Why Le Monde built a separate brand for reader-generated journalism: “We needed to be free to experiment” http://tr.im/CkKR »
Gorgeous @blprnt visualization of when people say “Good morning” on Twitter (for us, around 9 a.m. EST) http://tr.im/CjD9 »
Nick Denton on paying for the Balloon Boy story: “A story is a story. We’re not squeamish about the means” http://tr.im/CiED »
Big advertising revenue boom this year in…office lobbies? http://tr.im/Cir6 »
The Len Downie/Michael Schudson report on reconstructing journalism joins the growing consensus that journalism — the kind of accountability, watchdog and investigative reporting that helps provide checks and balances in a democracy — has become a public good in the digital age. We all need it, but few are willing to pay for it in the form of a subscription.
So what to do about it? Among other things, they recommend creating a national “Fund for Local News” with fees collected by the Federal Communications Commission. I’m not so high on this idea — I’m of the school of thought that government funding can’t help but come loaded with potential for hidden political agendas and other challenges to transparency.
But they also call for clearer IRS definitions for “new or existing news organizations,” which they say will build a more robust nonprofit sector in journalism. I’m all for this. But here’s the question: What exactly is a nonprofit news organization? And who’s going to tell the NRA — the National Rifle Association or the National Restaurant Association, take your pick — that their newsletter doesn’t qualify?
This is an issue of journalistic standards, but goes quickly to the question of nonprofit governance. More and more nonprofits, both new and old, are doing journalism. Some of it is really good, and we know it when we see it. But putting a definition into the IRS code could be highly problematic.
The solution, I think, is for the broader nonprofit community to address this issue in a proactive way. Even if it can’t produce a bulletproof definition, it can identify practices and procedures that create a fairly bright line between journalism and advocacy.
At first glance, this might seem like a call to navel-gazing. But the lack of a definition is already creating problems in areas like prize eligibilty and, more importantly, in deciding who gets access to places like the Capitol and the White House. Finding a solution sooner than later will help the nonprofit sector get past questions of legitimacy and credibility and get on to doing the kind of journalism that is most endangered in the digitial age.
Having spent more than three years doing dissertation research on the changing journalistic ecosystem in Philadelphia, I was excited to see Technically Philly get a great write up last week. And having spent the past six months as a research assistant with the Downie-Schudson report on reconstructing American journalism, I see a connection between Technically Philly, CUNY’s New Business Models For News, and the report. The nub of the connection has to do with building stronger news networks and deciding on the network ties we allow ourselves to utilize when we build them.
The ultimate story of my dissertation research — as much as I didn’t want it to be — had to do with the unraveling of a once-dominant Philadelphia news network, Philadelphia Media Holdings (a.k.a. the newspapers — see the latest on their bankruptcy here), and the simultaneous failure to build new local news networks in the city. While we often hear a lot about news-network successes, we don’t here as much about their fragility and the obstacles that lie in the way of building them. (See this tweet by Jay Rosen about the “lifecycle of hyper-local” for another example.)
Watching the emerging news void in Philadelphia, which grew despite many valiant attempts to fill it, was a sobering lesson for me on the promise and limits of the new networked news ecology. Keep reading »
We are not lacking deep lamentations and grand plans for the future of journalism (clever commentary is abundant as well). New additions to this canon appear weekly, and many have a reactionary bent with lots of chest thumping and hand wringing. It’s often a bit much — which is why the appearance of a long-view, measured report is a welcome palate cleanser.
“The Reconstruction of American Journalism” (download PDF here) sets its sights wholly on local news. It’s built on the thesis that the accountability journalism found in local newspapers offers the most value to communities, and the most risk if it disappears.
Beyond the focus on local newspaper coverage, the report is also notable for what it largely ignores: co-authors Leonard Downie, Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Michael Schudson, Columbia University professor and MacArthur fellow, offer little significant discussion on advertising, subscriptions, or for-profit models. Paywalls and micropayments get only passing mentions. The report’s six closing recommendations are instead built around private donations, foundation grants, and the repositioning of academic and government systems. Seeing as most journalism is still funded by market-driven models, this is an interesting comment-by-omission.
C.W. Anderson, research assistant on the report and a contributor to this site, told me the report’s intent is to find solutions that can maintain the previous model and its accompanying accountability journalism.
“There is no market solution obvious right now that will provide the same level of subsidy to journalism that existed under the monopoly paper model,” Anderson said. “So on some level, all the back and forth about new business models is fighting over table scraps. And so that allowed us to quickly return to the question of what we should do given actually existing cases of market failure.”
I spent a couple hours parsing the report’s high points and jotting down observations (see below). As is always the case with this kind of thing, a cursory overview is no substitute for your own in-depth read. Keep reading »
Our friend Marion Fremont-Smith at the Harvard Kennedy School has just issued an important paper on the nonprofit model in journalism. If you’re part of a news organization that is considering switching to nonprofit status, it’s definitely worth a read.
While there are plenty of news organizations operating as nonprofits, there have been looming questions around the ability of a for-profit newspaper to switch to 501(c)(3) status. There are newspapers that operate without traditional corporate ownership (like The St. Petersburg Times, owned by the Poynter Institute, or the Christian Science Monitor, owned by the church), but there have been questions about how readily an established news organization could make the switch to nonprofit status directly.
I’ve tried to understand this debate in the past, and I’ve gotten tied in knots trying to comprehend the various IRS rulings and legislative details that govern nonprofit status. (A bill introduced in March would clarify some disputes and change a few rules, but it hasn’t made much progress.) So I’m grateful to Marion for doing that work for us. Her conclusion:
…review of the law and these [IRS] rulings strongly suggests that, under existing conditions, a nonprofit newspaper could qualify for tax exemption without the need for legislation by Congress or waiting for the IRS to issue new guidelines.
This paper argues that the current economic situation of the newspaper industry warrants reconsideration of these rulings. To this end, the paper contains a description of the current laws under which nonprofit organizations can qualify for tax exemption, with special attention to the specific rulings dealing with publishing. It examines the manner in which existing rulings could be interpreted to permit daily newspapers to qualify for exemption and become eligible to receive contributions and grants from the general public.
Here’s the PDF, which I’ve also embedded below. Keep reading »
You’d think selling subscriptions within iPhone applications would appeal to media companies: It’s a model that promises recurring revenue streams, and it matches up nicely with the way they’ve always done business in print. But surprisingly few have jumped at the opportunity; most news organizations seem to be sticking with traditional one-off apps — some paid, most not.
More surprising still is that McSweeney’s — the independent book/periodical publisher best known for its association with Dave Eggers and a predisposition toward narrow columns of text — is one of the first publishing-centric companies to capitalize on the possibilities that came with the most recent iPhone software update, including in-app purchasing and push notification. Apparently, the road to the future has aesthetic sensibilities — and maybe some lessons for news companies. Keep reading »
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