In March, newspaper chains Gannett and McClatchy stopped using Associated Press wire reports and photos to cut costs.

Just a few days after the chains’ decisions were reported, the nonprofit Texas Tribune announced a move in the opposite direction; through a new content sharing partnership, it would gain access to the AP’s Texas stories and immigration reporting, while the AP would begin distributing Tribune stories to its network.

The Tribune appears to have inspired a trend in local and statewide nonprofit news. In May, five other nonprofit news outlets established their own content sharing agreements with the AP. And last week, the AP announced three more partnerships — with The Maine Monitor, The Nevada Independent (or The Indy), and Deep South Today (which operates Mississippi Today and Verite News). That brings the total to nine nonprofit partnerships across 10 states: California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, and Texas.

The AP frames its growing slate of partnerships with nonprofit news outlets as a mission-driven effort to respond to the expansion of news deserts across the U.S., increase access to local news ahead of November’s election, and extend its own reach. “The goal of the agreements is to ensure that high-quality journalism is reaching as many people as possible across the country,” AP media relations manager Nicole Meir said. “In selecting the new markets, we wanted to ensure we had geographic diversity, with AP journalism reaching both big and small states.” She added that each of the nine partner newsrooms are “based in areas where there is a growing need for more content due to challenges in the local news environment.”

Leaders of locally rooted nonprofit newsrooms, for their part, say they see content sharing partnerships with the AP as a means to get their stories in front of more people and better serve their existing audiences.

“Like most nonprofits, we are on a limited budget and have trouble covering everything we want to,” Nevada Independent founder, editor and CEO Jon Ralston said. An AP partnership “allows us to increase our bandwidth for our readers with more stories and get our stories a wider audience.”

Matthew Watkins, managing editor and incoming editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, has worked closely with the AP in his role. He told me the newsroom has seen concrete benefits from both components of its partnership for the Tribune already. AP stories distributed by the Tribune “are well-read and well-received,” he said. Specifically, Watkins highlighted the AP’s presence in New Orleans as a boon to the Tribune because it’s home to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which “takes on a lot of important Texas cases”; the Tribune can now syndicate that coverage for its audience.

On the flip side, Watkins said he’s been “pleasantly surprised at how many of our stories [AP has] picked up and distributed.” While he noted it’s difficult to separate out AP’s impact on distribution, the Tribune has “seen very strong distribution” in recent weeks. Two weekends ago, for instance, “we had 11 stories run on the front pages of 10 Texas newspapers,” he said.

AP and Tribune reporters are currently collaborating on a story, Watkins added, that they hope to jointly publish soon.

The content sharing partnerships don’t generate direct revenue for local partners. “We expect to be able to leverage it to build our brand and audience,” Deep South Today president and CEO Warwick Sabin said. (The AP did not answer questions about whether these partnerships generate direct revenue for them.)

By the business logic of nonprofit news, growing the audience of free readers by sharing content can have an indirect revenue benefit by leading to more potential donors and subscribers. “The AP’s distribution of our stories helps us achieve our goal of getting our public service journalism in front of as many people as possible, which hopefully helps readers and potential donors see the value of our work,” Watkins said. (Content sharing agreements with nonprofit news outlets are not unique to the AP; multiple of the nine newsrooms partnering with the AP, including Mississippi Today and the Tribune, are also part of content sharing agreements with States Newsroom, for instance.)

Both Ralston and Sabin said they were directly inspired to pursue content sharing partnerships with the AP based on the organization’s previously publicized deals. Sabin specifically pointed to the Tribune deal in March as the catalyst for Deep South Today’s interest; “we thought a similar arrangement would be impactful in our geographic region,” he said. (Deep South Today announced another separate reporting partnership with national climate outlet Grist last week.)

For the AP, the new partnerships reflect one way the more than 175-year-old organization is innovating in a changing news ecosystem. It’s focused on diversifying its revenue streams, specifically by ramping up in four areas: “services, direct-to-consumer and digital advertising, generative AI and data licensing; and philanthropy,” per Press Gazette. That’s making AP less dependent on partnerships like the ones it’s historically had with for-profit newspaper chains like Gannett; in March, AP said newspaper fees make up “just over 10%” of annual income. Earlier this summer, in another indication of the AP’s evolving emphasis on local news, the AP announced it would establish a “sister organization” focused on obtaining grants to support local and state news “both within the AP and through outside organizations.”

Though the AP has emphasized its goal of “expand[ing] the reach of local news ahead of the 2024 presidential election” through these content sharing partnerships, that isn’t necessarily the top goal of the partnerships from the perspective of its nonprofit partners. In Sabin’s view, for instance, the partnership “will undoubtedly strengthen 2024 election coverage for the Deep South Today newsrooms and AP, but that was not a primary driver of the collaboration,” he said. The organization is thinking bigger-picture; “We are developing our strategies with a focus on sustainable growth over the long term.”

Beyond political coverage, “the nine nonprofit news outlets are receiving AP content focused on beats and issues that are particularly relevant to their locations and audiences,” Meir said, including coverage of health care, climate change, and other beats. “These are all issues that matter to audiences at a local level but are also of significance to wider audiences across the U.S.”

The AP content sharing partnership is a kind of news bartering for the local nonprofits and the AP; all parties give something to get something. But this exchange made me wonder how local and state nonprofits are thinking, more generally, about the tradeoff of allowing republication for free out of a dedication to mission — as most nonprofit newsrooms do — versus increasingly pursuing content licensing, for a fee, as a revenue stream in a moment of anxiety about the long-term sustainability of nonprofit news.

The Tribune has always allowed its stories to be republished for free (following its ground rules), but content licensing to nonpublishers still generates some of its revenue (over $406,000, per its 2022 990). Specifically, for instance, that content licensing revenue comes from deals with textbooks to use Tribune content for education purposes, films that use Tribune video coverage of events, and photo licensing, Watkins explained in a follow-up email.

While Watkins noted that membership, events, corporate sponsorships and donations from foundations and individual donors are still the Tribune’s primary funding sources, he acknowledged that constant experimentation is essential to nonprofit news sustainability. Content licensing “is one of those ways to experiment,” he said.

“To us, it doesn’t feel like an either/or,” he said. “We’ve given our work away for free from the beginning. We want to inject fair, accurate and nuanced stories about state government and politics into the public discourse.” That logic also applies to the Tribune’s decision to partner with the AI search engine Perplexity in a revenue-sharing agreement, which my colleague Andrew Deck reported on last month; “If people are going to get information about Texas from generative AI-powered search, we want that…to be fed with accurate and fair content,” Watkins explained.

“By striking these content partnerships, we can further that goal and ensure that we get the credit and support that we need to keep that work going,” he added. “And then we can turn to potential funders, donors or partners and show that work to prove we’re an organization worth investing in.”

In a similar vein, “part of our brand is helping spread news to deserts,” the Indy’s Ralston said. (The Indy has had a content sharing agreement with rural newspapers since 2017.) “I have to believe the mission will keep us sustainable when people see what we are doing.” While he made no guarantees, he was doubtful that content licensing would become an important future revenue stream for the Indy.

Sabin’s answer was unequivocal: For Deep South Today (which also allows free republication under a creative commons license), “Our nonprofit news mission comes first, which means we prioritize making local news accessible to as many people as possible, especially in the underserved communities we serve in our region.”

He also didn’t rule content licensing out: “We are always considering how to build sustainable revenue streams to support our mission,” he said, “and content licensing is a potential opportunity for us.”

Updated with additional context about The Texas Tribune’s content licensing.