Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders o the News 1
Background
In late April 2008, nearly three dozen people gathered in New York City to think aboutthe role o oundations and philanthropy in a journalism world that had grown increasingly threatened. Te organizations that convened the day-long meeting – the Center onCommunication Leadership and Policy at the University o Southern Caliornia’s AnnenbergSchool or Communication, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics andPublic Policy at Harvard University – posed these questions: Might oundations and theirunders provide important answers to the news business’ ast decline? And i so, how mightthat happen?Guided by the conveners, Georey Cowan, Alex Jones and Orville Schell, the groupexpressed caution about how big a role oundations could or should play in supporting journalism.At the same time, members produced a menu o ideas: the creation o new journalism armsat NGOs; collaborations between oundations and or-prot news organizations; university investment in news businesses; seed money or entirely new inormation enterprises. In thisreport David Westphal, o USC’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, providesan update on that meeting based on new thoughts rom the attendees.
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ven those who were pessimistic a year agoat prospects or the American news businesshad to be taken aback by the switness o thedecline that has occurred since then. A majornewspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, hasclosed its doors. Another newspaper, the SeattlePost-Intelligencer, has silenced its presses whilemaintaining a small, Web-only operation. Severalmajor newspapers are in bankruptcy; others,such as the Boston Globe and San FranciscoChronicle, are threatened with closure. Te New York imes required a major cash inusion romMexico’s richest businessman. Even those witha stronger balance sheet are reeling against anadvertising recession that saw newspaper revenuedecline 17 percent last year and 25-30 percent inthe rst quarter o 2009.It’s not just newspapers that are in trouble.Virtually every news operation o any kind isunder stress on multiple ronts: a miserableeconomy, overleveraged balance sheets and thedisruptive eects o the digital revolution. enso thousands o journalists have taken buyouts orbeen laid o. Washington bureaus and statehousereporting corps have been shut down; oreignbureaus have been reduced to a raction o theirormer size. NPR closed down most o its WestCoast operation. Te speed with which all o this has occurred has been mesmerizing, and ithas led some to wonder how society’s essentialinormation needs will be met. “When we hadthe meeting last year we saw a need,” said USC’sGeorey Cowan, one o the conveners. “Butnow we’re in a state o desperation. Te collapseo the traditional economic model has increasedboth the need or nonprot journalism, but alsothe receptivity toward it.”Even as legacy news organizations struggle orsurvival, new inormation sources are springingup – oten as one or two-person sites that providenews and inormation about communities,neighborhoods and topics o interest. In many cases, these sites have established that small-scale, Web-only operations can deliver robustnews reports, with technology that providesar better two-way communication than has
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