What if for-profit media relied on philanthropy?
I'm working on a blog for OJR that explores whether newspapers, local broadcasters and other for-profit media might someday begin relying on philanthropy to subsidize their declining reporting resources. This idea might sound a little far-fetched -- why would a contributor give money to an organization that's already turning a profit? But there's an answer to this: It's to pay for coverage that otherwise wouldn't happen.
I started wondering about this last week when the Knight Foundation announced it was giving $5 million to 21 community foundations, who in turn would add their own money (up to $12 million) to support news coverage by nonprofits in their hometowns. This was the first round of a five-year program by Knight, which is journalism's biggest funder, so this idea could really catch on. I wrote about the grant announcement last week in OJR.
What struck me is that many of the funded projects sounded like things that would be right at the heart of a newspaper's mission statement. So what might happen if a newspaper decided it might want to get in on this action? Might foundation money and other kinds of philanthropy be a way to support critical reporting that otherwise might disappear from the newspaper?
My initial reporting suggests that there would be a lot of hurdles to overcome. Foundations face costly and time-consuming red tape when giving to for-profits; and newspapers would have potential ethical issues in accepting money from people and groups that have agendas. But, and this surprised me, I found quite striking receptivity to the idea from both funders and journalists.
Any reaction about this idea? Do you know of any for-profits that are already accepting philanthropy?
About Me
- DAVID WESTPHAL
- Executive in residence at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. I'm also a senior fellow at the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, and affiliated with the Knight Digital Media Center, both at USC.
3 comments:
I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think we are naive to assume that it wouldn't also come with many problems. Organizations that are underwritten by corporate philanthropy are often at the whims of donors- consider the LACMA and Broad, for example, or the way that scholarships get endowed and then plucked away at schools. I don't think an NPR or APM model of donations is sustainable either, as they too realize that their demographic is aging and their revenue stream will eventually dry out.
Three words: conflict of interest.
And even if a newspaper is covering a topic that really does need to be covered and there is no bias whatsoever, if that topic relates in any way to the philanthropist organization that is financially supporting that newspaper, the conflict of interest and perception of bias are easy to assume. And that just doesn't look good.
I agree with both the criticisms above. And yet I'm finding editors are open to this idea -- particularly when it comes to investigative reporting. When your newspaper is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, as Nancy Barnes' newspaper is in Minneapolis, the questions get starker, and the unthinkable gets thinkable.
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