BBC is only entirely 'non-profit' within the confines of the UK.

Flip on a VPN and you hit the BBC World version of the BBC news, complete with adverts.

Besides which, competition is healthy - so I applaud the creation of another another non-profit news site.

Not quite the same as that's mostly just news/events in the middle of the spectrum. Having Will Self on to rant about things occasionally doesn't really equal bringing in think tanks, academics and NGOs.

So if I am funded I will go well beyond the BBC site for politics and economics. Considering I am only asking for $40k and they have a budget of four billion pounds I think it's a reasonable proposition.

That said - because the UK spends four billion on the BBC, Australia spends one billion dollars on public broadcasting and there are things like PBS, subsidized journalists in France etc. - I think it's not unreasonable to use them as the backbone for the news part. Going up the continuum though they are unequipped to do the higher policy/ideas part.

Edit: The BBC also has its own biases, they refuse to release the Balen Report for example. Also, as a British citizen not in the UK, I can't access a huge amount of political content without a VPS because iPlayer is restricted.