Outlet profile

Navajo Times

Native American (Navajo Nation) community press; locally focused, no clear U.S. left-right alignment

Owned byNavajo Times Publishing Company, Inc., a for-profit corporation created by the Navajo Nation Council in 2003. It belongs to the Navajo Nation and is overseen by a five-member board of Navajo citizens.

FundingMainly advertising, subscriptions and newsstand sales. It has operated with financial independence from the tribal government since about 2004. The tribal government started it and was once its publisher.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The Navajo Times began in 1959 as a newsletter of the Navajo Tribal Council and became a newspaper in 1960. It became a weekly in 1961 and was labeled a "Tribal Enterprise." Because the tribal government ran it, leaders felt they could decide what it printed. In 1987 the government shut it down and fired its staff, a well-known press-freedom dispute in Indian Country. In 2003 the Tribal Council voted 66 to 1 to create the Navajo Times Publishing Company to give the paper more independence, and it became financially independent in 2004. Today it is a for-profit corporation held on behalf of the Navajo people, with a Navajo-citizen board, and it also runs a news website. Its coverage focuses on tribal politics, elections, health, energy, water, land and local events. In 2026 it has covered Trump administration actions that touch the Navajo Nation, including the review of Chaco Canyon protections, a proposal to remove race and ethnicity questions from the 2030 census, and the moving of Department of Education programs. It often quotes Navajo leaders who worry about the effects on Native communities. Its perspective is Navajo community-centered, and it does not follow a clear national partisan line.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-10-27; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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