New: a ‘how-to’ handbook for registering your newsroom as a charity
Download the Charitable Journalism Project's free guide for independent newsrooms
By Eliz Mizon / Wednesday August 6, 2025
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Guest post from Eliz Mizon, Project Manager at the Charitable Journalism Project.
Download the CJP handbook for registering a local newsroom as a charity
For the last several years, organisations such as the Media Reform Coalition have been grafting behind the scenes to promote equity and sustainability for independent UK public interest journalism. Throughout the industry, we’ve seen great examples of success: new products, formats, and an expansion of our understanding of how to serve and connect with the public.
But in terms of legislation, things move slowly. With each passing government inquiry and select committee report, recommendations to stimulate sustainability come and go – a key one, from the Cairncross Review, being to add the ‘advancement of public-interest journalism’ to the list of charitable purposes in the Charities Act. This would, legally, make public-interest journalism charitable in its own right, and create a straightforward path to newsrooms becoming charities and unlocking new sources of grant funding.
We’ve not managed to make that happen. Nevertheless, at the Charitable Journalism Project (CJP) we recently made a breakthrough: in 2024, our group of journalists, advocates, academics and lawyers guided the first local UK news outlet, The Guildford Dragon News, to successful registration as a charity. It was a landmark moment that The Guardian described as a “glimmer of hope” for the sector.
Since then, we’ve been working on a new product of our own. Today we’re launching a handbook, completely free for all independent UK newsrooms, that distils the lessons learned from that process, complete with legal templates and practical advice developed in collaboration with our charity law experts Stone King LLP.
A clearer, cheaper and more achievable process
Why would a newsroom consider charitable status? For many smaller newsrooms, it opens doors to funding that simply isn’t available otherwise – for example grants, donations, and tax relief. But navigating the Charity Commission can be daunting, especially without legal support. That’s why we’re publishing this handbook as a free resource: to make the process clearer, cheaper, and more achievable. We’ve already heard from the Bylines Network and Positive Futures Magazine that they’ll be using it to pursue charity status this year.
Of course, not every outlet will be eligible – only independent, and usually local, newsrooms focused on public interest journalism will pass the Charity Commission’s strict standards tests, and to help you think about your own eligibility you can find a definition of public interest journalism on the CJP website.
“This handbook is a vital step forward for journalism in the UK,” says Dr. Martin Moore of the CJP. “By sharing our learnings and legal insights, we hope to empower more newsrooms to explore charitable status as a sustainable path forward.”
We hope the handbook provides not only a demystification of the process for individual newsrooms, but also a precedent that highlights the cruciality of protecting and supporting public interest journalism systemically.
You can take a look, by downloading it directly from our website. Even if you’re just curious, our handbook is a great place to start.
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