Nonprofit Journalism Comes at a Cost

Slate by Jack Shafer | Oct. 1, 2009 (Opinion)
The downside of nonprofit news organizations like MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, and the Washington Independent.

But before we get out the party hats and noise-makers to celebrate the rise of nonprofit journalism, here's the bad news. In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately. No matter how good the nonprofit operation is, it always ends up sustaining itself with handouts, and handouts come with conditions. Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala - via MuckRack, Alexis Madrigal

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Subjects: Media, Business
Topics: New Media, Philanthropy, Journalism
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# Diggs: 2 (as of 2009-09-30)
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Posted by: via Alexis Madrigal - Sep 30, 2009 - 5:41 PM PDT
Reviewed by: Kaizar Campwala (review), Tom Pollak (review), Fred Gatlin (review), Linda M Shoop (review)
Content Type: Article
Edit Lock: This story can be edited
Edited by: Kaizar Campwala - Oct 1, 2009 - 9:23 AM PDT
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2.2
 by Fred Gatlin - Oct. 1, 2009

This article misses the point badly. It fails to understand why so many are working on journalism. The many current newspapers, magazines and radio/television journalism lack facts and good journalism. The interest in nonprofit journalism is because current profit journalism.

See Full Review » (11 answers)
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2.9
 by Tom Pollak - Oct. 1, 2009

Treatment of issue is superficial. It doesn't tackle experiences learned from NPR and other nonprofit news efforts or explain basis for distinguishing new efforts from several that he praises.

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3.2
 by Kaizar Campwala - Oct. 1, 2009
Kaizar posted this story.
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3.8
 by Linda M Shoop - Oct. 14, 2009

This one made me think a little more than I anticipated.I wonder if we could form a journalism website like Act Blue and donate to publications we ... More »

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