Why not a nonprofit model instead? NPR has been operating successfully on donations for years! News organizations are already basically not making a profit. By reorganizing and paying back their debts, they can go back to focusing on what matters instead of increasing the bottom line.

Why not take the meager revenues that news organizations are currently earning, deposit them into an endowment and supplement with a huge yearly fund-raising campaign, or a one time large insanely public grant from the federal government. If managed responsibly, something like this could sustain a decently sized news organization for a long time. Especially if we begin to rethink and reorganize how it might be done.