Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Media United States

Can Philanthropy Save Local Newspapers? (washingtonpost.com) 122

70 million Americans live in a county without a newspaper, according to a 2022 report cited in this editorial by the Washington Post's editorial board"

Who's to blame? The internet, mostly. Whereas deep-pocketed advertisers formerly relied on newspapers to reach their customers, they took to the audience-targeting capabilities of Facebook or Google. Web-based marketplaces also siphoned newspapers' once-robust revenue from classified ads.
But the Post emphasizes one positive new development: "a large pile of cash." In an initiative announced this month, 22 donor organizations, including the Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, are teaming up to provide more than $500 million to boost local news over five years — an undertaking called Press Forward... The injection of more than a half-billion dollars is sure to help the quest for a durable and replicable business model.

The even bigger imperative, however, is to elevate local news on the philanthropic food chain so that national and hometown funders prioritize this pivotal American institution. Failure on this front places more pressure on public policy solutions, and government activism mixes poorly with independent journalism...

One of the goals for Press Forward, accordingly, is building out the infrastructure — "from legal support to membership programs" — relied upon by local news providers to deliver their product. Jim Brady, vice president of journalism at the Knight Foundation, says it's easier than ever for news entrepreneurs to launch a local site because they can plug into existing technologies hammered out by their predecessors — and there's more development work still to fund on this front.

So where to go from here? Local philanthropic interests across the country could take a cue from the Press Forward partners and invest in the news organizations down the street.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Can Philanthropy Save Local Newspapers?

Comments Filter:
  • So? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 )

    70 million Americans live in a county without a newspaper

    .
    And almost all of them live without access to a hackney rental service (outside Amish societies, of course).

    We'll have to find something else to wrap our fish in.

    • Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @07:17AM (#63872671)
      How little you understand of how functioning democracies depend on local news. See my comments below: https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
      • One news outless less that tells its readers bullshit is sure gonna make a difference.

        You might not have noticed it, but we now have something we call the internet where, at least in theory, anyone can far easier and with much less input of money and time broadcast information. And if anyone wants to listen, they can do that. Same as a newspaper, just way easier to set up and use.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          And the users will gravitate towards only the "news" that confirms what they already think. Local newspapers are more varied. So in effect, the intertubes just make Americans dumber.

          • How is that different than the same yellow journalism on inked dead trees?

            You know the term yellow journalism pre dates the internet by at least a few years, right?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            This!

            For all the talk about disinformation and such, the real issue that should be more concerning is the mainstream mas-market press. Don't care what your politics are look at the David Portnoy one bite pizza sponsorship thing this past weekend. The Wapo basically decided to smear him, started their own roomers and than went muck racking dredging up decades old complaints that were not news because they were already well covered in the news at the time, and there was no 'new' facts relevant to their so ca

            • >Understand who the fascists are here people!

              I feel it might be time to coin a new term or resurrect an old one.

              While there are a lot of similarities in outcome, they're not REALLY fascists. It's a good old fashioned greedy sociopaths doing whatever they can to accrue more wealth and control.

              We've had them as long as we've had societies... there's just a lot more of us to be used and abused now, and the world's interconnected enough to make it possible to do so.

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by sfcat ( 872532 )
                Authoritarians, that's the word you are looking for.
                • That comes with a lot of implied meaning that I don't think applies. It's another one of those "hard to tell the difference, the same boot ends up on your neck anyway" kind of things - but the underlying motive is (slightly) different.

            • Found the foxwatcher! Uncritically repeating what they're told and trying to defend an admitted garbage person.

              Yeah, we understand perfectly well who the fascists are.

              Oh, don't like that? It's just a joke, bruh./s

          • You honestly think that's different with newspapers? Really? People will do the same with newspapers they do with online media: Consume the ones that match their world view. And there is hardly any shortage of that.

            And even if your IQ is below room temperature, do not worry, for there are newspapers that are better characterized as "picture books for adults". Large, large pictures with very, very little text that avoids those complicated three-syllable words entirely.

          • And the users will gravitate towards only the "news" that confirms what they already think. Local newspapers are more varied. So in effect, the intertubes just make Americans dumber.

            And this is why public education is being defunded, critical thinking is the enemy of authoritarians of all walks. When you are taught from a young age that your belief dictates reality instead of using facts and logical reasoning and combine it with social ostracism for simply pointing out how swallowed sound byte anecdotes can’t be simultaneously true, you get a population that is very easy to manipulate. The cherry on top is these people pine on about freedom because on a deep level they know the

            • by sfcat ( 872532 )
              Public education isn't being de-funded. It is being eroded by ideology, not from lack of funds.
              • Public education isn't being de-funded. It is being eroded by ideology, not from lack of funds.

                Yes and no. If you look at the per capita spending per student nationally, over the last decade or so we have been holding about constant with inflation. But just look at this map [educationdata.org]. That total goes predominantly to blue states on a per capita basis. The defunding is the lopsided spending on Democratic areas vs Republican areas. If red states properly funded their populations, they would be just as educated and profitable as blue states. Problem is those people are able to properly identify their self

        • That's not journalism. That's gossip. Doing journalism is hard, highly qualified, expensive work.

          How about if someone said of your profession that any bunch of idiots could do it because the internet?
          • Yes, that's gossip. And that's also what most newspapers are. Gossip and opinion, opinion and gossip. There are a few quality papers left, granted, but you have to look good and hard to find them.

            Just like you have to look good and hard to find online content worth your time.

            How about if someone said of your profession that any bunch of idiots could do it because the internet?

            The funny bit is, my profession can not be done by a bunch of idiots, exactly because of the internet.

        • You might not have noticed it, but we now have something we call the internet where, at least in theory, anyone can far easier and with much less input of money and time broadcast information.

          The internet is a news distribution medium. It is not a news reporting medium, because it doesn't hire reporters.

          You can easily bget every kind of national news (from whatever angle you like), but you're not getting local news unless that the internet is reposting articles from your local newspaper. Which hires reporters.

          Amateurs with an axe to grind posting stuff on reddit that gets spread around on twitter and facebook is not actually the same as journalists.

          • by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @11:47AM (#63873033)

            Amateurs with an axe to grind posting stuff on reddit that gets spread around on twitter and facebook is not actually the same as journalists.

            Yes but those amateurs include people like Anders Nielson who teaches at a Danish war college and is an expert on Russian hybrid warfare. Shockingly his analysis of the Ukrainian war is better than anything in the US media (he was one of only two defense experts who predicted Russian failures early in the war). Turns out, with the Internet you can get the analysis directly from actual experts with an actual good track record of being able to interpret events in a specific field. That isn't something the news media is able to match these days. You can also look up real data sets and see actual statisticians analyze them correctly. Turns out if you want to report on energy or industry you need to do that first and those are things the media has proven time and time again that they are incapable of doing. At this point, I get my news at least 2 days before you do if you are reading newspapers.

            • Amateurs with an axe to grind posting stuff on reddit that gets spread around on twitter and facebook is not actually the same as journalists.

              Yes but those amateurs include people like Anders Nielson who teaches at a Danish war college and is an expert on Russian hybrid warfare.

              I would point out that essays from the occasional expert are in no way a substitute for actual journalism, but I won't. I will point out that the subject is "Can Philanthropy Save Local Newspapers?"

              Expertise in Russian hybrid warfare had little relevance to your local news. Did you miss the line previous to the one you quoted?

              You can easily get every kind of national news (from whatever angle you like), but you're not getting local news unless that the internet is reposting articles from your local newspaper. Which hires reporters.

              • by sfcat ( 872532 )

                essays from the occasional expert are in no way a substitute for actual journalism

                Complete BS. Actual journalists would twist and distort his message to match the current fad or current ideological bias. That's like saying that I can see just fine, even though my glasses are the completely wrong script for me. And I can get this actual expert analysis on just about any topic Also, not for nothing but the best journalists today are mostly people without journalism degrees. Its so bad, that in my opinion, firing all the people with journalism degrees would actually improve our news so

                • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

                  essays from the occasional expert are in no way a substitute for actual journalism

                  Complete BS. Actual journalists would twist and distort his message to match the current fad or current ideological bias.

                  That is the lie that people themselves to justify not reading news that disagrees with their ideology: "The mainstream news is all biased! Only these sources that agree with me can be trusted!"

                  Right. Good way to stay in your echo chamber.

                  • by sfcat ( 872532 )
                    Oh the irony. So getting information directly from experts about whose politics I have no idea is an echo chamber? And getting information from an ideologically aligned institution with a track record of misinformation is not. Got it. Look, the media is so poor these days that we have an actual scientific theory to describe just how bad it is. Its called the "Gell-Mann Amnesia". Here is a description.

                    You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read.

                    The projection is so strong with you that you could get good therapy from a tape recorder.

                    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

                      Oh the irony. So getting information directly from experts about whose politics I have no idea is an echo chamber?

                      Correct. You are putting forth an excuse to preemptively dismiss all news that doesn't fit your ideology without even reading it.

                      That's the very definition of an echo chamber.

                    • by sfcat ( 872532 )
                      I dismiss news sources with a track record of misinformation, propaganda and outright lying. If you are not capable of judging such things, then I feel sorry for you.
                    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

                      I dismiss news sources with a track record of misinformation, propaganda and outright lying.

                      Nope, you have that backwards. When news sources tell you facts that disagree with your pre-existing opinions, you call them "misinformation, propaganda and outright lying".

            • by dryeo ( 100693 )

              But the subject is local news, Ukraine is a long way away and the problem is how to find out why a local road is closed, what that development is and when to go to the public meeting, as well as other stuff like the coyote attacks last week, etc.
              I still get a local paper delivered twice a week with mostly local stuff but compared to 10-20 years back, they're struggling, the classifieds are almost empty and they likely make most of their money from the flyers in the paper. If and when they close, where to ge

              • by sfcat ( 872532 )

                the problem is how to find out why a local road is closed

                Our county has a web site where you can lookup stuff like that.

          • Amateurs with an axe to grind posting stuff on reddit that gets spread around on twitter and facebook is not actually the same as journalists.

            Whether they do it because they have an axe to grind or because the news outlet wants to spin stories a particular way to influence voters... tomeeeeto, tomaaato...

      • by Anonymous Coward
        Post "local" newspapers are owned by 2 or 3 conglomerates, often just copy-pasting AP stories. Then they do fluff about a fucking dog show in town to show they are "local".
      • Re: So? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kenh ( 9056 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @10:34AM (#63872883) Homepage Journal

        The issue has exactly two causes:

        Local business don't want to pay for advertising in local paper because...

        Locals don't want to pay a subscription fee

        so the paper has no circulation and no advertisers.

        You can rail on about how important it is to have a local press, but neither of those two things will change (without subscribers, there's no ads, with no ads, there's no revenue to pay reporters, with no reporters, there's no content to attract subscribers).

        Ask yourself a serious question - what could someone put on a piece of paper that would cause you to pay them money to buy a copy for yourself? I'm decidedly old school, and I pay for a couple print magazines related to my hobbies, so I do pay for content I'm interested in, but no one offers compelling local content where I live. (We have one local oaper, but the reporters seem to be little more than unpaid interns trying to build a portfolio to get a paying job elsewhere.

        • Sample size on n=1, Slashdot participant. I suspect you may not be a particularly representative sample of typical consumers of local news.
        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          The local papers are often free around here and delivered to most households once or twice a week, there's a pile of them at my rural mailboxes free for the taking. They come with lots of flyers and some local advertisements, the classifieds are almost empty though. The news is mostly local or at least semi-local with some sharing between the local towns.
          If it goes away, it will be hard to find local news and such.

      • For small towns that don't have a news paper, it's far easier to get local news because the people you talk to regularly will pass information around. Groups that might have previously used the newspaper to get information about an event out often have Facebook pages that people in the community follow. There's nothing preventing journalism from occurring due to the lack of a paper. Now it's easier than ever for random citizens to act as journalists due to the Internet and being able to distribute news far
      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        How little you understand of how functioning democracies depend on local news. See my comments below: https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

        Sadly there is very little "local" news any more with most local rags being taken over by large corporations who just publish the same article in 14 different local rags after doing a find/replace for the town names.

        Most local papers here in the UK just try to peddle outrage because (_) No new housing is being built/(_) New housing is being built/(_) Stores closing down/(_) Town centre being turned into flats (apartments)/(_) A new McDonalds is opening/(_) Pubs are closing/(_) New Pubs are opening as wel

      • Can't the CIA use some of the Operation Mockingbird money from their black budget to prop up this failing industry?
        • Shhh!! Don't give the game away!

          BTW, govts have more effective & less clandestine ways to "encourage" news orgs to publish what they want the way they want. Plus the news isn't the most effective propaganda machine, that prize goes to TV & films (fiction, mostly); we are the stories we tell ourselves. The Pentagon already spends $billions "supporting" TV & films in return for editorial control over scripts/plots.

          C'mon, the Nazis worked that one out nearly a century ago.
  • by sxpert ( 139117 )

    regulation of press concentration of billionaires holding press is required.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @06:01AM (#63872633) Homepage

    Local news is important. In terms of impact on your life, it is more important to know about the fire next door than the avalanche on another continent. Unfortunately, international clickbait has a huge marketing advantage.

    We still have a local paper, and they would even have their news online. But their offers - even the online offers - try to get you to take the physical paper. While you can get an online-only subscription, it is stupidly expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Yes, important locally but also nationally & internationally. Every real news story starts out as a local story with journalists on the ground investigating. Without them, there's not much news. Look into the background of any really important news story that has had a significant impact & you'll find it started with a local journalist following up on something that caught her/his attention. Also, those are often the kinds of news stories that serve the public good but that corporations & "caree
      • BTW, it's sad that the richest country in the world has to rely so much on foreign government funding for its news. Al Jazeera does some good investigative journalism in the USA & for a time, Russia Today was a reliable source of high quality news (Remember it used to win awards before Washington turned its ire & propaganda machine against it?).
        • by sfcat ( 872532 )
          RT is pure propaganda. I think your BS detector might be malfunctioning.
          • Nope. What a poor memory you have. When they started up, they hired a whole bunch of seasoned, award winning journalists in the USA & the UK & funded them to investigate whatever they wanted. RT won awards & was well respected. Although it was pretty clear to everyone that if they investigated the Russian govt & corporations, it wouldn't go down too well with their benefactors. RT turned out to be a real thorn in Washington's & Westminster's side because the journalism was good. Yeah, th
  • They're okay to let big tech put them under surveillance and savage their privacy in return for getting everything they want for free on the internet. What makes you think they're gonna shell out a single cent to keep newspapers they don't read in business?

    If your business model requires philanthropy, your business is dead. There is no philanthropy. Just a race to the bottom.

  • Donate your used NFTs.

    • Used NFTs are about as valuable as a soiled infant's diaper.

      Soiled diapers from elected officials are more valuable as they may contain Government secrets.

  • ...why? because a VAST majority of newspapers (like the rest of the media) has made a lot of their content political....instead of like in the good ole days where they reported facts (as they were known at the time) without bias, and left the biased stuff for the letters to the editor/opinions columns, now a lot of the "news" is leaning to one side of the coin or the other, politically-speaking. And it's a damn shame.
  • Dead tree news is dead.

    Like the buggy whip makers and telephone operators, printed news papers are a shadow of their former selves and will never recover.

    I used to read the NYT front to back every day over breakfast. News was already old before ink hit paper. Now I have instant access with near real time updates to news from around the world from multiple sources.

    I can even get local news online.

    Why the fuck would I ever go backwards?

    If someone wants to keep dead tree news alive for nostalgia reasons that

    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      I don't really have a horse in this newspaper race, but I wonder if anyone feels similarly: I'm already on the computer too much as it is. When I get off work, there's a computer waiting for me at home, too. If I take a break, I'll find myself in front of the TV! Screens, screens, screens.

      I might be the last American who subscribes to multiple magazines (R.I.P., "Popular Science"), but there's something to be said about that experience, too.

      So when is Slashdot coming out in newspaper form? (We c
    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      If I'm understanding this correctly the problem isn't the loss of the physical paper news it's the loss of anyone covering local news at all. When these papers go under so do their websites.

      • Yes, agreed. If people wanted local news enough they'd pay for it. If there aren't enough willing to pay what it costs to generate local stories then the people have spoken. If someone else wants to donate cash to keep local news going then more power to 'em.

        • by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Whether "the people have spoken" or not, not having a local news source is not a good thing for a democracy.

          • Sure but make local people pay for something they don't want to pay for; see how that works out.

            There are lots of things that would be good for society we don't pay for. Local newspapers isn't the top of the list, not even close.

            I'm not saying we shouldn't have local news. I'm saying that printing it and charging for those dead trees is a dead/dying business model.

            • by skam240 ( 789197 )

              Sure but make local people pay for something they don't want to pay for; see how that works out.

              We do that all the time with taxes. I guarantee you there is some one out there against any form of local taxation and spending you can name and yet it's very much an accepted part of life for most people.

              There are lots of things that would be good for society we don't pay for. Local newspapers isn't the top of the list, not even close.

              I dont know about about that. An informed electorate is kind of necessary for our form of government to function properly which is pretty integral to our way of life.

              I'm not saying we shouldn't have local news. I'm saying that printing it and charging for those dead trees is a dead/dying business model.

              And I've never disputed that. Printing news is really just kind of wasteful in this era where almost everyone has a small computer in their p

              • Taxing people for a newspaper is not the same as taxing thdm for roads, cops, fire, emt, hospitals, enforcing building and food safety codes and numerous other critical services.

                If no one enforces safety codes, people die.

                If no one follows local news about the Tigers vs Lions high school game, so what?
                I hope the Tigers win! It's going to be a nail biter!

                • by skam240 ( 789197 )

                  Heh, your post reads like you only read my first sentence.

                  • No, I just disagree with your basic premise that local news is a critical societal element.

                    The high school game is of zero importance to the education of the electorate.

                    On today's environment people get their local news from Facebook. The reason local newspaper are going out of business is because no one reads it. Give it away free. Pay people to take it. It won't get read. The people aren't interested in it or it wouldn't be dying.

                    This should be self evident.

                    Just because I didn't respond point by poin

                    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

                      The high school game is of zero importance to the education of the electorate.

                      And comments like these dont address any of my points so why do you keep saying them? All you're doing is pointing at one of the smallest aspects of local news and then stating "See, this is useless so all of local news has to be".

                      On today's environment people get their local news from Facebook.

                      And who do you think generates this local news? Who writes the news stories holding local government accountable when there's no one being paid to do so?

                      I felt your other comments were red herrings and uninteresting.

                      Or you couldnt address them and you're just making bullshit excuses. The founding fathers went on at length about the value of a

                    • > Or you couldnt address them and you're just making bullshit excuses.

                      An odd thing to say in response to me coming back for the purpose of replying to them after you complained I didn't respond to each point.

                      If I don't respond to something it is because of one or more of:
                      1) I agreed with you
                      2) I didn't care about that item either way
                      3) I felt it wasn't worth a reply for any of various reasons
                      4) I was too busy to bother
                      5) You're on my NPC idiot list (you aren't but this is a general list of reasons applyi

                    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

                      Since we're making lists lets take a moment to look at the arguments that have been made in this discussion.

                      In support of local news I've
                      1) Listed a sampling of important issues local news media addresses mostly involving holding local government accountable
                      2) Cited hundreds years of widely accepted political philosophy that many of our founding fathers avidly subscribed to as being indispensable to democracy

                      In contrast you have pointed out
                      1) Local news has high school sports scores published in it (apparen

                    • My points are fully supported. I apologize if you were triggered by an obvious anecdote.

                      So now that we're back at square one, your plan is to do what?

                      Raise taxes to pay local reporters to report on corruption of the same people who are paying their salaries with those taxes.

                      Fabulous. Sounds like a great plan.

                    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

                      My points are fully supported

                      I have provided just as much support for your points I listed as you provided. Feel free to let me know what I got wrong if I missed anything.

                      I apologize if you were triggered by an obvious anecdote.

                      Because me pointing out your anecdotes are more or less meaningless in this conversation is somehow me being "triggered"? Should I just have gone along and accepted your pointless stories as meaningful instead? Should I hug you and tell you you're an insightful person while I'm at it too?

                      Raise taxes to pay local reporters to report on corruption of the same people who are paying their salaries with those taxes.

                      Fabulous. Sounds like a great plan.

                      I love how you claim to read my posts and you say shit like this. I pointed to th

    • Dead tree news is dead.

      Are you sure? Go into almost any hotel, anywhere in the USA and you'll find copies of USA Today, free for the taking. Of course, it's the hotel that pays for them, because they know that a large number of their guests want to read it and it's a nice perk to get it for free. I live in a small city and the local supermarket provides a free local magazine that's paid for by the advertisers. Lots of ads and interesting (to me) articles on local history.
      • Pretty sure. If nothing else this entire article is about the death of printed newspapers. Even with no other information that is pretty telling to me.
        Ymmv.

        • So you think that because there's one article written and published about the death of printed newspapers, they must be dying. Has it ever occurred to you that whoever wrote it might be exaggerating or that the article might be nothing more than clickbait?
          • No, I think this is one of many articles that have been written about the death of newspapers for many years as subscriptions declined and papers of all sized did layoffs.

            This is hardly the first or only time I've seen this said. Is it the first time for you? Did this article make you lose your "newspapers are dying" virginity?

            • I've been seeing articles like that since long before you gave up posting as AC and decided on a username that shows up nothing more than your arrogance and ego. Before responding, take a moment to look at my user ID and take a guess how many years I've been posting, and how long I've had Excellent Karma, non stop.
              • I was here when UID were 3 digits so don't pull the "I've been here longer than you therefore I'm better!" thing. It's lame and UID=value is a silly metric.

                Now then back to reality. You act like this is the first time you saw an article that said newspapers are dying. If true then you need to learn about the newspaper industry. If not the case and you were aware they've been dying for years then you are just trolling.

                Either way, it doesn't matter what you actually believe or if you're just jerking my ch

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Go into almost any hotel, anywhere in the USA and you'll find copies of USA Today, free for the taking. Of course, it's the hotel that pays for them, because they know that a large number of their guests want to read it and it's a nice perk to get it for free.

        I used to do a bit of traveling for work, and I never wanted to read USA Today. I was always interested in reading the local (usually big-city) newspaper, mainly because I found it interesting to read about the place I was visiting, but it also helpe

  • Depending on the 1% to replace things the general population thinks are a good idea but cannot afford to buy or fund through taxation is a sign of social rot.

    The West is ridiculously wealthy, but we're letting a tiny handful of people live like gods instead of forcing compression of the wealth curve. Never has there ever been a nation that was a nice place to live when a small number of people essentially controlled everything, and we're letting our societies slowly fall back into that state we spent so mu

    • Depending on the 1% to replace things the general population thinks are a good idea but cannot afford to buy or fund through taxation is a sign of social rot.

      Is it your contention that people aren't buying newspapers because they can't afford them? Could it be that instead, an increasing number of people see no value in newspapers?

      I'm not a U.S. resident, but I am considered "poor" by the standards of my society. I'm not starving, and if I wanted to, I could buy a newspaper once in a while. In fact, up until about 10 years ago, I did exactly that on a regular basis. I stopped because journalism has essentially died. I'm not buying a paper containing nonsense wri

    • Wow, are you really that stupid?

      I support my local nonprofit news organization, and it is great. They do 5 investigative pieces each weekday and cover the things that the commercial paper is hesitant to. I didn't give much, maybe $500, but they reached out to me and wanted to thank me and get my input.

      These types of newsrooms make a huge difference in giving people the information they deserve on corruption, community, and other subjects that are not easy to cover in a for-profit format. How else are you go

      • Wow, are you really that stupid?

        Have you looked at his username? Of course he is; if he were even half as smart as he thinks he is he'd have known better than to pick that, and he'd have taken the time to proofread it and see that the perpendicular pronoun wasn't capitalized.
  • So ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @08:47AM (#63872757) Journal

    ... instead of local news funded by used car dealerships (the old newspaper game), we are going to have local news funded by big NGOs with their own agendas?

    All part of "fortifying" "democracy", I guess.

  • Newspapers and other local journalism vehicles need to be nonprofits supported by earnings from an endowment that the board of the nonprofit holds and manages. They also need to operate an education arm that increases access to journalism careers by apprenticing journalists and cutting the overpriced colleges and universities out of the process. Pittance grants from likes of MacArthur and Knight are irrelevant- they need to donate endowment level grants whose earnings can support a minimum initial staff of

  • I doubt philanthropy is a sustainable business model for an objective, independent, widespread yet local news service.

    I don't have a solution. Newspapers existed because communities needed news. Part of the business was employing a cadre of local news reporters. The problem is that the local, manual, dead-tree delivery of news is frankly no longer needed. People still want news, but there is no need for that local infrastructure, thus no need for the local ecosystem that supported and fed it.

    So local ne

    • This. Theres no sustainable business model to find. Nobody is gonna pay the 3$ per day needed to support a local newspaper, and no philanthropic org has the firepower to support something like that indefinitely. Our democracy needs to adapt. Somehow.
  • Nextdoor (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @10:13AM (#63872861)

    My rural small town has a local paper, but it's always suffered from a frustrating lack of follow-up. Major stories, like the murder-suicide of a couple who would seem to have had everything to live for, get standardized initial coverage and then...nothing. We never find out how any story ends.

    But now that there's a social medium that does a better job of local news. Call it gossip if you will, but if you apply the instincts we are developing to glean truth from the general online firehose, we can learn a lot about our local area from it,

  • The injection of more than a half-billion dollars is sure to help the quest for a durable and replicable business model.

    What happens when the half-billion runs out?

    This is simply propping-up an industry the consumers has moved on from.

  • by Larsen E Whipsnade ( 4686581 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @10:52AM (#63872911)
    No philanthropist funds anything for free. They're looking for propaganda outlets.

    Before you get too outraged, consider this: news outlets, including local ones, have always been propaganda outlets.

    (Want to know about the fire last night down the block? Ask somebody down the block. Reporters know nothing.)
  • The question isn't "CAN" philanthropy save local newspapers, it's "HOW MUCH" is needed this year and every year after.

    Half a billion dollars? That will help, but will it plus any future philanthropic dollars be enough? My Magic 8 Ball says "Ask again later."

  • by Usefull Idiot ( 202445 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @10:59AM (#63872923)

    For me, it depends on whether the "local" newspapers will actually cover local news, and have reasonable rates. When the one near me started losing money, the first thing they cut was local news, then they started raising rates. All they were doing was taking articles from the AP and some of the larger national papers, cut/pasting them, and charging more for it. Within a year or two, they increased the rates so much that it cost for 2 months, what it used to cost for 6 months, so I quit. I wish them luck, but a lot of people have moved on to online rumor mills, and seem to be happy with them.

  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday September 24, 2023 @11:38AM (#63873003) Journal
    Reverse Clintonâ(TM)s/gop law allowing companies to own any number of media companies, and then have these companies start writing news and not GD political pieces. Clinton/GOP nightmare allowed extremist to buy these and they have worked hard to push horrible politics. In addition, it is time to start hiring REAL journalists and not these poly sci hacks.
  • âoeThe injection of more than a half-billion dollars is sure to help the quest for a durable and replicable business modelâ

    Or more likely the total opposite. It will just keep them leashed to their donors.

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

Working...