The Montana Free Press (MFP) is a non-profit news organization based in Helena, Montana that was one of five partners with the Associated Press (AP) to beef up local news coverage in advance of the 2024 elections. Left-of-center advocacy groups and Democratic mega-donors fund the AP’s partners. ¹

MFP is an independent news source that collaborates with other news outlets to report stories on the state of Montana. MFP claims to move society toward justice and equity by studying bureaucratic processes, seeking out dark corners of major institutions, digging deep into data and documents, and holding power accountable to the people. ²

Founding and History

Montana Free Press was founded on February 26, 2016, by a group of five board members and close advisers in the basement of the Missoula Public Library. The organization’s founder, John S. Adams, previously the capital bureau chief of the Great Falls Tribune, established MFP as Montana’s first nonprofit digital-first statehouse news organization. Adams had departed from the Tribune due to a      restructuring by Gannett Co. Around the same time, several of Montana’s leading political journalists were also laid off by another media chain. ³

Adams was also previously the director of communications for Clean Wisconsin, a left-of-center nonprofit that claims to protect and preserve Wisconsin’s clean water, air, and natural heritage. ⁴

Motivated by a decline in commercial print journalism and inspired by nonprofit models like ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, Adams aimed to provide Montanans with independent, objective journalism. ⁵ He launched his own nonprofit news outlet, the Montana Free Press, operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the left-leaning Institute for Nonprofit News. Adams serves as the chair of MFP’s board, which is comprised of Democratic and Republican state senators, and a former investigative reporter who is now a licensed private investigator. ⁶

Funding

The Montana Free Press has secured grants from left-of-center organizations such as the American Journalism Project (AJP), megadonor philanthropists Simon and Trench Coxe, and Arnold Ventures. Major donors from 2018 to 2023 include a $65,000 and $100,000 grant from the Daylight Foundation for the years 2018 and 2019, a $875,000 grant from the AJP in 2020, a $59,395.05 and $50,000 grant from Simone and Tench Coxe in 2021 and 2022, and a $150,000 grant by Arnold Ventures in 2023. ⁷

In 2023, the Schwab Charitable Fund awarded a $90,275 grant to MFP and in 2022 the Wilburforce Foundation provided a $50,000 grant for “environmental” purposes. ⁸

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2. Montana Free Press. “About MTFP.” Montana Free Press. Accessed July 31, 2024. https://montanafreepress.org/about-mtfp/.
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