Foundations Move to Fill News Gap
Important Details: The decline of US newspapers has caught the attention of the foundation community, and it is responding with large and increasing sums to offset lost investigative and local reporting. J-Lab — the American University-based intiative in interactive journalism — has rounded up data on journalism-oriented giving. It has identified almost $128 million in grants awarded to at least 115 news projects in 17 states and the District of Columbia, from the beginning of 2005 through mid-2009.
Foundations have increased their giving around journalism as they, too, read the papers and see cuts of almost 10,000 newsroom staffers over the past several years. It’s not “journalism” they are trying to save and re-invent, however.
“They’re asking, ‘What’s the value of news and information?'” says Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab and a former business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Foundations are increasingly looking at news and information as a “public good”, one the marketplace used to fund adequately through advertising. Now, news and information’s role in building and maintaining healthy communities is on the table, much like older concerns about health care, education and the arts.
Clearly, though, we’re at the beginning of foundations figuring how their role. Schaffer says they are asking fundamental questions like, “What is this space? How do we fit in? What’s the social return?”
A few high points from the survey bear note:
- Of the 115 projects getting funding, 102 of them went to organizations that have launched within the last four years.
- The largest share, $65 million, went to “investigative” projects. Of that amount, $56 million went to the “big 3” investigative organizations, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity and Pro Publica.
- A searchable database, which can be search by funders and by grant recipients websites, is accessible online.
As new money flows into supporting journalism, one key question is how much goes to out-of-work journalist refugees and how much goes to fresher blood. Says Schaffer, “I worry that women will be left out, that all the the money may be taken up by the same old guys. There’s an old club possibility.” She says that her center recently provided three $10,000 grants to “New Media Women Entrepreneurs” — after vetting 435 applications for those three awards.
Implications: Outsell believes that this unprecedented level of journalism funding is another sign that we are entering terra incognita. It’s a unknown land, and time, into which we’re moving, as for-profit newspaper companies winnow their staffs and efforts to what makes financial sense, given advertising revenue migration. It’s a land in which thousands of reporters and editors have found themselves displaced and put, mid-career, on the job market. It’s a time when entrepreneurs across the country — even in the midst of recession — assemble small staffs and lay claim to legitimacy as they launch new city news start-ups.
It’s curious how much money has gone to “investigative reporting.” It’s true that costly, time-consuming in-depth reporting has been an casualty of the industry’s decline. It may be that that the term immediately connotes public good, and more easily communicates value lost and needed to be regained. “Local news” is a squishier term, but that’s where we’ve seen huge cutbacks in story production. This year, hundreds of thousands fewer stories will be written than were several years ago. Newspaper websites may accommodate infinite content, but staff cuts have dramatically cut news production. So as foundations work through their fundamental questions, they’ll have to understand and parse “local news” losses as well.
For newspaper publishers, the new foundation funding is further sign of how crowded the landscape is becoming. The great changes in ad spending and reader habits may have downsized their operations, but we’re seeing greater willingness of others to bridge the gaps. For communities, for readers, for the public, this may mean an uptick in news; for publishers, it means more competition. Foundation-funded startups inevitably will compete for readers and advertisers. They can grow from ankle-biters to wallet-grabbers quickly.
Such emerging competition means several things to publishers. By reducing their news products, they’re inevitably inviting more competition. The new start-up websites, however, — whether local or nationally oriented investigative — offer new opportunities for publishers to aggregate, to network and to partner.