WITF parent company gifts newspaper to nonprofit led by David Greene

Pennon, the parent company of WITF in Lancaster, Pa., has gifted its LNP newspaper to a new nonprofit led by former NPR host David Greene. 

Greene will serve as interim publisher, the company announced Monday in a press release.

Growing up, Greene lived in Lancaster and read the newspapers that have since merged to make up LNP.  

“This is an organization that has been in my life since I was a kid,” Greene said in an interview. “And the idea of turning it into a nonprofit for the first time in 231 years, I think we’re going to do something really special here.”

The move ends the newspaper’s relationship with public broadcasting after Steinman Communications gifted the newspaper to WITF in 2023. 

The expenses for LNP Media Group, the Pennon subsidiary that operates LNP and two other newspapers, exceeded revenue by more than $5.5 million in FY25 and more than $4 million in FY24 as the company experienced dips in both advertising and circulation revenue, according to WITF’s most recent audit.  

Last year, Pennon announced organization-wide layoffs affecting about 10% of WITF and LNP staff. In February, journalists at WITF and LNP voted to unionize.

Path to sustainability?

Like many newspapers across the country, LNP was facing financial challenges, Leigh Horner, interim president and CEO of Pennon, told Current in an interview. “The cost structure was not being supported by the revenues,” she said. “And so we needed to look at, how could we help LNP get onto a path for success and sustainability?”

Because of the newspaper’s challenges, the board had to consider a range of options, including restructuring, bankruptcy, gifting or a potential sale, Horner said. “As we dug into this, we really believed that this gift and the creation of a nonprofit had the best chance of success,” she said.

Always Lancaster, the nonprofit that will take over the newspaper, will finalize details such as publishing schedules, staffing levels and community engagement initiatives after the deal closes, according to the release.

Greene says he sees the deal “like a job-saving move, because a lot of the alternatives, like bankruptcy, could have been incredibly tough to swallow.”

He believes the ability to add philanthropy as a revenue stream could help the newspaper’s financial prospects. 

“Spending time studying the Salt Lake Tribune model and the Baltimore Banner and some other organizations who have really found success and a path forward has gotten me really, really excited to to develop a model here in Lancaster that can be something that we’re really proud of here and that people who are watching from the outside are really proud of and excited about,” he said. 

Greene said he plans to have an “ambitious philanthropic strategy from day one and also start thinking about ways to rebuild trust, to promote civic engagement, and really honor the history of this organization while also building a version of it for the future.”

The organization will form a Community Advisory Panel and complete a listening tour to “understand truly how people feel, what their level of trust is in media, what they want out of LNP, how they want to engage, what stories excite them the most, and just start a conversation with the community,” Greene said.

The organization will look for a permanent publisher to take over for Greene, who said he will remain involved with the organization after transitioning out of the interim publisher role. 

Once a permanent publisher is in place, Greene will become board president and work on fundraising for the organization. He said he will remain “incredibly invested in the future of LNP. I would not be doing this if I were not ready and committed to making this model successful.”

Greene also hosts two public radio programs, Sports in America and Left, Right & Center, which brings people together from different political perspectives to try to solve problems. “So to the extent that I can bring that into the culture at LNP in this exciting moment, I’m all in,” he said.

Greene said his wife jokes that he never sleeps/ “I actually love it that way,” he said. “So I’m ready to dig in.”

The transaction will need approval by the state’s attorney general’s office, Greene said. He hopes to have the approval finalized by the end of the year. 

Both Greene and Horner declined to discuss specifics about the transaction. The release said Pennon will “gift the news organization’s assets” to Always Lancaster. Greene said Pennon will no longer have a financial stake in the nonprofit.

“The relationship will be less family and more friends,” he said. “I think we’re going to be rooting for each other. I think we’re gonna be encouraging people in Lancaster County to continue engaging with WITF and listening.” 

‘Underappreciated’ challenge

As a member of the board of LNP and WITF’s Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement, Greene was part of discussions about the best model for LNP moving forward, Horner said. Greene expressed an interest in a nonprofit model, she said. Then, in September, he recused himself from the boards while the LNP board discussed next steps and eventually decided to move forward with Greene’s idea. 

She sees the move as a benefit for both LNP and WITF. “It allows LNP to really focus on the specific Lancaster community, and then it allows WITF to really focus on our 19-county service area,” Horner said.

She also said that WITF “really underappreciated the challenge of running a daily newspaper, quite honestly.” 

Public media outlets considering taking on a newspaper “really need to understand and have a level of expertise in running a print operation,” she said. “I think we underappreciated that because of its dynamics and the way that works. … I would encourage anyone who might be thinking about alternative models with public media and journalism … to really make sure you understand that dynamic.”

Moving forward, Pennon will look at “investing again into the WITF newsroom and making sure that we can … bring readers, listeners [and] viewers regional news in the way that they would expect, and hopefully flourish going forward.”