Houston Landing

In January 2022, in an effort to enhance the region’s journalism ecosystem and answer the community’s calls for additional news coverage, three of Houston’s leading philanthropies—Houston Endowment, Kinder Foundation, and Arnold Ventures—announced plans to launch an independent nonprofit news operation in Houston that will emerge as one of the largest in the country. Kinder Foundation contributed $7.5 million of the more than $20 million pledged before the February 2023 launch of Houston Landing.

Houston Landing, a new digital news platform that will provide essential and independent journalism powered by a team of veteran journalists passionate about accountability reporting and telling stories that reflect the region’s diversity, launched on February 1, 2023. The Landing begins with a newsletter at www.houstonlanding.org and will evolve into a full website later in Spring 2023.

Houston Landing is one of the most well-funded projects in a burgeoning industry of nonprofit news sites nationwide.

The project was born from a two-year research effort, led by the American Journalism Project, which relied on focus groups, community listening sessions, and surveys conducted in four different languages, as well as content analyses of existing coverage to examine local information gaps and news needs.

The organization will be sustained by a combination of philanthropy, memberships, and sponsorship revenue. It will uphold the highest standards of journalism — philanthropic foundations will not have editorial control, review, oversight, or influence over the content being created or distributed.

“I am hopeful that our efforts will produce impartial, high quality journalism that will benefit and inform all Houstonians,” said Rich Kinder, chairman of Kinder Foundation. “This additional newsroom for Houston is supported because of an existing need, and we see this as a way of augmenting the current journalistic industry that informs our city.”

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