Diane Rehm: Assessing Non-Profit Journalism
Diane Rehm’s NPR hour today focused on not-for-profit journalism models. I participated in the discussion with Diane and:
- Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity. He was Vice President of News for National Public Radio, as well as an NPR foreign affairs correspondent and London bureau chief from 1978-1997. He was also Senior Vice President of News at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio from 1998-2006. He co-edited “Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism.”
- Steve Engelberg, managing editor, ProPublica. He’s the former managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, as well as in New York.
- Evan Smith, CEO and Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune. He spent nearly 18 years at Texas Monthly as the magazine’s president and editor in chief. On his watch, Texas Monthly was nominated for sixteen National Magazine Awards, and twice was awarded the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
Good talk, and great call-ins and evolving comments on the website. Of course, the NPR model itself came up, though we could only touch on the potential impact it can have on new, local journalism.
Most significant, I think, is the passion you can hear from those practicing the new, non-profit journalism. Freed from the visegrip of industry worry, they are doing the journalism, and you can hear the optimism in their voices. My issue here can still be summed up in one word: scale. That’s the issue before us, even as journalism re-invents itself intriguingly.
