Five years ago this month, Mississippi Today launched as the state’s first nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital-only news outlet. The vision of our founders and early team was that of an entrepreneurial start-up: build a new way of delivering news and usher in an age of journalism that answers to the reader, not to a mass media holding company.    

We cut our teeth on Capitol coverage and watchdog reporting, and have since grown to cover a myriad of beats, never straying from our mission of providing the best journalism for Mississippians without the barriers of paywalls and subscriptions. Our reporters listen, dig deep and mine data to give you the full picture of what is happening in our state, bringing awareness to systems, issues and stories that have long gone untold. 

We will be celebrating our five year milestone all year long, and as we kick off this anniversary, I want to say thank you for reading our site, sharing our stories and helping us get the word out about Mississippi Today. We are humbled by the support we’ve been shown since 2016, and are especially grateful to become a part of the lives of so many new readers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the next month, we’ll be sharing more about our past and future. I invite you to join us in celebrating the value of mission-driven journalism focused on Mississippi.  We intend to be around for a long time, and we need your continued support to make it happen.

Being a nonprofit is central to who we are as a newsroom. It means we are driven by values, not by dividends, and it means that we rely on donations from readers to power the work we do: paying for records requests, keeping the lights on (literally), providing our team with health care and much more.

To our current membership: thank you, truly, for your generous support. Our work is not possible without you.

To our readers who are not yet members: thank you for your readership and engagement. I hope you’ll consider joining our community of members by making a donation. Our journalists may be the ones writing the stories, but without you, those stories go untold.

Close window X

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Unless otherwise noted, you can republish most of Mississippi Today’s stories for free under a Creative Commons license. For digital publications:

• Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
• Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
• You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
• You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
• Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
• If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.

For print publications:

• You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
• You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
• You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
• Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
• You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
• You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
• Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
• If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.

If you have any other questions, contact Audience Development Director Lauchlin Fields.

Mississippi’s first nonprofit newsroom marks five years in March

by Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today
March 3, 2021

<h1>Mississippi’s first nonprofit newsroom marks five years in March</h1> <p class="byline">by Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today <br />March 3, 2021</p> <p>Five years ago this month, Mississippi Today launched as the state’s first nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital-only news outlet. The vision of our founders and early team was that of an entrepreneurial start-up: build a new way of delivering news and usher in an age of journalism that answers to the reader, not to a mass media holding company.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>We cut our teeth on Capitol coverage and watchdog reporting, and have since grown to cover a myriad of beats, never straying from our mission of providing the best journalism <em>for </em>Mississippians without the barriers of paywalls and subscriptions. Our reporters listen, dig deep and mine data to give you the full picture of what is happening in our state, bringing awareness to systems, issues and stories that have long gone untold.&nbsp;</p> <p>We will be celebrating our five year milestone all year long, and as we kick off this anniversary, <strong>I want to say thank you for reading our site, sharing our stories and helping us get the word out about Mississippi Today.</strong> We are humbled by the support we’ve been shown since 2016, and are especially grateful to become a part of the lives of so many new readers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. </p> <p>Over the next month, we’ll be sharing more about our past and future. I invite you to join us in celebrating the value of mission-driven journalism focused on Mississippi.&nbsp; We intend to be around for a long time, and we need your continued support to make it happen.</p> <p><strong>Being a nonprofit is central to who we are as a newsroom.</strong> It means we are driven by values, not by dividends, and it means that we rely on donations from readers to power the work we do: paying for records requests, keeping the lights on (literally), providing our team with health care and much more.</p> <p>To our current membership: thank you, truly, for your generous support. Our work is not possible without you.</p> <p>To our readers who are not yet members: thank you for your readership and engagement. I hope you’ll consider joining our community of members by making a donation. <strong>Our journalists may be the ones writing the stories, but without you, those stories go untold.</strong></p> <div class="wp-block-buttons aligncenter"> <div class="wp-block-button is-style-fill"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-background" href="https://checkout.fundjournalism.org/memberform?org_id=mississippitoday&amp;campaign=" style="border-radius:4px;background-color:#ff6c37"><strong>DONATE</strong></a></div> </p></div> <p>This <a target="_blank" href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/03/mississippis-first-nonprofit-newsroom-marks-five-years-in-march/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://mississippitoday.org">Mississippi Today</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/MT_square-thumb.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://mississippitoday.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=995356" style="width:1px;height:1px;"></p> Copy to Clipboard

1