How nonprofit newsrooms are exploited by funders — and their own sense of calling
RQ1, Seth Lewis, Nick Mathews:
Welcome to another edition of RQ1! For those who are new, we are Mark Coddington, Seth Lewis, Tamar Wilner, and Nick Mathews — four former journalists turned academics, now teaching and researching at Washington and Lee University (Mark), the University of Virginia (Seth), the University of Kansas (Tamar), and the University of Missouri (Nick). This edition was written by Seth and Nick.
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Over the past decade, nonprofit news has been seen as one of the bright spots in U.S. journalism — an emblem of hope for the future amid a landscape littered with failures and financial struggles.
With an average of 10 local newspapers closing each month, joining the thousands that have met that fate already, conditions out there are grim. Largely in response, more than 6,000 nonprofit foundations have made major investments in local news initiatives, totaling some half a billion dollars or more in direct funding for journalism. As a result, the number of U.S. nonprofit news organizations has been growing by double-digit percentages year-over-year, with an estimated 550 such organizations in operation.
It’s fair to question whether this is sustainable. But, in the meantime at least, what’s not to like about this arrangement — this major push to subsidize local journalism at a time when the for-profit model for it is rapidly vanishing?
