(Note: The following are notes made for remarks at Thursday’s conference at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy on “How to Make Money in News.” I spoke briefly about foundation-funded journalism and made a special note about the emerging non-news organizations.)
I’m going to talk briefly about another of the missions of Geoff Cowan’s center (the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy) and of USC Annenberg and that is the nonprofit new-media sector, including operations financed by foundations and other philanthropy. I also want to mention an emerging model that’s worth watching: the non-news organizations.
These days none of us can avoid seeing how fast foundation-funded journalism is growing: Just in the last week there have been grant announcements from MacArthur for the Chicago News Co-Op; from the Bullitt Foundation for InvestigateWest; and, this announcement that made us would-be grantees perk up, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for Crosscut Seattle. (Later note: Bob Giles added the Hechinger Institute’s new role in education reporting.)
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This may not exactly be the average week for announcements like this, but it’s not far off. Whatever you think about this phenomenon, the fact is there is quite striking growth here, and it’s probably going to continue. The news coverage we became accustomed to is shrinking rapidly, and there’s a growing feeling that somebody needs to do something.
So we’re seeing: foundations and philanthropists supporting community news sites, investigative reporting sites, topical news sites and more.
We’re also seeing foundations create news organizations in their area of interest: Kaiser Health News, for example, and the new health policy site funded at USC by the California Health Care Foundation.
And here’s the model we think is just getting going: journalism created by non-news organizations:
You might say universities are an example of that, as the Downie/Schudson paper recommended last week. At the place I know best, USC, there are multiple examples — a general-purpose online news site; two micro local initiatives, in South LA and East LA; and Geoff is exploring a USC role in Los Angeles arts journalism.
But look at some other examples in the Southwest:
— The Goldwater Institute in Phoenix and its hiring of an investigative reporter.
— Two new sites in Southern California — Voice of Orange County and Accountable California, both funded by labor unions.
All three of these sites, interestingly, are writing about the same thing — waste, fraud and abuse by the government. Who would have thought, a conservative think tank and labor unions, comrades in journalism?
And speaking of government, it’s going to play, too. A member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has hired a former LA Times city editor to write news stories about county government because, he says, nobody else is doing it.
Is this stuff journalism? Are these people journalists?
We’ve been debating lately about whether Fox News does legitimate journalism. I suspect we’ve only begun to start answering such questions.
As for Bill Mitchell’s question about "Who Will Pay for the News," one answer is foundations and philanthropists, but another is businesses, trade associations, labor unions and yes government. And unlike some, these institutions have money!