Founded on Accountability in Public Media

From Newsletter to Information Hub

In 2025 Alex Curley founded Semipublic, a Substack newsletter about the public media industry using data-driven analysis. At the beginning, we were focused on station finances and their reliance on federal funding. But as interest in the industry grew — as well as the threat of federal funding cuts — so did the scope of Semipublic. We began tracking and providing unique insights about industry 990s, lobbying disclosures, layoffs, and hiring trends.

Soon, Semipublic was much more than a newsletter: We became a central place for donors, journalists, and public media champions to get real-time data and analysis about what was happening in public media.

Adopt A Station: Turning Data Into Action

After Congress officially rescinded public media's federal funding in July 2025, we put our data to use, creating a website that helped people understand which stations were most at risk and how to donate to them.  

Adopt A Station was born. Since its launch, the website has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors and we have directed hundreds of thousands of dollars to local public media stations. 

This success was made possible by reporting from outlets like The New York Times, Last Week Tonight, Axios, and Vogue. Using our data, we also launched the Public Media Layoffs Tracker and a jobs website just for public media.

Building a Lasting Organization

With the rapid rate of change within public media, we knew that a central, independent organization dedicated to tracking these changes was urgently needed. It was time to turn this innovative project into a lasting organization. In late 2025, we kicked off a GoFundMe campaign whose supporters enabled us to transform Semipublic into a nonprofit. 

We launched in June 2026, dedicated to our mission of building public trust in media through data.

We are grateful to partner with the Tiny News Collective, who supports Semipublic as our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.

What Comes Next

As a growing nonprofit, we will continue to provide independent data, analysis, and tools that help strengthen public understanding of the media landscape. We believe transparency builds trust, and we're committed to providing journalists, funders, researchers, and the public with timely, accessible information. 

None of this would have been possible without the support of our community, and we're excited to build the next chapter together.