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TEMPLE: Nonprofit newspaper? Nonsense

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 31, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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Kathye Thomas, a Rocky Mountain News presentation editor, participates in a rally to save the paper Thursday in downtown Denver. Her placard represents one year the newspaper has been in operation.

Photo by David Zalubowski / Associated Press

Kathye Thomas, a Rocky Mountain News presentation editor, participates in a rally to save the paper Thursday in downtown Denver. Her placard represents one year the newspaper has been in operation.



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The question has been very much on my mind this week: How do you fund newspapers to make them viable?

The reason, I hope, is understandable, given that the Rocky's fate is hanging in the balance. If no buyer is found, the paper very well may close soon, almost 150 years after it was founded.

Some very smart people argued in national publications this week that the solution to newspapers' financial crisis is to turn them into "nonprofit, endowed institutions - like colleges and universities."

I wish I believed they were right. It sounds so good, so comforting.

The chief investment officer at Yale and one of his financial analysts wrote on the op-ed page of The New York Times: "If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved."

But in Jefferson's time, there was no journalistic medium to rival newspapers. They were the press. That's not true today. Despite what some may think of it, television is the principal source of news for many. And that's not all bad. In Denver, we're lucky to have a slew of good TV investigative reporters. And the Web, well, it offers a plethora of choices, whatever you may think of the quality of some of them. Remember, in Jefferson's day, many thought little of their newspapers, too.

On the Web site of The New Yorker, Steve Coll, former managing editor of The Washington Post and an accomplished author, published a similar piece.

"In the foreseeable future," he wrote, "it seems, there will be two kinds of nonprofit newspapers - those which are deliberately so and those which are reluctantly so."

The Rocky and The Denver Post are the latter.

Coll acknowledges the vitality of the digital revolution - the Web - but argues that "there is just no substitute for the professional, civil-service- style, relentless independent thinking, reporting and observation that developed in big newsrooms between the Second World War and whenever it was that the end began - about 2005 or so."

Is he right?

First, I don't think the question should be how to save newspapers in the form these writers admire. The question should be how to save the type of journalism they, and I, admire: independent, verifiable reporting on subjects of public importance. We don't necessarily need newspapers to do that. Does anybody seriously believe that 60 Minutes or Ted Koppel's Nightline or other documentary programs haven't produced work that compares favorably with the efforts of America's major newspapers?

Second, even the national newspapers these writers treasure do far more than inform their citizenry with serious reporting on public affairs. That's just a part of what they do. I can tell you from experience that the comics are far and away the section of newspapers that many readers feel most passionate about. Coll's Washington Post publishes comics. Are we going to have nonprofits publishing the funny pages? Members of the public getting tax breaks for donating to keep Garfield alive? If we want to be so high-minded to create nonprofits for public service journalism, we'd have to exclude not only comics but also sports, entertainment, cooking, lifestyles, gossip, horoscopes, puzzles and all the other stuff that readers love but has nothing to do with Jefferson's ideals.

We're a country that values freedom and independence. Invariably, by going the nonprofit route, newspapers would become more beholden to government and more subject to regulation. The Yale authors acknowledge as much but say the sacrifice of certain aspects of what we do is a worthwhile tradeoff.

My experience as an editor has taught me that it's true that necessity is the mother of invention. Journalists are driven to excel, in part, by the demands of their job. Uncertainty is not necessarily an enemy of excellence. In fact, I've found that high-achieving journalists typically thrive on uncertainty. They find better ways of doing their work because they're forced to.

Personally, I'm more intrigued by solutions to newspapers' plight that expand the information available to communities. A French journalist based in New York, Jeff Mignon (a friend), argued on his blog, media cafe, that perhaps a new model for news organizations can be found in French local daily newspapers, where he says 70 percent to 80 percent of the content is written by amateur "correspondents."

"Imagining a media where the content is, for a big chunk, written by non-journalists is not a fantasy. It already exists and it has been working for years. Pro and 'am' can live together and produce a quality medium."

On average, he wrote, there are 10 correspondents for one journalist.

This kind of creative approach stems, in my view, from the need to find an efficient economic model, one where the most serious work is given to trained journalists but where much else of what is valuable to readers is produced at a lower cost.

I'd prefer to see us look for new models like this than try to preserve ones that once worked. Inevitably, if we take the latter route, innovation will pass us by.

In talking to people about the current storm swamping newspapers, I often compare it to a 100-year flood. Everything in the waters' path gets wiped out, with the occasional survivor tossed to safety. Much is lost. But when the waters subside, new life always begins.

That will happen with newspapers, too. It is happening. It sometimes can be difficult to recognize. But it's there. And as it grows, a new world will take shape.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

Comments

  • January 31, 2009

    8:22 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Having read the Rocky for 50 years, I would hate to see this fine Denver tradition fade away in the same manner so many former Denver Icons have disappeared. We've lost so many fine old buildings, homes, restaurants and theaters that Denver is a far different place than the city I knew when I was young. Many would say that they disappeared because they lost their relevance; that they stood in the way of progress. Unlike Europeans, Americans have always been willing to cast off the old in favor of the new. Does anyone know at what point we will have replaced so much of the old with its sense of place and tradition with so much of the new with all its seductions that we will have lost the soul of the city? I feel that the pending demise of the Rocky Mountain News represents a tipping point. We may soon lose an institution that has been a part of this city almost since its founding as a little supply town for the miners and the trappers. The Arapaho Indians and the buffalo still roamed the plains near where the paper was first published along the banks of Cherry Creek. The Rocky is one of the few remaining threads that still connects our colorful past to our vibrant present. I can only hope a way is found to attach this tread to the fabric that is Denver's future. That would be a rich tapestry indeed.

  • January 31, 2009

    11:09 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    durangojim writes:

    "If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved.” Why then is the news article "Daschle steers into tax trouble" on page 25 instead of a cover story complete with photos as it would have been had it been someone in the Bush administration?

    As further evidence of this bias, you have the article on Steele as the first black GOP chair on page 23 should have been another front page story.

    You are loosing readership because steadfast Americans like myself have had it with this bias and are not renewing our subscriptions. God help us if we have socialized newspapers, we already socialized radio with NPR. Perhaps Geroge Soros might be interested in buying RMN.

  • January 31, 2009

    11:53 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    durango,
    You are behind the times my friend.

    Its not the loss Of "steadfast Americans" that is killing newspapers. Its the loss of classified revenue to on-line sites such as Craig's List.

    As for NPR? You are really behind the times on this issue. What you said was true 30 years ago. Now, as reported in Wikipedia:

    "Over the years, the portion of the total NPR budget that comes from government has been decreasing. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the majority of NPR funding came from the federal government. Steps were being taken during the 1980s to completely wean NPR from government support, but the 1983 funding crisis forced the network to make immediate changes. More money to fund the NPR network was raised from listeners, charitable foundations and corporations, and less from the federal government. Major donors are listed on the NPR web site.[12]"

    To continue:

    "About 2% of NPR's funding comes from bidding on government grants and programs, chiefly the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the remainder comes from member station dues, foundation grants, and corporate underwriting. Typically, NPR member stations raise about one-third of their budget through on-air pledge drives, one-third from corporate underwriting, and one-third from grants from state governments, university grants, and grants from the CPB itself."

  • January 31, 2009

    12:23 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    analytixman writes:

    The newspaper industry has no one to blame but themselves. The Newspapers need to learn from the computer industry. Over the past 50 years of computer software, the leader in software in the current paradigm almost always gets by-passed by the innovator of the next paradigm shift. If you don't innovate and change, you die, its a fact of the technology based world.

    The newspaper industry, fat with cash and monopolies in most markets, sat around in the dawn of the internet age and watched upstarts like craigslist.com, monster.com steal viable revenue from their coffers. While they ignored these upstart technologies they also made the fatal mistake of raising their ad prices and continued their left wing biases reporting. You cant tell me the executives did not see these websites and hundreds more like them early on and not make moves to either buy them, or capitalize on the ideas. The fact of the matter is the mega media companies had more money than the start ups and sat around thinking the internet was going to be a passing fancy. No one can feel sorry for them as they had the money and captive audience to drive change to but instead, they continued to be newspaper companies.

    My grandpa rode a horse for transportation as a boy. I love horses, but I don't ride one to work each day. I don't listen to records, 8 track tapes, watch VCR movies, take my kids to drive in movies, etc, etc... heck I barely use a landline phone anymore.

    while it's a sentimental thing, reading your morning paper with your favorite breakfast beverage, its better for our world and economy to have profitable innovators delivering news, ads and content rather than to have the wasteful laggards still delivering the new via paper.

    Look to the upside, how many resources will be saved without newspapers. Millions of trees, fuel and countless other resources are used in getting that old newsprint to your front door.

    Yes, it's hard to say goodbye to old tradtions but I prefer a world where we look to a betters ways of accomplishing the same task.
    The newspapers could have made it if they would have branched out into other forms of advertizing at reasonable rates. The Rocky and Post could have become the biggest email and website producers in the region, but instead, they chose to stick to paper.

    I ask you, when was the last time you pulled out a paper phone book to find a business? When Dexonline delivered the phone books to my house, I did not even bring them in the house, instead they made their way to the recycle bin, never once opened.

    Sorry Templeton and the leaders at the Rocky, you had the chance to innovate but you did not...

  • January 31, 2009

    1:02 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    EP writes:

    Wow, you're all so smart on this board. I honestly wonder why they haven't tried your suggestions before.....

  • January 31, 2009

    3:30 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    durangojim writes:

    Greenleaf,
    My friend, you can fool some of the people some of the time...

    "This is actually the company line. As the NPR website states:

    A very small percentage -- between one percent to two percent of NPR's annual budget -- comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    This is clever, but the impression it leaves is not accurate. Isolating "competitive grants" is no measure of NPR’s federal funding. NPR receives substantial money from the CPB – through member stations. The 2007 financial statement of NPR Inc. shows under "Revenues" that $65 million of its $169 million in reported revenues come from "Station programming fees," and another $2 million comes from "membership dues." Member stations receive grants through CPB, which they send back to Washington for dues and programming.

    NPR claims the member stations receive only 13 percent of their revenue (on average) from CPB, but the federal funds sloshing through the NPR system are substantial, not a "miniscule" fraction of their operating support.

    When we have suggested cutting federal funds for public broadcasting, NPR’s spokesmen and executives wail to Congress (and shamelessly lobby the public) over any budgetary fraction that would be chiseled away, making a special point of stations in "underserved" minority communities.

    As for Adler's pagan beliefs, my point was simply that the story didn't include any real rebuttal of the atheist's strange claim that religion can't be practiced in "public space," and that it was hard to believe that the meeting between Adler and the atheist was a complete fluke."

    —Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center

  • January 31, 2009

    4:43 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    greenleaf writes:

    Ah durangojim,

    Do you ever watch PBS? It has commercials every hour. In watching just a few hours of programming, one hears about dozens of foundations and large individual contributors including the widow of Ray Kroc of McDonald's fame.

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st....

    The production of many programs is often subsidized by one corporation or another. Then there are the hundreds of thousands of people such as myself who contribute many millions more dollars to a worthy cause such as this. If the feds "own" even a 5% share, I would be surprised. State contributions are probably in the same area, give or take a percent.

    Others have made the point that NPR's nature, historical and theatrical content isn't unique, that it can be found on cable as well. Of course, but one has to pay a lot for cable or satellite and not everyone can afford to pay for such programming. Accordingly, I believe that the tiny amount of our tax dollars that go to NPR and PBS serves a far more valuable service than the way government squanders vastly larger amounts on purposes that provide far less for the American people.

  • January 31, 2009

    10:01 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    The_Punnisher writes:

    Mr Temple, just think of the demise of M$M as EVOLUTION IN ACTION.

    We don't have to put up with the BLATANT BIAS in the US M$M, anyone can go to the country where NEWS happens with a few clicks of a mouse.

    We don't have to rely on a single JOURNALIST ( IMNSHO an EPITHET ) to get MULTIPLE REPORTS of a news story. Then the READER is the one who judges ALL THE FACTS and makes the opinion, NOT THE JOURNALIST!!

    M$M has been complaining about the AMATEURS who do a better job of REPORTING than the JOURNALISTS....and have been complaining for YEARS while doing the same crappy job of reporting the news. It is time to pay for that HUBRIS.

    The YourHub model may be the future. You will have to share the power of the (e) press. I hope YOU will evolve.

  • February 1, 2009

    7:33 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    burpmedia writes:

    analytixman has it right. I worked in the newspaper industry for years leaving in 2006. While there I developed and received a patent on an ad delivery platform that is currently being delpoyed in an industry that before never sought advertising as a revenue stream. Now, it competes for ad dollars that used to go to newspapers. For years I tried to bring it to management of the Rocky and DNA with no success. Those included were Dean Singleton and Ken Lowe. My efforts to help the industry resulted in harassment by management who resented my personal efforts. The mind set for the past 20 years in management has been that of elite snobbery that trickled down to middle management. The innovative DNA managment style of "touch your desk at 8 and 5" was the apex of creativity and all they had when it came to attempts to increase ad sales. The death of the Rocky and the Post for that matter should be swift and complete. With dinosaurs as managers they contribute little more than future fossils in a media museum.

  • February 1, 2009

    7:07 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    peterpi writes:

    Oh, sure, it's not because of CraigsList, E-Bay, the Internet, changing public tastes, broadcast news, cable news, no,
    John Temple is a commie-symp socialistic liberal whale-loving tree-hugging liberal, and so is his fellow-traveling pink sidekick Vincent Carroll.
    Punnisher, why are you writing for free on this lowly website when you could be making millions spouting your drivel, repackaged as outrageously stupid comedies, for the TV networks?
    So, fire Vincent and John, and replace them with neocons and the Rocky Mountain News will make tens of millions overnight. Riiiight ...

  • February 2, 2009

    10:19 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    AC writes:

    John, you can go on and on about the fact that 60 Minutes does good journalism, but they're not doing what you local newspapers are supposed to be doing. Tell us how your internet and national broadcast media tell will tell me each week about what DPS is up to, what the legislature is up to, what Denver City Council is doing or even the Glendale city council. When was the last time 60 Minutes paid a staffer to attend weekly school board meetings?

    This is the info I need as a Denver citizen, not to tune in to 60 Minutes to hear about some deal in Miami or picking apart what Obama is doing. I'll be well educated on national issues but completely clueless on what happened down the street. What's the model for that kind of news gathering to survive?