Posted by Joanna Eng, who runs the Idealist in NYC blog.
From Flickr user allaboutgeorge via Creative Commons
We all know that traditional print media companies are converting to online and new media formats as fast as they can. But did you know that news services are also converting to the nonprofit sector in larger and larger numbers?
Of course, nonprofit and independent publications, radio stations, and websites have been around for a while. But only recently has the nonprofit model come to be seriously considered as the future of the whole newspaper industry. The nonprofit news model is appealing because it allows journalists to cover the stories they think are important, rather than the ones that will have the most shock value and gain the most clicks and advertising revenue.
If you want to know more about how nonprofit news sites are run, check out
this introduction and archived online chat with Andrew Donahue, the editor of Voice of San Diego. He explains that "In nonprofit funds, foundations enjoy funding specific projects or themes (science or environmental reporting in general), or a project on community successes. However, funders don't have special access to reporters, don't control what stories get written and don't say how the stories are written."
For examples of thriving nonprofit news sites, look at
MinnPost,
New Haven Independent,
ProPublica, and
Voice of San Diego. The
Bay Area News Project and the
Texas Tribune are about to launch and add themselves to the mix.
