Yes, it's true. No more firewalls. Go read the article I originally linked, here it is again:
https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta...
Some key paragraphs are:
> The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants.
> The grant is for more than $8 million over three years, and about 20 of the climate journalists will be new hires. The AP has appointed Peter Prengaman as its climate and environment news director to lead the team.
> For many years, Journalists and philanthropists were more wary of each other. News organizations were concerned about maintaining independence and, until the past two decades, financially secure enough not to need help. Philanthropists didn’t see the need, or how journalists could help them achieve their goals.
> Nonprofit news organizations like ProPublica and Texas Tribune led the way in changing minds. The Salt Lake Tribune, which in 2019 became a nonprofit to attract more donors, and The Seattle Times are other pioneers.
> “As far as we’re concerned, it has been really seamless,” said Monica Drake, assistant managing editor at the Times. “It has allowed us to focus on things we want to cover and to do it independently.”
> Both sides had things to learn. For Carovillano, it was getting used to the idea that funders weren’t just being generous; they had their own goals to achieve. “This is a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he said.
> “I feel like our language has gone from people talking about local news dying to there being a renaissance of local news,” she said. “If you can provide good, high-quality journalism, people are willing to pay for that, people are willing to support it. I think there’s a lot of room for optimism. The trick is, can we move quickly enough?”
The article leads with climate grants but is really about the phenomenon in general, which covers many topics.
The quoted journalists are duplicitous, trying to reassure themselves. The text says that what they're doing used to be taboo because rich guys had "goals to achieve", but now it's considered "pioneering" and "mutually beneficial". Their justification is they didn't have any money and felt sad, but now they've got lots of money and are happy. They say the transition has been "seamless", i.e. readers aren't aware of it. And hilariously, at the end Carivillano claims there's room for optimism because people are willing to pay for high quality news - except "people" aren't paying, that's the reason they need to take money from a handful of donors.
It's obvious this compromises their journalism, especially in the stories they don't publish. These news orgs have basically been bought by the donors, large chunks of their staff only exist because of these grants. Thinking it doesn't compromise their news would be like saying Facebook simply buying all the news teams that cover the internet wouldn't have any effect.