Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

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Among the interesting developments is the growing set of non-profit newsrooms.

There are the venerable institutions of PBS and NPR in the US, broadcasting on television and radio respectively, as well as increasingly online through video and podcasts.

ProPublica is probably the best known of the recent arrivals, providing investigative journalism at a national level.

I'd submitted a couple of items on Chicago's public radio station, WBEZ, acquiring one of the city's two remaining daily print papers, the Sun Times.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/1/18/22890454/chicago-sun-...

The other, the Tribune, was acquired by the vampire-capital firm Alden Capital somewhat over a year ago and has been emitting coronal mass ejections of reporters, columnists, and staff, since, though many curiously remain on the paper's masthead...).

WBEZ didn't pay for the acquisition, it was paid to take over the paper. Which might tell you something of the market for print news media presently.

Another notable example is the Baltimore Banner, which officially launched two weeks ago on June 14. It's another non-profit, is looking to expand to 70 journalists. It is online-only.

https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/baltimore-banner-offic...

But both the Sun Times and the Banner are big-city papers. They're not papers reaching into small towns and rural areas, in which the news desert truly exists.

I see two possible paths forward. One is for news-as-public-good, in which jouranlism is publicly (and preferably locally) supported. Another is a return to the partisan press of the past, notably the 19th and early 20th centuries. Given the dominance of right-wing talk radio, Fox, OANN, Breitbart, and similar organisations, it seems at least one political party is already largely there.

In my city, the local chamber of commerce put together a plan for a nonprofit local news website, something that is truly needed for the reasons cited in TFA. However, while the virtual masthead proclaims "Independent. Accurate. Unbiased." the board of directors is made up mostly of wealthy property developers and people connected with the local real estate industry. There's no way they won't put their thumbs on the scale when it comes to vetting the chief editor, providing coverage of community meetings around development, and endorsing candidates for mayor and city council.

You have the same problem with commercial newspapers, though. The L.A. Times is nothing more than a 100-year-long real estate pump and dump. Almost every newspaper in America relies on car dealer ads, and will therefore never say anything even slightly negative about cars. Cars and real estate have had their thumbs and the rest of their hand on the scale for a long time.

Look especially to the Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler eras.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times#Otis_era

Or other papers / publishers --- William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane wasn't just whistling Dixie), or Robert McCormick and the Chicago Tribune.

I work in non-profit media and it's really tough. Getting funds from membership is an uphill battle. Executive comp is much lower than private media, but at the same time it's relentlessly criticized for being too high because the numbers are disclosed. The Baltimore Banner exists based on the personal largesse of one person who tried and failed to buy the Baltimore Sun so it's going to have a hard time maintaining impartiality or surviving in a competitive market.

Largely agreed, known, and understood. See also my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31981720

We also enjoy a local not-for-profit news organization called Cityside which covers Oakland and Berkeley, which together is a city about the same size as Baltimore. "Local reporters" who are on the staff of the SF Chronicle and Bay Area News Group, the local legacy newspaper organizations, are always whining on Twitter about how locals don't support news any more, but the existence of these successful, award-winning nonprofit news outlets shows that people will support good reporting, but they won't support more of the same thing the big newspapers have been doing for decades.

In SF there was briefly something called The Bay Citizen that was funded by Warren Hellman.

> The Bay Citizen was a non-profit news organization covering the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded as the Bay Area News Project in January 2010 with money provided by Warren Hellman's Hellman Family Foundation. On May 26, 2010 the organization launched the website, baycitizen.org.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bay_Citizen

But he passed away and it merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting.

> The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California.[1] It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-platform newsroom, with investigations published on the Reveal website, public radio show and podcast, video pieces and documentaries and social media platforms, reaching over a million people weekly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Investigative_Repor...

I really think that anything started by a bazillionaire as an instant nonprofit enterprise is bound to fail. It goes for Warren Hellman and Mitch Kapor and the rest of them. Those that start with an immediately sustainable business model, like Cityside, seem to persist.

Well, arguably the Bay Citizen didn't fail, they merged with CIR, which is a decent exit IMO. They didn't run out of money, their patron died.

I don't really know, but presumably a bazillionaire would set up a trust that then generates the funds to pay for the project from stable investments (or whatever, I really have no idea.) It's not a business model but it would be sustainable.

I figure failure would be if they folded due to lack of reader interest, but I don't think that was the case.

(I only heard of them because I interviewed there once, and I only remember the interview because it was the first time I encountered fizzbuzz. I thought they were putting me on, the interviewer had to convince me they were serious. Anyway, they seemed like they had their act together, although they passed on hiring me, which is a warning sign. ;P Maybe I'm too arrogant and full of myself?)

The success rate of startups isn't exactly spectacular either.

Growing slowly and organically isn't sexy, but it tends to build some degree of robustness and resilience.

Non-profits are funded by people (possibly lots of people with a little money, but far more usually a couple of people with a lot of money) who have interests, or by foundations that are funded directly and completely by government. They are not news-as-public-good.

Non-profit doesn't mean "benevolent charity."

This is true, though the point is more that news organisation don't seem to be possible to run as for-profit entities in the long run.

I'm well aware of issues with not-for-profit / NGO organisation and charity:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31493135

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28044444

And specifically addressing information / publishing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27802315

The Baltimore Banner's first few stories have been absolutely amazing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com