Freedom Forum
nonprofit organization
The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) foundation dedicated to fostering First Amendment freedoms for all. The organization advances First Amendment freedoms through programs that include Today's Front Pages, the annual Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference for high school juniors, annual First Amendment Festival, Free Expression Awards and other conferences. Freedom Forum operated the Newseum in Washington, D.C. until 2019, when it closed the museum, sent most artifacts back to their owners, and sold the building to Johns Hopkins University.
The Freedom Forum was founded in 1991 when the Gannett Foundation, started by publisher Frank E. Gannett as a charitable foundation to aid communities where his company had newspapers, sold its name and assets back to Gannett Company for $670 million. Retired Gannett chairman and USA Today newspaper founder Al Neuharth used the proceeds to found the Freedom Forum. Its original mission was to foster "free press, free speech and free spirit."
Neuharth's daughter, Jan A. Neuharth, is chief executive officer and chair of the Freedom Forum.
Today, the organization trains, teaches, and surveys students, educators, journalists and journalism educators, and community leaders to promote free expression, First Amendment awareness and storytelling, and inclusive newsroom culture. The Freedom Forum's vision is "an America where everyone knows, values and defends the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition." The Freedom Forum's affiliate organizations include the Al Neuharth Media Center at the University of South Dakota; the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University of Mississippi; and the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University.
History and current work
Independence Day marks the birth of the Freedom Forum, which grew out of the Frank E. Gannett Newspaper Foundation, established by the newspaper publisher in Rochester, N.Y., in 1935. The foundation supported journalism education, adult-literacy campaigns and social-service causes, particularly those within the mostly small towns served by Gannett's many newspapers and broadcast stations.
The public source identifies “Freedom Forum” as nonprofit organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Freedom, Forum and nonprofit.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5500541. VIAF identifies the subject as 267487618. The Library of Congress control number is nr92007497. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1991 and 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Freedom Forum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.