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A new report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism -- the home of the Pulitzer prizes, no less -- suggests that government funding might be a necessary part of the solution for preserving independent local news reporting. The report has been greeted by reactions ranging from interest to skepticism and outright dismissal.
The need to preserve independent journalism
The 96-page report by former Washington Post managing editor Len Downie and scholar Michael Schudson includes a concise and comprehensive review of the industry's evolution over the last 40 years. As of a decade ago, they noted:
"Newspapers [had] moved from a preoccupation with government, usually in response to specific events, to a much broader understanding of public life that included not just events, but also patterns and trends, and not just in politics, but also in science, medicine, business, sports, education, religion, culture, and entertainment.
"These developments were driven in part by the market. Editors sought to slow the loss of readers turning to broadcast or cable television, or to magazines that appealed to niche audiences. The changes also were driven by the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The civil rights movement taught journalists in what had been overwhelmingly white and male newsrooms about minority communities that they hadn’t covered well or at all. The women’s movement successfully asserted that “the personal is political” and ushered in such topics as sexuality, gender equity, birth control, abortion, childhood, and parenthood. Environmentalists helped to make scientific and medical questions part of everyday news reporting."
The recommendations
The authors argue that the question we face is whether that kind of informed reporting and analysis is so essential to democratic functioning that it should be treated as "a significant public good whose diminution requires urgent attention?" The authors' answer is a resounding, "yes." After reviewing the range of existing and emerging business models for funding independent local journalism, they recommend:
- Having the IRS or Congress allow news organizations doing public service journalism to organize themselves as tax-exempt non-profits or low-profit limited liability corporations (called L3Cs). This is similar to a legislative proposal by Sen. Ben Cardin, the Newspaper Preservation Act of 2009, which is currently under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee.
- Increasing donations from philanthropists and foundations supporting journalism.
- That Congress direct the government-subsidized Corporation for Public Broadcasting to invest in local news reporting
- That universities start news organizations and run them as labs for innovation. (For what it's worth, I've been in favor of that one for a while now.
- That a government-backed fund for local news be established to support local reporting. To those who fear that this constitutes undue government involvement in journalism, they argue:
The federal government already provides assistance to the arts, humanities, and sciences through independent agencies that include the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. The arts and humanities endowments each have budgets under $200 million. The National Science Foundation, with a budget of $6 billion, gives out about 10,000 grants a year. The National Institutes of Health has a budget of $28 billion and gives 50,000 grants. In these and other ways, the federal government gives significant support to individuals and organizations whose work creates new knowledge that contributes to the public good.
They conclude on an optimistic note:
"At many of the news organizations we visited, new and old, we have seen the beginnings of a genuine reconstruction of what journalism can and should be..."
The feedback
Here's a sampling of some of the reviews.
Jan Schaeffer, the executive director of J-Lab, which supports experiments in journalistic innovation, said Downie and Schudson were focused on the wrong thing:
"In looking to reconstruct journalism, I’d start not by asking how do we get money for what we’ve always done. I’d ask instead: How do we provide something worth paying for? As a long-time news consumer, I have recoiled at much of what we are rendering as 'journalism.'”
Journalism student Paige Hansen said she and her fellow students are eager to help fill the void in local reporting:
"Students in the newsroom could work for both the print medium and the broadcast medium. I think this option is a lot better than having the government financially support local broadcast news, even if Downie says, 'it can be done with safeguards to ensure that the government doesn't become the
