 |
The Weekly Wrap: April 18, 2025
What happened at the Houston Landing?
$20 million seems like…more than enough money to get a nonprofit news outlet through its first two years.
In the case of the Houston Landing, it wasn’t. The Texas news nonprofit, which raised more than $20 million before it launched in 2023, announced this week that it will shut down in May after less than two years of publishing. The funding came from the American Journalism Project and the Knight Foundation, as well as three Houston philanthropies: Arnold Ventures, the Houston Endowment, and the Kinder Foundation. Funders also made up half of the site’s six-person board.
Sophie, Nieman Lab’s local news staff writer, is working on a story about what happened at the Landing, and what lessons there might be for other nonprofit news sites. We’re interested in learning more about the situation from anyone close to it, even if you don’t want to speak on the record. You can reach Sophie via email or Signal (sculpepp.28).
— Laura Hazard Owen
From the week
 |
Eggs are how much? News outlets launch grocery price trackersTracking the prices of supermarket staples over time is a service to readers — and a way to keep an eye on the national economy. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
 |
“Multi-local” newsrooms aim to get more news to more peopleThe model could allow local reporters to be part of bigger, better-resourced teams, while maintaining a level of community trust that’s out of reach for most national counterparts. By Sophie Culpepper. |
 |
The Houston Landing raised $20 million pre-launch. Less than two years later, it’s shutting down.The site will stop publishing by mid-May, CEO Peter Bhatia said Tuesday, and its 43 employees will be laid off. By Sophie Culpepper. |
 |
The unreality of reality TV: How competition shows influence U.S. politics and shape views about economic inequalityColumbia University’s Eunji Kim: “The behavioral data tells us that most American life is not political — so why don’t we study what people are actually consuming every day, however lowbrow it may seem?” By Joshua Benton. |
Highlights from elsewhere
NPR / Mary Louise Kelly
NPR CEO Katherine Maher addresses future of federal funding for public media →
“The biggest effect would be on the NPR network, which are the 246 stations around the country…Those are our member stations, and they receive about $100 million of the $121,122 million that goes to public radio every single year.”
Nieman Reports / Elias Schisgall
With international students at risk, campus newspapers loosen editorial policies →
“At The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, editor-in-chief Laney Crawley said the paper is granting anonymity more readily than before and has acceded to two or three takedown requests from columnists who have immigrant relatives and who have written things critical of Trump. The editors of The Exponent at Purdue University in Indiana have gone even further: They announced in February that they would remove all names, photos and identifying information of pro-Palestinian students from their published content.”
Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Facebook referral traffic is increasing again after algorithm change, Similarweb data shows →
“In January this year Meta said it ‘will take a more personalised approach to political content, so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can’ across Facebook, Instagram and Threads, resulting in more news content appearing. Similarweb data estimating Facebook’s share of total social referral traffic in March 2024 versus 2025 appears to confirm the change in strategy is having a positive effect on many of the biggest news websites.”
The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr and Maegan Vazquez
White House eliminates permanent spot for news services in press pool →
“According to a White House official, the pool will consist of one print journalist to serve as print pooler; one additional print journalist, occupying the seat formerly provided to wire services; a television network crew; a secondary television network or streaming service; one radio journalist; one ‘new media/independent journalist’; and four photographers. The pool covers the president at close proximity on behalf of the larger press corps, providing text reporting, photography and video to outlets not afforded access.”
FT / Daniel Thomas and Anna Nicolaou
CNN plans to roll out a “suite” of new digital subscription services →
CEO Mark Thompson “described the launch this year as a ‘non-news digital product, though it might be heavy in information,’ initially in the U.S. before taking it to customers around the world.”
Semafor / Max Tani
How Bloomberg — and “Walter Bloomberg” — drove markets and headlines →
“Though [editor Reto] Gregori was too polite to point it out, Bloomberg’s main rivals — the financial broadcaster CNBC and the global wire service Reuters, which picked up the CNBC report, in an ouroboros of aggregation — had fallen for a ‘Walter Bloomberg’ post. The post, shared around 10 a.m. on Monday, claimed, apparently out of thin air, that Trump would pause the tariffs that had just crushed global markets. The fracas sparked some $2.5 trillion worth of market moves, as investors reacted to what they (or some automatic models) assumed was a genuine Bloomberg scoop.”