Alexandria Times converts to nonprofit

The Alexandria Times became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on Sept. 5 with its sale to Alexandria Community Media. The move, states a post, took place almost 20 years to the day since the Times printed its first paper in September 2005. AlexTimes LLC, which had owned and operated the Times since 2009, was dissolved.

“It’s something that had been in the back of our minds for a number of years,” Denise Dunbar, publisher and executive editor of the Times, said in an interview. She said Alexandria Community Media was founded in January and received IRS approval as a 501(c) (3) in May.

Dunbar emphasized that the move was made with an eye to not just surviving as a media organization in an increasingly challenging environment, but to growing and introducing new products and coverage areas.

“… We want to be able to not just muddle through, but to serve the community better, because at this point in time, journalism is a community service,” Dunbar said.

The transition, continues the post, comes as the number of nonprofit news organizations has sharply increased over the past 10 years. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, there are more than 500 nonprofit outlets across the United States as of 2024; there were just 27 representatives at INN’s founding in 2009.

Dunbar said the heyday of the Times’ for-profit model in advertising came in the late 2010s but declined during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While we have an amazing group of dedicated, core advertisers, we didn’t fully rebound from [the pandemic] with our sales, so we realized that to not just survive, but thrive longterm, we were going to need to do something different,” Dunbar said.

Dunbar pointed to newer outlets that have embraced the nonprofit model, like ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Virginia Mercury, that consistently produce high-quality investigative journalism.

Dunbar also said the Times plans to continue generating impactful investigations in partnership with the Alexandria Journalism Project, a private foundation of which Dunbar is the managing trustee. Dunbar was also managing member of AlexTimes LLC but said she will not be chairing the board of Alexandria Community Media.

“While we’re blessed to be in this thriving metropolitan area, the reality is that The Washington Post really focuses more on national and international things, and other local and regional media doesn’t, at this point in time, really do in-depth reporting in Alexandria the way we do,” she noted.