Community-supported local news for Chattanooga

Introducing Tennessee Valley Today, a new nonprofit newsroom for Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley, launching in spring 2027.

You might know our team from Chattamatters — a civic platform that operated at The Enterprise Center from 2022 until mid-2026.

After we got such a strong response in the first couple of years of creating Chattamatters, we started to dream bigger — what if we could build an independent news organization, from the ground up, designed just for what Chattanoogans need today?

In 2025, we spent months asking you what you wanted from local news. We hired “listening ambassadors” across Hamilton County to interview their friends and neighbors, we hosted focus groups, and we sent out surveys. We heard from about 400 of you in the process.

Here’s what we hear you want from your local news:

🧭 Content that helps you navigate local systems (schools, elections, healthcare, housing).
✏️ Reporters who ask hard questions and hold leaders accountable.
🎨 Stories that build community, including arts and culture reporting that showcases our local talent and creativity.
💡 Journalism that helps us understand our community’s biggest challenges (jobs, education, housing, environment) and explores solutions.

Now, it's time to make it happen.

We're creating a local newsroom that is smart, in-depth, and accessible to all—journalism that gives you the context you need without assuming you already know how everything works.

We'll keep making the social media videos you love. We'll create events that bring people together (and you'll want to come to). And we'll report on the issues that matter most to Chattanoogans, with a goal of making a meaningful difference in our community.

We also plan to have a little fun along the way.

And we hope you'll be part of it. 🤝

We are thrilled to be launching this newsroom in partnership with Deep South Today, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that exists to strengthen local news across the South. Their shared business operations and resources allow us to focus our energy where it belongs: on local news that serves you.

A different kind of news organization.

Nonprofit news is a growing movement in the U.S., with more than 400 nonprofit newsrooms serving communities nationwide. Cities including Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans have thriving nonprofit newsrooms.

Our newsroom will be supported by a mix of local businesses, sponsorships, philanthropy, and memberships from people like you.

There will never be a paywall. Everyone in Chattanooga should be able to access reliable news and information, regardless of their income or zip code.

We're grateful to have some early philanthropic support behind this launch. But building a community-powered newsroom takes, well, our community.

That's where you come in.

🛠️ Help us build local news for the Tennessee Valley.

We've set an ambitious crowdfunding goal because we have ambitious plans for this newsroom.

We're working to raise $75,000 from people who believe Chattanooga deserves independent, community-focused local news.

Your contribution today will help us build the foundation for this newsroom — supporting the people, reporting and community engagement that will make it possible.

Whether you give $15, $50, $250, or $1,000, your support is a vote of confidence in the kind of local news Chattanoogans deserve.

Will you help make it possible?

Make a contribution today and help us reach our $75,000 goal.

This newsroom is being built for all Chattanoogans—and we want to build it with you.

Who are we?

Mary Helen Montgomery is a local journalist and nonprofit leader, born and raised in Chattanooga. She was previously the creator and editor of Chattamatters, and earlier in her career, a reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press and WUTC. She has won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. She is leading the charge on the ground in Chattanooga and will serve as Tennessee Valley Today’s editor-in-chief.

Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today, Verite News, The Current, and, later in 2026, Arkansas Today. Mississippi Today launched in 2016 and now operates the largest newsroom in the state, and its team won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Verite News opened its doors in 2022 in New Orleans, where it covers inequities facing communities of color. The Current began publishing in 2018 and serves Lafayette and southern Louisiana.

Across the network, Deep South Today operates a centralized business and editorial infrastructure that allows local newsrooms to focus on reporting while they share the back-office capacity that keeps them sustainable at scale. The organization’s reporting has earned recognition at the highest levels of national journalism — including the Pulitzer Prize — and Deep South Today offers that coverage at no cost to other news organizations across the South, including commercial and for-profit outlets, so credible local information reaches the widest possible audience.

With this regional scale and scope, Deep South Today is rebuilding the local information infrastructure of communities across the South. Its newsrooms produce deep, nonpartisan reporting and put it in the hands of the people and leaders who can act on it together.

Help Take Tennessee Valley Today Live!

A new nonprofit newsroom in the Tennessee Valley will launch in spring 2027, and we need your help to make it happen.

Team Members