overall. Among those, 12.5% identify as African American/Black, 21.9% as Asian or Pacific Islander, 6.3% as Hispanc or Latino, 3.1% as multiracial, and 3.1% as North African/Middle Eastern. No one identified as American Indian/Alaskan Native.

Our staff by race and ethnicity

Our leadership1

Sixty percent of our senior leadership are women. In foundations overall, women held 65% of CEO and leadership roles in 2024. 

Leadership by gender identity

Twenty percent of our senior leadership members identify as people of color. In foundations overall, 24% of those in CEO and leadership roles identify as a person of color.

Leadership by race and ethnicity

Our Board of Directors

Our board includes experienced leaders from the news industry, business, the nonprofit sector, and philanthropy. Our board is 36 percent female and 64 percent male, compared to 45 percent female and 54 percent male across all foundations.

 

Board of Directors by gender identity

Thirty-six percent of our board identifies as people of color and 64 percent identify as white. Among those who identify as people of color, 18 percent identify as African American/Black, 9 percent as multiracial, and 9 percent as Hispanic/Latino. No one identified as American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or North African/Middle Eastern. In foundations overall, 22 percent of board members identify as people of color.

Board of Directors by race and ethnicity

 

Our grantees

The American Journalism Project has committed support to a portfolio of 50 nonprofit news organizations across the country, investing in their business capacity and providing venture support for their leadership as they grow sustainable, resilient organizations. We are committed to creating a better, more diverse and more inclusive news media that advances human and civil rights. We fund nonprofit news organizations that demonstrate an active commitment to building organizations that reflect and serve the communities in which they work. 

Currently, as of Dec. 31, 2024, 62% of the news organizations in our portfolio have a person of color leading the newsroom, organization, or both; 68% of our portfolio organizations have a woman in one or both of those roles.

 

Portfolio staff hired with our funding

We focus on strengthening the revenue and operations capacities within our portfolio, helping teams grow their newsrooms and expand reporting to better serve their communities. A significant portion of our grants supports business roles across revenue streams at all levels of seniority.

By Aug. 2024, we filled 97 revenue and operations roles across our portfolio. 71 people in those positions responded to our 2024 survey. 

Among the respondents, 16 percent of AJP-funded hires identify as Black, 21 percent as Hispanic or Latino, 6 percent as Asian, 1 percent identify as multiracial, 1% as American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 55 percent as white. No one identified as North African/Middle Eastern. 

Funded hires by race and ethnicity

 

With regard to gender, 76 percent of funded hires identify as female, 19 percent as male, and 5 percent as nonbinary. At the senior leadership level, 69 percent identify as female, 22 percent as male, and 9 percent as nonbinary.

At the senior leadership level, 18% identify as Black, 21% Hispanic or Latino, 5% as Asian, and 55% as white. No one identified as Multiracial, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or North African/Middle Eastern.

With regard to gender, 72 percent of funded hires identify as female, 24 percent as male, and 4 percent as nonbinary. At the senior leadership level, 66 percent identify as female, 29 percent as male, and 5 percent as nonbinary.

Funded hires by gender identity

Methodology

This is the American Journalism Project’s fourth diversity report. This report represents American Journalism Project staff and board members through Dec. 15, 2024. Grantee data is drawn from individual surveys conducted among AJP-funded positions by our team. The response rate to the survey sent to funded hires was 73 percent.

1Data as of Dec 1, 2024. Comparative data to the philanthropic sector utilized from the Council on Foundations’s 2024 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report.

This is the American Journalism Project’s fourt annual diversity report. Download our 2023 diversity report here, our 2022 diversity report here and our 2021 diversity report here.