Can Non-Profit Startups Help Save Journalism?
A Senate hearing held Wednesday on the “Future of Journalism” drudged up the usual animosities (and boring back-and-forth) between content producers and aggregators.
But beyond the bickering, there were a few reasons for optimism.
New non-profit news organizations, grounded in public service journalism, have a promising chance of picking up where traditional newspapers are leaving off. MinnPost.com was mentioned numerous times throughout the hearing – and it represents just one attempt in one city.
The MinnPost.com model for self-sustained community journalism could be duplicated in every American city to compliment existing news organizations and fill the holes left by fading legacy media.
David Simon – former reporter and creator of the HBO show The Wire – talked about 20+ percent profits margins that could have gone toward R&D and additional staff:
I have no faith that if a new revenue stream were established and newspapers began to thrive again that the chain journalism that was not locally based, that was not committed within the communities that it was covering, that was basically a creature of Wall Street and of the profit margin – I have no faith that that new revenue stream would not be cannibalized into CEO salaries and the price per share and it would not be transformed into new reporters, new hires [and] better coverage.
The reason we all pay $50 or $60 a month now for our television, which used to be free, is that the content expanded and became more complex and more sophisticated. And we’re willing to lay out money for something which was free for 30 years. Newspapers actually shrunk prior to the arrival of the Internet and they did so because they were not non-profits. The public interest was not the priority.
Is it time for more public service journalism that isn’t publicly traded?
