Billionaire Philanthropy Bingo: How 'Bout 1% for News?
You see A15, I say A1. Found in the print New York Times, page 15, but a big story for the country, and one that could be a big one for the next generation of news media.
Spurred by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, billionaires — now that’s a segment to reach — are signing on to the pledge to give away more than half their wealth to good causes. Three dozen billionaires — Larry Ellison, Larry Lokey, Michael Bloomberg, David Rockefeller, among them — have bought in, exceeding expectations. As the Times said: “The program has predicted that it will draw $600 billion into philanthropy — or about twice the estimated total amount given by Americans last year.” Later in the story, it says that $600 billion may be inflated, covering some money already pledged. But, still some hundreds of billions of dollars.
So, for the moment, forget NPR-like pledge drives, $49 contributions, micropayment schemes, pay hurdles. Think about a program to get a modest tithing, a pledging of new philanthropic dollars to assure the free flow of news and information, as that next generation of news creation is born.
Let’s halve the $600 billion. Using a $300 billion number, take one measly percent, and you get $3 billion. That would do the trick. You can do the math with greater or lesser total sums and differing percentages.
I know: the world hasn’t worked that way. The vast infrastructures around philanthropy are all entrenched, serving as pipelines to established “charities.” Yet, only in the past couple of years has news and public information been recognized as a “public good,” like health, education and the arts. Only in the past couple of years , have foundations, led by the Knight Foundation (Knight CEO Alberto Ibarguen’s speech to community foundations, here), recognized that there’s a yawning community gap in news that they need to bridge. (Yes, NPR and a few others have been getting foundation money for awhile, but that seemed supplemental to the profit-making press.) Those foundations are now moving more strategically, and we’ll see more announcements of funding over the next six months.
That’s all great. What we need to think about here, though, is scale. We’ve lost 12,000-15,000 daily newspaper journalists over the past five years. The Texas Tribunes, MinnPosts and VoiceofSanDiego’s are an important new wave, but have less than 50 journalists among them. As cool as the new journalism is, it comes nowhere close to replacing the sheer volume of community coverage lost.
That scale case — that 1% notion — should be made to those with access to the new philanthropic giving now unfolding. Some of them, like Buffett, who owns the Buffalo News, deeply understand how the market economics of the business has changed. Some of you have access to that new philanthropy. Some of us don’t, but have ideas of how they can use it effectively.