Nonprofit Journalism: The Journey from Anomaly to a New Paradigm

This article describes United States-based journalism nonprofit businesses and why this business model is one of current interest. The author Jim Barnett suggests that in this period when new nonprofit newsrooms are launched every month to do the work of investigative, enterprise, watchdog, and explanatory journalism, the non-profit model merits scrutiny.

Barnett’s opening example of an early nonprofit journalism organism that grew is the Associated Press (AP); started when several New York newspapers created a cooperative to pay for dispatches from the front lines of the Mexican-American War, it remains a nonprofit. The author has been tracking non-profit web-based start-ups and believes that: "There simply aren’t enough foundation grants, individual contributions or advertising clicks to go around." He states that great journalism will not necessarily bring sustainability, but that the relationships that the nonprofit develops with its readers may be a key to survival.

What the good nonprofits are doing, according to the author, "is to show readers how journalism can connect friends, neighborhoods, communities and, ultimately, a society....If they can reach that level, their readers’ donations take on a whole new meaning. They become statements of personal values and nothing less than affirmations of self." An example of cultivating a news source - reader relationship is an event held by the Voice of San Diego - a member event that celebrated working people, held with the purpose of, according to the publication, "both building that ownership and fulfilling our desire to get our members together, talking, in the same room."

Leveraging is another strategy described here. Barnett provides this example: a venture capitalist seeking to increase
support for his daily newspaper purchases an online,
subscription-based weekly newsletter on "statehouses politics that... gives... access to an audience of lobbyists, lawyers and business people who have a vested interest in state government and don’t mind spending some money to keep tabs on it." The mailing list becomes a potential consumer/donor base for the nonprofit daily newspaper.

As stated here, "One of the great things about the nonprofit model is that it answers to a different bottom line, so it fits neatly into a world where journalism is a public good. Nonprofits measure success not by the revenues and profits they generate, but by yardsticks such as how many people read their work, the educational value of that work and the impact it has on decision-makers.

Another great thing is that it allows journalists to build islands of credibility in a online sea of misinformation, disinformation and too much information. I’ve heard it said many times that in the online world, transparency is the new objectivity. The tax laws require nonprofits to disclose their major donors, and the good ones are taking disclosure to greater levels than that required by law."

The entrance of non-profit organisations, including foundations, into the realm of journalism has both possibilities of increasing journalistic standards (examples reported here are publications of Human Rights Watch and The Kaiser Family Foundation that do extensive investigation and submit to a rigorous advisory process) and of leaving journalistic standards behind in favour of entrenched positions. A danger, as cited here, is that topics favoured by foundations will be covered, while others without sponsorship will languish.

The non-profit model may not be the only strategy for newspapers in difficulty, but partnering with non-profits is already occurring. For example, the Pocantico Declaration resulting from a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored meeting of a group of journalism nonprofits, launched "the Nonprofit Investigative News Network, which will address standards, as well as questions of scale such as administering benefits and joint fundraising."