Draft:Spotlight Delaware


Spotlight Delaware is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that covers public policy and community in the state of Delaware. It is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.

History

Founder, Publisher and CEO Allison Taylor Levine began fundraising for a new nonprofit newsroom to cover the state of Delaware in 2021. Levine and her late husband, Jason, had both worked at The News Journal, the state's largest newspaper, and she was disheartened by the editorial staff reductions by owner Gannett in the 2000s and 2010s.

Originally launched as the Local Journalism Initiative, the nonprofit aimed to be a three-prong solution to the woes of journalism in the First State: creating a collaborative program to bring together existing journalists statewide for joint projects, funding scholarships to train new journalists and creating a statewide newsroom that could feed into existing newspapers that had seen declining local coverage.

For the latter, Levine commissioned a survey of 250 Delawareans on their view of local media and the gaps in current news resources. Her work earned her a spot as a finalist for the 2023 Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation’s Reinventing Delaware award.

That preparation led to an $800,000 seed grant from the Longwood Foundation, a Delaware-based charitable foundation that was founded by the famed du Pont family. The Longwood grant would then spur a $1 million grant from the American Journalism Project.

Spotlight Delaware launched Jan. 1, 2024, with Jacob Owens serving as its editor-in-chief.

In began publishing a weekly email newsletter on Feb. 1, 2024, and launched its official website on March 1, 2024.

Originally publishing just once a week, Spotlight Delaware would expand to publish five days a week by the summer of 2025.

It also launched a sister brand, Spotlight Delaware en Español, that publishes content in Spanish and produces Spanish-language short-form videos.

Coverage Area

Spotlight Delaware provides in-depth coverage of the state government of Delaware, including the Delaware General Assembly and the administration of Governor Matt Meyer. It also covers the state's county governments of New Castle County, Kent County and Sussex County, as well as the municipal governments of all three county seats: Wilmington, Dover and Georgetown.

Coverage Topics

Spotlight Delaware does not cover all news in the state, choosing to focus on a key core of topics and often approaching coverage with a "Day Two" perspective that emphasizes comprehensiveness rather than speed.

  • Government Accountability
  • Public Education
  • Land use / Energy
  • Health Care Policy
  • Immigration / Underrepresented Communities

Notable Stories

Spotlight Delaware has produced several major investigations, most of which depended on significant Freedom of Information Act disclosure and some of which have resulted in proposed legislative fixes.

In October 2024, Spotlight Delaware published a three-part series that examined the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission and its grant-making process for funding meant to address the overdose crisis sparked by opioid epidemic. The reporting, based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen records, found that the funding had little oversight, rushed reviews and went overwhelmingly to preventative info campaigns. Just a few months later, the state overhauled how the fund was managed and how money would be allocated.

Across 2025, Spotlight Delaware published a number of stories that disclosed the conversations being had between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police departments about potential 287(g) agreements at the outset of the second Trump administration. Those stories led one police department to abandon such an agreement, while revealing that many other departments had been contacted. The state legislature would later ban such agreements in Delaware, citing Spotlight Delaware's coverage as contributing to the impetus for the bill. A January 2026 story further disclosed that the Laurel, Delaware, Police Department had shared a list of locations where they had encountered Haitian residents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, drawing concerns from immigration advocates.

In October 2025, Spotlight Delaware published an analysis of charity care spending by the state's largest healthcare system, ChristianaCare, which found that its spending on care for the poor had remained stagnant despite growing profits. In May 2026, Governor Matt Meyer and statehouse legislators proposed reforms that would increase the amount of charity care that nonprofit hospital systems would be required to provide.

Accolades

Spotlight Delaware and its staff have received a number of awards and prestigious fellowships.

Notable Awards

  • Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association News Organization of the Year (Division D) [2025]
  • Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association Rookie of the Year (Nick Stonesifer) [2025]
  • Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association State Government Reporting Best in Show [2024]
  • Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association Election Reporting Best in Show [2024]
  • Delaware Press Association Communicator of the Year (Allison Taylor Levine) [2024]

Notable Fellowships

  • Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship (Jose Ignacio Castañeda Perez)
  • USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism National Fellowship (Nick Stonesifer)

References

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