A feature piece from our Spring 2026 issue of the Lancaster Thriving Publication.
David Greene hasn’t lived in Lancaster County for more than 30 years. But his experience of growing up and going to high school here inspired him to return to help the newspaper – and community – he remembers so fondly.
“My mom and I felt very quickly welcomed here. I never took that for granted. It really meant something,” said Greene, 49, who was in junior high school when he moved to Lancaster with his mom when she got a job as a psychology professor at Franklin & Marshall College.
Greene lives in Los Angeles now but has been visiting Lancaster more than usual lately. When he’s here, he’s been leading an effort to forge a new, financially sustainable model for LNP | LancasterOnline. Greene is interim publisher and board chair of the nonprofit that now owns the media company where he once interned as a college student.
In January, his nonprofit, Always Lancaster, was gifted LNP | LancasterOnline by Pennon, the WITF parent company that itself was given the newspaper in 2023 by the Steinman family, its longtime owners.
As a nonprofit, Always Lancaster will solicit donations to complement revenue from subscribers and advertisers, creating what Greene describes as a “three-legged stool” that can support what is otherwise a broken business model for newspapers.
Greene, who maintained some strong ties to Lancaster, joined LNP’s board of directors when it was given to WITF by the Steinmans. He also became a board member then of the Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement, the Steinman-funded group that was supporting the new venture.
But within a couple years, Greene saw early optimism of that partnership giving way to some grim financial reality.
“Suddenly, we started talking about survival,” said Greene, recalling that options included a radical restructuring with severe job losses, bankruptcy or a sale of LNP. “That’s when we started to talk and see if there was another way.”
In his new role leading that other way, Greene is pitching the idea that a community that feels like it has a stake in a local newspaper will support it with donations.
Lancaster County is a special place with the right ingredients to support a local nonprofit news source, Greene says. He lists four unique qualities that make the move to nonprofit news possible here:
- A strong spirit of philanthropy, exemplified by annual community fundraising events such as ExtraGive and FaithfulGive.
- A deep sense of civic engagement and pride.
- The existence of respected, high-quality journalism.
- An owner (Pennon) of a news organization that was willing to gift the assets to the nonprofit (Always Lancaster). Always Lancaster is doing business as LNP Media Group, which publishes LNP | LancasterOnline, the Lititz Record, and the Ephrata Review.
LNP | LancasterOnline can thrive, Greene says, if it continues delivering local news and information while also becoming a hub of civic discourse where people can feel connected, overcome disagreements and solve problems together.
Civic discourse also means LNP | LancasterOnline listens to feedback.
LNP | LancasterOnline is actively soliciting feedback through Community Listening Events to be held all around the county. The first one was held on March 3rd in Landisville. The full schedule can be found on EventBrite: Lanc.news/LNP-Listening. People are asked to sign up for no more than one event so that as many different voices as possible can be heard.
Another initiative to embed community feedback into the fabric of LNP | LancasterOnline will be the creation of a Community Advisory Board.
These are early days for this new nonprofit and the path forward is still being charted. If you have questions or would like to get involved, please email info@alwayslancaster.org.
And, please consider supporting local journalism for your community by donating here. It is only through community involvement and funding that we can collectively save Lancaster County from becoming a news desert.
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