Crashed 'Landing'

Houston, you had a problem at the now-defunct digital press outlet known as the Landing.

In under two years of journalistic orbit, this highly touted endeavor burned through an astounding twenty million dollars of seed money before shutting its doors this spring.

What happened there might just be a clarion call for the nonprofit news model as a whole.

The Approach

Turn back the clock to early 2022. A bold nonprofit news pursuit was reinvigorating professionals nervous about shrinking prospects and legacy paper layoffs. Houston Landing was going to transform the paradigm. The excitement stretched far beyond coastal Texas; it went industrywide.

Thanks to the generosity of a variety of deep-pocketed organizations and years of research by the American Journalism Project, the pieces appeared to be in place. The new 501(c)(3) was equipped to build an online powerhouse. By launch in mid-2023, over thirty employees had been hired... a number that swelled to forty-three by 2025. Salaries for typical staffers hovered around $80-$100k. Management was also handsomely rewarded for their efforts right out of the gate. According to sources, the editor-in-chief (EIC) position was pegged at roughly $250k while the CEO took home a whopping $450k. Add it all up, and those paychecks et al equated to an astronomical $4.5 million in annual compensation alone!

Obviously, those in charge were not afraid to spend. But to what end? The answer to that wasn't quite clear. Were they trying to be an investigative outfit, a space for underrepresented communities, a bullhorn for accountability or a blend of the three? Was their audience only interested in Houston and Harris County content? Or did the Landing have a duty to cover matters from Sugar Land to The Woodlands, too? Most pivotally, could their nascent publication make any sort of dent in a region the funders referred to as already "rich in local media?"

Those unresolved questions weighed heavily on their newsroom. Still, other factors were more directly responsible for the critical failures that brought the entire apparatus crashing down...

The Descent

After a less-than-inspiring 2023, CEO Peter Bhatia recognized changes needed to be made. In short time, EIC Mizanur Rahman was let go. This move was met with a flurry of outrage both internally and across the trade. Media commentary on the situation was slanted squarely in one direction. Bhatia was generally portrayed as an incompetent leader... as was the case when the Washington Post prioritized allusions to footage provided by a "rabble rouser" over the track record of a guy who has piloted his properties to ten Pulitzers.

Following a tumultuous vacancy period, Rahman's role was eventually filled by Manny Garcia. Angel Rodriguez was simultaneously onboarded as managing editor. Logically speaking, choosing men of Hispanic origin better aligned with the Landing's desire to reach individuals who'd consider visiting the Spanish version of their site. [Not to mention being a backdoor method to check the 'marginalized communities' box their board of directors so desperately sought.] But good luck finding any pundit willing to connect those dots for the public.

In the middle of all of this, the rank and file began a union organization blitz. In predictable fashion, Landing writers and photographers (who, as we've established, were already making a nice chunk of change compared to their peers at other institutions) pulled out all the stops. Seemingly every month begat a new heap of drama that tarnished the masthead's reputation. These laptop ladies and lads repeatedly claimed their cushy workplace felt unsafe, engineered a walkout, posted about their employer chilling union activity, and bashed Bhatia regularly.

Talk about dysfunctional! Is it any surprise the Houston Landing's free newsletter subscriber count couldn't crack the fifteen-thousand mark in a megalopolis of eight million humans? As bad as that sounds, it pales in comparison to 2024's paltry $80,000 in member revenue. In other words, this multimillion-dollar experiment mustered fifty-ish cents per month from their average customer.

The writing was on the wall. At least one original funder ceased bankrolling the venture last winter. In April 2025, the announcement was made. A month later, the plug was formally pulled.

Image courtesy of Trac Vu

The Lesson

On the same day that the Houston Landing informed readers of its demise, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) logged the Texas undertaking's obituary. In it, CJR executive editor Sewell Chan indicated that the American Journalism Project was "shut out of key decisions and backed away from regular involvement." *

Kind of odd treatment for the brainchild behind the Landing, no?

Then again, they were the same 'experts' who suggested catering to rural audiences and those facing language and cultural barriers because of a smattering of surveys and focus groups. So maybe it's not the best idea to trust the hunches of people blindly hyping up the nonprofit news model... particularly when they insist the fate of the Landing is "not part of a broader trend."

That's the real takeaway from this debacle. It is a trend. Most of these newfangled operations are floundering just as badly as their traditional counterparts. They're simply able to disguise it better because of their lack of notoriety and the shorter timelines since receiving their capital infusions. With rare exception, these concepts are not self-sustainable. Heck, even the American Journalism Project is reliant on the generosity of bigger fish. Without the Knight Foundations of the world, would the whole system exist? What will happen if the whales develop a distaste for throwing good greenbacks after bad... or when a shinier cause comes along??

There's one other elephant in the newsroom that demands attention: the journalists themselves. They are incapable of shouldering the slightest blame for all of these fiascos. They pretend the shockwaves they generate don't have repercussions. For instance, the Landing crapped out fourteen months after unionization. If impartial arbiters were briefed about the virtually identical fact pattern surrounding a DC rag that went kaput, wouldn't they be tempted to assign causality?

Steering away from the organized labor taboo, how would those neutral parties judge Sewell Chan's firing, which stemmed from staff complaints concerning his own leadership? [For the record, that transpired two days after his CJR byline combed over Bhatia's management style.] My guess is they'd recommend avoiding media management altogether, primarily because nothing good can come from dealing with fragile personnel who have lost touch with reality. Honestly, in what universe would serious folks denounce grant givers for mistakes made at glorified blogs?

This universe, apparently.

One Texas Monthly correspondent had this to say about the Houston Landing fallout, "I 100% blame management and the funders... the funders really did not have a lot of experience it seems in funding journalism." His inane opinion was echoed by Nieman's Sophie Culpepper, who wrote, "ample seed funding can become a liability." What part of the 'gift horse' metaphor don't they understand? These are the type of sheep who bleat nonstop about news deserts despite proving that areas like Moab have exponentially more journalists per capita than Los Angeles. ***

For all these reasons and more, it's a farce to think that nonprofit news will save journalism. Sure, a bunch of digests will survive. A handful might thrive. But just because reporters hope a new template can rescue them from a dying industry doesn't mean it will. As Poynter's Angela Fu put it, "nonprofit status is not a silver bullet. It is not a substitute for a sustainable business model..."

Taking a step back, shouldn't the actual goal be to document news, regardless of tax status? It doesn't take massive grants to do that. There are plenty of us who would gladly do it for free.

Note: the post above may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion.

This site does not render legal advice, nor does it intend to replace legal advice.

*From what I can tell, Chan was the sole stringer to report this key detail, even though many others cited the same contact at AJP.

**That timing is wild, but not nearly as nuts as his employees' behavior. Yet, he was the one jettisoned?!

***The linked map should be retitled 'Cognitive Dissonance.' Savvy Equalizer fans will recognize that, sadly, the news desert crowd will never admit it. By keeping their heads in the clouds, it allows opportunists the chance to play both sides of the coin.

Image courtesy of Erik McLean