Last week, a New York Times op-ed proposed a novel way to save newspapers: “Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities.” Claiming that endowments would “enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down,” Yale professors David Swensen and Michael Schmidt wrote:
By endowing our most valued sources of news we would free them from the strictures of an obsolete business model and offer them a permanent place in society, like that of America’s colleges and universities. Endowments would transform newspapers into unshakable fixtures of American life, with greater stability and enhanced independence that would allow them to serve the public good more effectively.
The New Yorker’s Steve Coll liked the idea:
How did we end up in a society where Williams College has (or had, before September) an endowment well in excess of one billion dollars, while the Washington Post, a fountainhead of Watergate and so much other skeptical and investigative reporting critical to the republic’s health, is in jeopardy?
But others worried that endowments would both compromise newspapers’ neutrality and keep them from having to adapt to the changing news environment. Former McClatchy exec Howard Weaver said the endowment enthusiasts “have the musty smell of the mausoleum all about them,” while Jack Shafer warned against “stroking philanthropic billionaires or foundations in what my colleague Adrian Monck calls the ‘holy search for “enlightened” money.’”
But. There has never been a system of financial support for journalism that didn’t involve tradeoffs. And “enlightened money” is still money, which is in short supply at newspapers these days. Let’s say a billionaire of moderate political leanings establishes a fund to endow the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. What would the consequences be, both good and bad?
In almost any case, I think the health-of-journalism ledger sheet on a transaction like the Seattle scenario laid out above would be a net plus.
There would be a variety of ways to structure that kind of deal, some better than others. The best in my mind is the Joan Kroc model. Kroc, you may remember, was the widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, who upon her death miracled some $200 million to NPR. No one there had any idea it was coming, and considering that she was and is still dead, it's hard to figure out how the gift could influence NPR's coverage of Hamburgler-related issues.
The analogy isn't perfect: that sum, princely though it may be, wasn't enough to set NPR up for perpetuity. They still rely on an omnivorous mix of "corporate underwriting", foundations, and money from member stations (who get it from government, pledges, their own underwriting, etcetera).
Of course, a cool $200 mil endowment would suffice at a smaller outfit. But I doubt there are a lot of rich folks ready to die, and ready to sign over their fortume or some portion thereof to something that people are, for good reason, used to thinking of as a profit making venture.
There are other ways to do this short of the endowing-by-will option. Better models would sign the money over as string free as possible (i.e., not making the gift subject to renewals, not sitting on a board, not taking the publisher's chair).
Anything short of those prophylactics would certainly raise eyebrows.
But it isn't acknowledged often enough that the advertising based model that has funded much journalism to date brings its own inherent conflicts. Editors and publishers do their best to minimize them, but they are there. And should a paper be lucky enough to bag a benefactor, I don't think the endowment model is really so different as to be unworkable.
#1 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Wed 4 Feb 2009 at 05:56 PM
I agree with Clint: it's silly to assume, as we often seem to, that journalism as it's been practiced during the BC (Before Crisis) era has been blissfully free of funding-based conflicts of interest. The various revenue streams news outlets have depended on to finance the work of newsgathering have carried their own tensions. Take, since we're talking about the Post-Intelligencer above, newspapers--which have traditionally relied on three-pronged revenue from newsstand sales, subscriptions, and advertising. Have journos at the papers funded through those channels bowed to pressure from their corporate sponsors? Yes, occasionally. Have they sometimes sacrificed public-interest journalism for the schlock they think their audiences prefer? Certainly. Have either of those facts invalidated either corporate sponsors or readers as sources of funding for journalism? Absolutely not.
It's an analogue of the classic argument about objectivity: the hallmark of a good journalist isn't that he has no biases, it's that he's able to transcend whatever biases he may have for the sake of his story. In the same way, good journalism doesn't come from a journalist's being sheltered from commercial interests--such insulation is nearly impossible--but rather from his ability to rise above those interests. And if reporters at a given institution are able to go about their days learning new information and distilling it for readers--with no concerns save those of their stories--then that's what matters; the origins of the money allowing them to do that matter very little, I think, as far as ethics are concerned.
So, then, back to the original question. If a billionaire (perhaps, for the sake of argument, a particularly civic-minded one, one who happens to live in Seattle...) comes along and offers to endow the P-I...then, yeah, all I'd say to the paper is mazel tov. Sure, if the billionaire in question is less Bill Gates-like and more Monty Burns-like, or something, then acceptance of his financing should perhaps be made contingent on some kind of no-meddling agreement from him. (The saga of The New York Times and Carlos Slim may be instructive here; that's for another overly long comment, though, I suppose...) But assuming the P-I's billionaire is making his donation simply out of concern for philanthropy (or out of concern for his legacy, or what have you), and thus that he has no interest in editorial control of the paper...then, yeah: I'd say the P-I staff should take some time to thank both their benefactor and their lucky stars, and then get to work putting the money they've gotten to good use.
As to the wider, endowments-as-model implication here: endowments, sure, may well be a solution for individual papers that find themselves lucky enough to have the option of establishing them. But they're not a panacea. We can't hope our way out of journalism's current crisis. (If I win the lottery, I'll be thrilled, and everything--but that doesn't mean I'm going to plan my retirement around the chance I have of buying a winning ticket one day.) To rely exclusively on endowments is to resign ourselves to a model that is the opposite of self-sustaining. We can't allow good journalism to be the whim of the wealthy--and we can't stake our future on serendipity.
#2 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Mon 9 Feb 2009 at 10:13 AM
I think the best reason many people are worried about endowing newspapers is that it will stifle innovation. Rightly or wrongly, we as a society mostly seem to think we've got the university pretty much figured out, so we're less worried about dampening its incentive to improve itself. Of course, there are broad swaths of people who do believe the university has utterly retreated into its ivory tower, away from the of what such a skeptic might call "competitive ideas." But we're not at all comfortable as a society that we've got journalism and the news business more generally figured out. We need not enumerate the slip-ups or rehearse the theories of the netroots. No one but the most rear-guard curmudgeons believes the world of news couldn't use at least a serious tune-up and maybe top-to-bottom overhaul of all the stages of production, consumption, and journalists' objectivity-focused ideology along the way. The worry is that free money will make journalists too comfortable when they need a kick in the pants.
#3 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Mon 9 Feb 2009 at 03:40 PM
You're right Josh--free money could lead to an industry gathering dust.
But while I'm hopeful that a profit earning model can be found that preserves journalism's public service functions, there's nothing to say that the sink-or-swim-in-the-market race won't lead to bad journalism. In some cases, it certainly will.
I can't imagine that every paper will get a wealthy pillar of the community to buy them out, or will be propped up by an endowment. But a few probably will, and I think those communities will be lucky to have at least one outlet doing (relatively) high quality work.
There will be plenty of new, built from the ground up, journalism organizations eager to try out new methods in those towns, and for all of our sakes, I hope they are successful. Meanwhile, having a well-endowed legacy paper in the same city can't do any harm, can it?
#4 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Mon 9 Feb 2009 at 04:27 PM
Sure, I agree that endowing a few newspapers can't do more than marginal harm (with perhaps the washington times notwithstanding). But that's not really what David Swensen and Michael Schmidt envisioned, and that's not nearly as interesting a subject for discussion. So I worry that, while your trimming the scope of the discussion salvages a partially correct answer, it also undercuts the value of the question.
#5 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Mon 9 Feb 2009 at 04:53 PM
Hi, Josh -- post, and you shall receive. Some thoughts on the Swensen/Schmidt argument, in particular, if that's what you find to be the most pertinent part of the discussion...
Here's the thing: I agree with every sentence in their essay--with the vision they lay out for news outlets' potential; with the notion that freedom from financial worry will liberate news organizations to do better work; with the idea that, hey, we need to come up with something by which to save ourselves--except, that is, for the very last one: "Enlightened philanthropists must act now or watch a vital component of American democracy fade into irrelevance."
Oh? Must they? When I read "act now" in that sentence, I have to admit, I couldn't help but imagine Swensen and Schmidt as a two-fer version of Billy Mays, hawking OxyClean and promising that, if we act now!, he'll throw in a ShamWow or whatever to sweeten the deal. To me, there's something incredibly unsavory about pitching journalism in this way--about asking others to save us, rather than finding a way to do it ourselves--and about ceding control of the industry's future to people who could, literally, take it or leave it.
Sure, individual outlets have sought foundation support, and everything...but to propose seeking such support across the board--as, you know, A Model--strikes me as, at best, naive. I may watch Mays's commercials, after all, humoring him and myself...but I've never bought anything he's selling. Never, despite Mays's many exhortations and overtures and infectious enthusiasm, do I "act now."
And we can't assume that "enlightened philanthropists" will, either.
It's a matter of practice rather than theory: it's simply unrealistic to expect that billionaires (hey, even mere millionaires) will be falling over themselves to come to journalism's aid. Some may, sure, and they should be celebrated for it. But odds are their help won't be enough to preserve the breadth and diversity of reporting that democracy requires. And, in the meantime, I don't want our journalistic institutions to turn into glorified Billy Maysian analogues, the desperation of their desire to sell their products only partially obscured by perky promises of stain removal. I'm not ready to consign newspapers to charity cases. Instead, I want to see journalists paid, directly or indirectly, by their readers, the people who consume and benefit from their work. And not for some fuzzy, romantic idea of the value of journalism in a democratic republic--but because good journalism is a product that people should be more than willing to pay for.
I don't have a problem with endowments overall. (And I don't buy the whole financial security begetting complacency argument against them. Market forces aren't the only determinant of job performance, after all; universities themselves, to take only one example, provide ample evidence of that.) But I do question the wisdom of assigning Financial Model status to endowments. They may work well in isolated cases, sure, but as a blanket cure for journalism's ills? I'd love to be proven wrong...but I just don't see it.
#6 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 12:31 AM
I thought this was an almost laughably implausible idea, and am surprised that two supposedly intelligent B school professors would even put their name on it. How to save the newspapers? Just find a donor with a billion dollars! It’s sort of like the old story about the bum that asks for a million bucks. Most people would laugh but, hey, you only need one person to say yes.
Donor funds are limited resources. The imagined billions for newspapers have to be redirected from other worthy efforts. What do you propose to cut – Aids in Africa? Cancer research? Social programs?
The unfortunate fact is that many people are unwilling to pay for the services of the print media, as they are currently offered. That’s what needs to be addressed.
#7 Posted by JLD, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 09:00 AM
@JLD I don't think it's "laughably implausible" at all. Wealthy philanthropists and foundations already have a history of generously supporting the news. And I suspect many would consider seriously the idea of contributing very large amounts of money to endow the news if the stark alternative were really something close to zero American reporters in Iraq.
@Megan. Hey, thanks! I want to clarify what my argument about financial security begetting complacency--at least insofar as I use academia as my foil. Your counterargument is good. I take it to be something like, "Hey profs are far from lazy! They do really important work, and they work really hard at what they do." I don't doubt that at all. I certainly don't doubt that they're some of most dedicated people alive, deeply committed to their work and willing to work long, long hours in service of their commitment.
But my point isn't that endowed journalists would take off every other Friday and enjoy two-hour lunch breaks if they didn't work for a stern business type ever-focused on the bottom line. I don't doubt that journalists would still strive mightily. I'm sure they would battle for every scoop, and compete among themselves for the choicest assignments.
My worry--just a worry, but a serious one--is that the best or hottest scoops would begin to change or that the most prestigious assignments would creep toward being relevant to a smaller group of people, a more elite group of people. Now, I don't actually think that academics are horribly corrupt, values-free influencers of our children. I've got a typical liberal's opinion of profs. They're great and wise! But many people are alienated from academic thought and culture, and that's really, terribly unfortunate. And journalists do already have a problem with the public's trust. I'd hate to see that bond erode even more as a result of the understandable opinion that journalists were retreating into a cloister.
#8 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 10:42 AM
That's a great point, Josh--to me, the elitism argument makes a much more compelling case against endowments than the complacency one. It's a valid concern: the last thing I'd want to see emerge from all the tumult is for the press to mimic (yes, even more than it already does) the Ivory Tower-ness of academia.
But I'd also reiterate my earlier point that I just don't see endowments becoming a catch-all solution. I see them--maybe--helping out some news organizations. Maybe. So even if, worst case scenario, endowed papers do become hotbeds of journalistic entitlement, or what have you...I'd think that, given their rarity relative to the rest of the journosphere, the impact of their elitism would be minimal. And at least they'd be around, in all their well-funded privilege, to do reporting that everyone else--non-funded journos, the public, etc.--can benefit from.
#9 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 11:58 AM
@Josh Young: In regards to the differences between endowing one or endowing them all, I take your point. But I think the possibility of every major newspaper (or even a sizable minority of major newspapers) coming out of the other side of the industry's dark financial tunnel with an endowment is so slim that I'm not too concerned about the potential for endowments to breed complacency. (And you and Megan have had a good back and forth on what 'complacency' might mean in this case, with good points all around.) But, as far as the thought experiment goes--and this may just be the market skeptic in me speaking--I say, yes, we'd be better off if every paper were endowed with the stroke of a pen. No matter how well they adapt to the modern era, I'm sure that there would still be room for innovators to grow around them.
@JLD: I wouldn't put it as stridently as you, but I too think that there's an unhealthy let's-hope-for-a-white-knight tone to a broad endowment plan. But we can hope, no?
#10 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 12:17 PM
the answer is clear. the newspapers should pick up the netflix model. buy a subscription and you get the physical paper and the online content. scale back both the size and the amount of content in the paper. the papers are two big and cumbersome in a world where mobility is king.
beef up content online. make the websites more interactive. move into the mobile space with widgets and rss feeds. the mobile platform is crying out for local content. the subscription price gets you all three.
do the same with the ad pricing. also, utilize video more for both ads and content.
of course all newspapers have to adopt this model for it to have a chance. but the fact remains that print media organizations still do a better job than weeklies, blogs and, yes, even tv when it comes to delivering the news.
#11 Posted by Frizell, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 12:38 PM
@Clint: As a conservative, I’m not necessarily hoping for a bailout of the newspaper industry. I think some creative destruction might be a good thing.
After all, Bush has been voted out of office, but we’re still stuck with Pinch Sulzberger.
But this does raise a key issue about content. Why should the political view of a paper survive if its business model has failed? Would a "non-partisan" non-profit newspaper still give Bill Kristol the boot and hand Paul Krugman a megaphone? Why not replace Frank Rich with Ann Coulter?
#12 Posted by JLD, CJR on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 03:43 PM
What's difficult to come to terms with is that with endowments sustaining journalism, like academic institutions, you will likely have to reconfigure the political underpinning of a newspaper to reflect a broader-base of viewpoints, asuming that the donor is offering funds with no strings attached, and only "for the public good." In this case, the traditional tone of print political underpinnings will be diluted, or re-created into a multi-voiced publication, something that might have to include both Bill Kristol and Paul Krugman, much like the changes that have occured at NPR in the past five years even after Mrs. Kroc's funding -- a "forced" broadening of voices.
I think identity politics of newspapers will be lost, mired in the more vanilla endowment landscape, and the fear is not that it will turn journalists into cloistered purveyors of highbrow content but more splintered, more de-centralized from political lines, and therefore more diluted journalism, with a few star columnists whose work could run in any of the new breed of endowed publications, like trading baseball cards, that aim to seek the broadest base and the multi-cultural/multi-political voices of a vast, potential readership/consumer.
#13 Posted by Mary Campbell, CJR on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 12:27 AM
@ Mary: It would be interesting to see how non-profitdom might affect editorial pages. But I don't think that it would necessarily require shifting to a broader array of viewpoints on the editorial page. I can very easily see how it might actually engender the opposite. Some voraciously for-profit newspapers (The Wall Street Journal comes to mind) run a very ideologically constrained editorial page. Others (USA Today) are far more idiosyncratic.
Many, though not all, of the country's political magazines are 501c(3) non-profits, and manage to maintain distinct points of view: Mother Jones, The Progressive, The American Prospect, Reason, The American Spectator, etc. Others are run for profit, in theory, but I can't think of one that actually regularly turns a profit.
#14 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 12:32 PM
Not to discourage discussion here (actually, keep it coming!) but we've just launched a new News Meeting on a different, but regrettably related topic: What's the deal with all the chatter on micropayments?
Join us!
http://www.cjr.org/news_meeting/micropayments.php
#15 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 12:37 PM