Report Outlines Proposals to Revive Newspapers

Remedies Debated Over Models of Journalism, Nature of News Reporting

Oct 24, 2009

Financial incentives and government fees, with foundation and university support, are part of the model for newspapers envisioned in a report on restructuring journalism.

How to sustain and finance newspapers and reporting is prompting more scrutiny of the current model of journalism. With newspaper bankruptcy filings and diminishing advertising revenue, the reporting process itself continues to be expensive even as the Internet as a distributor of news has lowered costs.

A number of daily newspapers are doing less reporting themselves as they and others outside of traditional print journalism look at a sharing of reporting resources. Alternate approaches include developing of outside investigative reporting units to produce and sell stories to newspapers, recruiting and training neighborhood residents to report news in their community, and greater use of news blogs and other news sites.

(All the focus on financial sustainability and information content sometimes has bypassed how and where news is generated. Jeff VanDam, writing in New York Magazine, looked at how original news is uncovered in several recent instances.)

Study on Restructuring of Journalism Sees Online Local News Sites and Nonprofit Investigative Reporting

A range of proposals on possible next steps for newspapers and other avenues of journalism emerged in a report released October 19 on “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” by former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie and Michael Schudson, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

They envision journalism entailing online local news sites, local and regional nonprofit investigative reporting efforts, continued foundation support for locally based news startups—on the order of what the Kaiser Family Foundation has done in establishing a nonprofit news service on health care, and universities operating community news operations.

Howard Kurtz, in the October 19, 2009 Washington Post in “The same old story turns into a new one as start-ups multiply,” wrote: “Campuses, from the University of Wisconsin to the University of Maryland, are producing more professional-level journalism with student manpower. Former Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has used his Northeastern University students to conduct 11 front-page investigations for the Globe since 2007.”

Christopher Caldwell, writing in the Financial Times of October 23, 2009 in “The state and journalism,” said: “The authors have high hopes for ventures such as the St Louis Beacon (made up of journalists laid off from the St Louis Post-Dispatch) and the Watchdog Institute of San Diego (drawing on journalists laid off from the Union-Tribune).”

Proposed IRS Changes for Tax Deductible Contributions to News Operations, FCC Fees for Reporting Fund

As to financial backing for journalism, Downie and Schudson suggest the following:

"The authors insist they are not recommending ‘a government bailout of newspapers, nor any of the various direct subsidies that governments give newspapers in many European countries,’ even though, they reckon, ‘those subsidies have not had a noticeably chilling effect on newspapers’ willingness to print criticism of those governments’,” Seth Lipsky, an adjunct faculty member at the Columbia Journalism School, noted in an October 22, 2009 Wall Street Journal commentary “All the News That’s Fit to Subsidize.”

"When I asked Mr. Downie for more detail on what he had in mind, he said he envisioned government money more for innovation than continuing operations, though he also suggested that grants could be renewable,” Lipsky wrote.

Some were more pointed in their response. Harry Jaffe, writing October 21, 2009 on Washingtonian.com in “DC Radio Boss Calls the Downie Report ‘Thin Gruel’ and Attacks the Post for Bad Numbers, Bad Reporting,” said of Downie, now a professor of journalism at Arizona State University: “He fought the Post’s transition to digital journalism. He stood in the way of merging web and print newsrooms. His front page stories won journalism prizes, but the newspaper he edited failed to respond to drops in circulation with the kind of creativity and innovation shown by the New York Times and other newspapers.”

Internet Impact on Financial Base of News Reporting but Also on Longtime News Audience

Paul Starr, a professor of communications at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and co-editor of The American Prospect, in a response to the report in “First Read: Journalism Minus its Old Public,” in the October 19, 2009 Columbia Journalism Review, said the findings “understate the changes taking place in the news.” “The challenge that the Internet poses is not just that it is destroying the financial base of reporting; it is also dismembering the public that the press has long had,” he wrote.

At the same time, Starr thinks that nonprofit journalism should be free from the restrictions on taking political positions by which tax-exempt organizations are bound.

“Moreover, if newspapers need to shift to nonprofit status to survive, they should not be required to sacrifice any of the rights of a free press—including the freedom to endorse political candidates.”

Also responding in the October 19 Columbia Journalism Review in “First Read: Follow the Breadcrumbs,” Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C., said several of the recommendations already have been implemented, such as nonprofit news ventures and foundations invested in news projects. “Many newly launched sites were triggered by frustrations with or vacuums created by mainstream news outlets.”

Focus group studies her institution has conducted, Schaffer said, indicate that the news consuming public wants reliable information, links to further sources on topics of interest, some visual content, and adoption of social networking in reporting.

The copyright of the article Report Outlines Proposals to Revive Newspapers in Newspaper Journalism is owned by John Seidenberg. Permission to republish Report Outlines Proposals to Revive Newspapers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.