Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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Use of DataLos Angeles County, California, USA
LA Public Press (LAPP) is an independent nonprofit digital newsroom covering Los Angeles County, founded in 2022 and publishing since early 2023. It was created by Matthew Tinoco — a Los Angeles native and former radio journalist who covered housing insecurity and homelessness for local and national outlets — after he concluded that the structural pressures of mainstream local journalism were incompatible with the community-centered, equity-focused reporting he believed the city most needed. The publication operates without a paywall, accepts no corporate advertising in the traditional sense, and funds its journalism entirely through membership contributions and philanthropic grants. Its editorial mission begins from a specific demographic reality: Los Angeles is the most populous county in the United States, three-quarters of its residents are people of color, and 55% speak a language other than English at home. Legacy media, LAPP argues, has long treated most of those residents as invisible — covering the decisions that affect their lives without centering their voices, needs, or perspectives. The newsroom is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and conforms to its ethical standards, maintaining a firewall between editorial decisions and sources of revenue.
Tinoco began building LA Public Press in late 2020, when he left his position covering housing and homelessness at a local radio station. In a publisher's note he published in March 2023, he described his reasoning with disarming directness: he was exhausted, close to burnout, and could not reconcile his vision of journalism with the daily operational reality of institutional media. "There was always a press conference to cover or a politician's reaction-quote to harvest," he wrote, "vacuuming up any space in my day to work on the deeper stuff." He had spent years interviewing people living outside or in increasingly precarious housing situations, and found that the daily rhythms of mainstream journalism consistently prevented him from doing the reporting those communities deserved. LA Public Press was his answer: a newsroom built from the ground up around the communities it intended to serve, rather than retrofitted to serve them within a structure designed for a different purpose.
The organization was formally incorporated in 2022 and began publishing original journalism in early 2023. Within its first 14 months, the newsroom had published more than 200 pieces of original journalism, established a pattern of being credited with "first reported by LA Public Press" by other Los Angeles outlets, and co-hosted a City Council candidate forum with Boyle Heights Beat — a youth-run community newsroom — using a community safety team rather than police presence, an operational choice that reflected the publication's values as directly as its journalism does. A full-time staff of eight journalists, all under 35, covers the county from bases across it; two part-time employees and several dozen contributing writers have extended the reach. The newsroom made national journalism industry news with its decision to pay every full-time staff member the same annual salary of $84,000 — a deliberate flattening of the hierarchical pay structures common in most newsrooms, designed to reflect the publication's stated values of equity in practice as well as in editorial mission.
LAPP's core coverage beats are housing affordability and tenant rights, homelessness, immigration enforcement and immigrant communities, environmental justice, transportation, public safety, and local government accountability. The framing is explicitly service journalism: the goal is not only to inform readers about what is happening but to equip them to act — to provide the specific, actionable information about their rights, available resources, and civic options that makes the difference between passive awareness and engaged participation. A bilingual tenant's rights zine, "How to Get Your Landlord to Do Their Job," distributed through the Los Angeles Public Library system and developed from a survey of hundreds of LA residents, captures this approach in a tangible form: original research translated into a practical community resource, distributed through channels that reach residents who may not encounter the publication digitally.
The publication has also demonstrated a capacity for original investigative and data-driven journalism that breaks new ground for coverage of its specific communities. Work on the "substantial remodel" eviction loophole — through which landlords have used a legal technicality to displace tenants before renting renovated units at market rate — generated significant coverage from other outlets and, according to the publication's own tracking, was cited in public meetings and redistributed by community organizations working on housing advocacy. Coverage of the Eaton fire's displacement of Altadena residents and the city's post-disaster response reached the Columbia Journalism Review. The publication's first audio documentary, "Smogland Radio," covered belonging and displacement in Los Angeles through a narrative audio format distributed via standard podcast platforms.
LAPP is a demonstrated practitioner of the collaborative model increasingly common among Los Angeles nonprofit newsrooms. Its coverage of immigration enforcement in 2025–26 — produced as a coalition with Capital B, CALÓ News, LA Taco, Capital and Main, and Q Voice News — documented what happens on the ground when communities mobilize to resist ICE operations, a story that required the specific credibility, source relationships, and community trust of six different organizations working simultaneously across multiple communities. The Voting Rights Act coverage produced with Capital and Main and published ahead of the spring 2026 elections reflected similar collaborative architecture. These partnerships allow LAPP to punch significantly above its staff size on major stories while maintaining the community accountability that distinguishes it from larger general-interest outlets.
LA Public Press discloses all donors and organizations that have given $5,000 or more, in keeping with the transparency standards of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Major funders as of the most recent disclosure include the Tucker Family, the Listening Post Collective, the Miami Foundation, the California Community Foundation, LION Publishers, the Wells Fargo Foundation, the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Weingart Foundation, the Leonetti/O'Connell Family Foundation, the Red Leaf Family Foundation, the International Women's Media Foundation, Social Justice Partners Los Angeles, the Ceres Foundation, and the Campbell Foundation. The organization explicitly maintains editorial independence from all funders: it states that acceptance of financial support does not constitute endorsement of donors, that it maintains a firewall between coverage decisions and revenue sources, and that it will cede no editorial control as a condition of any gift or grant.
The newsroom is governed by a board of directors. Following a 2025 expansion, the board includes Sue Cross (former CEO of the Associated Press Media Editors and a veteran of AP and Institute for Nonprofit News), Lorie Hearn (investigative journalist and nonprofit media executive, founder of inewsource in San Diego), and Julie Patel Liss, alongside founding board members Michelle Faust-Raghavan and Isaac Tucker. Will Litton serves as Director of Development, bringing more than 15 years of senior nonprofit advancement experience and having helped develop over $100 million in revenue for mission-driven Los Angeles organizations. Gabe Schneider serves as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Growth.
All LA Public Press journalism is freely available without paywall at lapublicpress.org. A weekly newsletter delivering every story along with exclusive updates is available by subscription at lapublicpress.org/newsletter. Freelance journalists and contributors can pitch stories through the pitch form at lapublicpress.org/pitch. Reader membership — monthly financial contributions at any level — is the publication's primary source of direct reader revenue and is described as essential to its sustainability. Membership and donation information is at lapublicpress.org/donate. LAPP's journalism is available for republication by other outlets; interested organizations can contact the newsroom through the website.
LA Public Press (LAPP)
Los Angeles County, California, USA
Independent nonprofit · Member of Institute for Nonprofit News
Founder and Publisher: Matthew Tinoco
Board: Sue Cross · Lorie Hearn · Julie Patel Liss · Michelle Faust-Raghavan · Isaac Tucker
Director of Development: Will Litton | Director of Strategic Initiatives: Gabe Schneider
Website: lapublicpress.org | Newsletter: lapublicpress.org/newsletter
Pitch: lapublicpress.org/pitch | Donate: lapublicpress.org/donate
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