A report released by the CCLP, written by Director Geoff Cowan and Senior Fellow David Westphal was referenced in work by The First Amendment Coalition regarding non-profit news models…….
Tag: news
Boot Camp for Journalism Entrepreneurs
Last week, I was an instructor at the News Entrepreneur Boot Camp 2010 at USC. Sponsored by the Knight Digital Media Center, USC Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, theAnnenberg Center for Communication Leadership and Public Policy(CCLP), and the Online Journalism Review, the camp brought together about 20 aspiring entrepreneurs, almost all former journalists, who are trying to create new news/information enterprises in the digital world. If you'd like to watch a video of my session, click here [from the Knight Digital Media Center], or take a look at my power point slides [below]…….
Annual Fellows Luncheon highlights CCLP impact in a variety of fields
Geoffrey Cowan (left) and Warren Bennis at the Annual Fellows Luncheon held at the University of Southern California. Faculty, staff and friends of the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) gathered for the second Annual Fellows Luncheon to honor senior, faculty, research, law, graduate and junior fellows. Following welcoming remarks from managing director Geoffrey Baum and director Geoffrey Cowan, guests and honorees listened as select fellows described projects and accomplishments during the 2009-2010 academic year. Distinguished fellow, noted author and leadership scholar Warren Bennis was the featured guest, offering observations about the rising importance of the communication field…….
Cowan presents research on Public Policy and Funding the News at the Federal Trade Commission
CCLP director Geoffrey Cowan presented the center's latest research on Public Policy and Funding the News as part of a two-day Federal Trade Commission workshop exploring how the Internet has affected journalism, held March 9-10 at the FTC headquarters in Washington, D.C….
New Study Traces History of Government Subsidies for the Media
The New York Times featured research by CCLP Director Geoffrey Cowan and Senior Fellow David Westphal, which found that though American newspapers have relied on government subsidies since this country's founding, that support has dropped sharply in the last four decades. "The knee-jerk reaction tends to be that government can't get involved," Cowan said. "We think it's important for people to understand that the government has been involved from the beginning, and that the subsidies were much larger in the past."……
Two Newspaper Models: Microlocal success, large market challenges
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The latest evidence of financial viability of microlocal news comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal describing the Register-Star, a successful newspaper in Hudson, a town in Columbia County, New York. The formula is a familiar one: "a rich diet of local politics, education news, crime, school sports and people stories." And according to the Journal article, the Register-Star never relied on classified advertising as heavily as the major metro dailies, all of which have seen their classified ad revenue eviscerated by craigslist.com. But that's another blog; let's go back to the editorial side, to……
Newspapers as non-profits? Tax savings but some big downsides
Given the fact that many newspapers seem headed toward nonprofit status anyway, it's perhaps not surprising that someone would try to make it official. Legislation introduced this week by Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland would enable newspapers to establish themselves as tax-exempt nonprofits and qualify for significant expense savings courtesy of Uncle Sam. Under the Cardin measure, they wouldn't have to pay income taxes on income derived from advertising sales. That's a big difference from existing IRS regulations, which customarily extract federal income taxes on advertising revenue derived by nonprofits. (There are a number of exceptions to this, including one……
Watchdog journalism: Hardly a newspaper afterthought
I've just helped judge a journalism contest for my alma mater, McClatchy, and have a couple of observations to report: First, don't believe those who argue that newspapers' investigative reporting is so minimal that it's easily replaced. It isn't small, and if newspapers couldn't do it anymore, the void would be very deep. Second, high-quality watchdog reporting isn't simply the province of big national players doing "secret prisons" or "secret eavesdropping" stories. It's also the heart and soul of newsrooms across the country that keep watch over their communities and regions. I say these things not primarily to brag about……
The public gets a voice in the ‘future of news’
The media revolution has reached a new and important stage: The American public is being let in on the discussion. In the last two weeks' articles in the New York Times and Time Magazine have helped push the question of "whither news media" before a much bigger audience. I say it's about time. Of course, it's not as if the industry's increasingly dire business outlook has been a secret. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings of the Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star Tribune were plenty telling. So was the Detroit newspapers' decision to limit home delivery to three days a……
In financial crisis, the objective story shows its limits
The financial press has been taking it on the chin lately for its coverage of the nation's economic mess. Some of it's well-earned. At least several financial writers have acknowledged they should have asked more questions about the long period of easy credit, soaring asset prices and ever-growing leverage on Wall Street. To my eye, the criticism is overcooked. Even a casual reader of the business press the last few years would have known that big trouble lurked. The two dailies showing up on my doorstep in Washington the last 13 years, the Washington Post and New York Times, regularly……