A Pulitzer-winning nonprofit is scaling up with a new Arkansas newsroom and a multimillion-dollar video push. Can Deep South Today balance rapid growth with sustainable local journalism?
Six hundred thousand video views in two days. That’s the kind of audience Deep South Today is chasing after a single vertical video outperformed months of investigative work on its Mississippi Today site. The nonprofit is now betting that short-form video and a networked newsroom model can reach the Deep South’s news deserts-and do it at scale.
Deep South Today’s ambitions are clear. With more than 80 staff and a budget over $10 million, the network is preparing to launch Arkansas Today, its fourth newsroom, after bringing in The Garrison Project and expanding into Louisiana with Verite News and The Current. A recent $3 million donation from board chair Andy Lack is set aside for Deep South Today Studios, a centralized video operation meant to boost engagement and test new formats. According to a Nieman Lab report, the Arkansas launch is the next step in the network’s growth strategy.
Deep South Today’s revenue structure is 55% philanthropy, 30% membership, and 15% earned revenue, reflecting its reliance on national grants due to unstable local philanthropy in high-poverty regions.
The challenges are real. Mississippi and Louisiana have the country’s highest poverty rates and some of the lowest household wealth, so local philanthropy is unreliable. CEO Warwick Sabin says national grants are still essential: 55% of revenue comes from philanthropy, 30% from membership, and 15% from earned sources. The network’s model-independent editorial teams sharing business, tech, and payroll-aims to keep costs down while reaching under-resourced areas. The Ford Foundation confirms Deep South Today operates as a nonprofit news network serving the Heartland and is actively planning the Arkansas Today launch.
Arkansas as a test case
Arkansas Today isn’t just another newsroom. Sabin, who spent nearly twenty years in Little Rock, calls the state a blank canvas for new approaches. After two years of research and listening tours, Deep South Today found widespread frustration with local news-especially on housing and politics. A civic information census showed nearly three-quarters of Arkansans want more investigative reporting, but most prefer social media posts and short videos over long articles.
The state’s media landscape is thin. Of 75 counties, four have no news source and 46 have only one, according to Medill’s 2025 State of Local News report. Sabin sees a chance for Arkansas Today to act as a wire service for rural outlets, especially as the Associated Press shifts away from newspapers. The newsroom will start with reporters in Central and Northwest Arkansas, plus an audience editor, video editor, investigative reporter, data journalist, and a New York Times fellow. On the business side, there’s a managing director of sales and a senior director of development and partnerships.
New newsrooms in the Deep South Today network operate as independent editorial teams but share business, technology, and payroll infrastructure-a key scaling model for regions facing local news deficits.
- Nieman Lab
Sabin says the goal is to complement, not compete with, existing Arkansas media. The new editor-in-chief will have the freedom to shape coverage, beats, and workflows, using Deep South Today’s research and relationships as a starting point. If the Arkansas model works, it could be used across the network.
Video as the growth engine
Mississippi Today’s video push started out of frustration. After a major investigation into a state legislator’s finances drew only 50,000 pageviews, the team posted a 90-second video summary on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. The result: twelve times the reach in two days. Since then, monthly video views have reached 5.5 million, and the newsroom averages 300,000 to 400,000 website users each month.
Sabin used these numbers to raise money for expanding video operations, first in Mississippi, then at Verite News. TikTok leads in engagement, followed by Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels. Deep South Today Studios will now centralize resources and push further experimentation, with Andy Lack’s support and a goal to develop a video monetization strategy that isn’t tied to tech platforms’ changing rules.
Ganucheau, now executive editor and chief content officer, says video is reaching younger and more diverse audiences than text ever did. He calls reading TikTok comments a career highlight, seeing real engagement from communities they hadn’t reached before. Still, monetization is a challenge-grants and donations remain the main source of funding for this growth.
Lessons from Mississippi
Mississippi Today’s path from cardboard-box desks to Pulitzer-winning investigations wasn’t straightforward. Ganucheau remembers struggling to find the right staff structure, eventually landing on a teams-based model with dedicated editors for each beat. This improved reporting and made fundraising pitches more concrete: funders could see exactly what their support paid for.
The newsroom’s focus on accountability reporting created a dilemma-how much daily coverage to provide as local newspapers shrank or closed? Ganucheau admits he was slow to adapt, prioritizing deep dives over breaking news even as the state’s media landscape changed. The arrival of Emily Wagster Pettus, a former Associated Press journalist, as editor-in-chief brought a renewed focus on daily coverage.
Deep South Today’s network model is designed to avoid the pitfalls of for-profit chains, where regional editing and story selection can erode local relevance. Ganucheau says story ideas have to come from local newsrooms, not be dictated from above. He believes this is the only way to serve audiences in the Deep South’s fragmented media environment.
Expansion risks and realities
Rapid growth brings risks. Ganucheau and Sabin know that trying to do too much, too quickly could undermine what they’ve built. The organization constantly reassesses staffing and support, aiming to stay lean while filling big gaps in local news. Sabin says nothing is guaranteed-economic and technological shifts could upend the model at any time, so constant adaptation is necessary.
For publishers and newsroom leaders watching Deep South Today, the lesson is that scale and sustainability in local news require ongoing experimentation, operational discipline, and a willingness to leave old habits behind. The network’s approach-testing new models in Arkansas, investing in video, and sharing infrastructure across independent newsrooms-is a response to the collapse of traditional local media. But the reliance on philanthropy and the challenge of making digital engagement pay are still unresolved. As Deep South Today tries to balance expansion and sustainability, its next steps will show whether nonprofit networks can rebuild local journalism at scale, or if the same weaknesses that hurt legacy outlets will appear in new forms.
For a look at how leadership changes can destabilize even established newsrooms, see this report on The Washington Post’s opinion section.
Mississippi Today, Deep South Today’s flagship newsroom, won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2023. The network’s growth has been fueled by major philanthropic support, including a $3 million gift from Andy Lack. Deep South Today’s partnership with The New York Times on investigative projects and its expanding video presence make it one of the most ambitious nonprofit news experiments in the country. As of 2026, the network employs over 80 people and operates with an annual budget above $10 million.
