Non-Profit Newsweek?
No one knows how to sustainably make good profits in the news business anymore, it seems. So while we instinctively divide the news world, in part, by the old rubrics of “profit” and “non-profit”, those terms hardly work anymore.
Long highly profitable newspaper companies have largely, though not completely (witness Gatehouse’s results), turned profitable again — but only by taking deep cuts that may imperil their future. They’ve got to be profitable to satisfy investors, but they’re in the midst of a tough dance.
Online start-ups are testing membership, sponsorship, events and you-name-it, all to build on their foundation/venture start-up funds. End of year one for many in a three-year uphill journey.
All these companies have the same issues, of high costs for content production, declining ad markets, intense digital competition. Simply, there’s not — at this reading — enough money to go around to support the level of journalism we are used to.
So, look at Sidney Harmon’s Newsweek purchase against that backdrop. He has pledged to give it “years, not weeks,” to find a future. Even with cost cuts, that probably means he’ll be operating it at a loss for some time to come. So is Newsweek non-profit? Is it profit-seeking (later, than sooner)? Is its very existence dependent on philanthropy, bought by a media mogul/philanthropist, just as the online start-ups have looked to the Knight Foundation and others for funds.
It’s a great blurring of lines, one of many. In journalism, in news, the divide between profit and non- ain’t what it used to be — and may not be again.