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Outlet profile

State Affairs Pro

U.S. nonpartisan / center (procedural statehouse focus)

Owned byState Affairs, Inc., a venture-backed media and policy-intelligence company co-founded by Evan Burns (CEO) and Jamie Seltzer (VC, LightShed Ventures); the company's network also includes the State House News Service (Massachusetts) and Gongwer News Service (Michigan and Ohio)
FundingVenture capital — Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund backed a seed round in 2021; ongoing subscription revenue from lobbyists, government affairs professionals, and policymakers via the pro.stateaffairs.com platform
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

State Affairs was founded in 2020 by Evan Burns, a media entrepreneur from Jasper, Indiana, and Jamie Seltzer, a venture capitalist and co-owner of the Philadelphia Union MLS club. Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund provided seed capital in June 2021, positioning the company as a technology-enabled statehouse newsgathering operation aimed at policy insiders. It expanded through acquisitions: Howey Politics Indiana was purchased in October 2022, and the Massachusetts-based State House News Service was later brought into its network. In early 2026, Gongwer News Service — founded in 1906 by former Cleveland Plain Dealer statehouse correspondent Charles S. Gongwer and one of the oldest continuous statehouse news services in the country — aligned with State Affairs, significantly deepening its Midwest coverage in Michigan and Ohio. Alison Bethel, a veteran journalist formerly with The Boston Globe and The Detroit News and the first woman to lead the International Press Institute, serves as Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer across the network. The outlet positions itself as nonpartisan, with reporters assigned to cover policy outcomes rather than political sides and no editorial endorsement section. As of mid-2026, no major independent bias-rating organization such as AllSides or Ad Fontes Media has published a rating for State Affairs Pro.

Sources

  1. About | State Affairs
  2. Non-Partisan News | State Affairs Pro
  3. News Service Ownership Aligning With State Affairs | State House News
  4. Gongwer News Service Aligns With State Affairs
  5. Howey Politics sold to digital news startup State Affairs – Inside INdiana Business
  6. Alison Bethel tells us about State Affairs – What Works
  7. State Affairs | Khosla Ventures Job Board
  8. State Affairs Funding Rounds & Investors – Wellfound
  9. The Gongwer News Service Century

Profile compiled 2026-07-04; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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