Building the News and Information Fields

Facilitator: Kinsey Wilson, NPR Digital

Scribe: Roberta King, Grand Rapids Community Foundation

For context: NPR has 17 million online readers month, vs. 34 million a week on radio.

Our relationship with media is changing; there are many more competing entities. What do we pay attention to, what do we ignore or give something to or become involved with? People have to distinguish between types of media in different marketplaces. Two groups might be broadly described as: commercial business models like Yahoo and Google with reviews and aggregation reviews and the other side is news. At this point there is money on one side. Sides used to be bundled, in the newspaper model. When classifieds dropped out of newspapers it was the beginning of the end. The portals sites are are trying to put the bundle back together.

Cable TV is the last big bundle left of media. Bundling broadly describes a practice in which one part of a news mix pays for another. For example, Dear Abby paid for war journalism. Shoe leather journalism is the hardest to pay for and most important.  There are close to 2,000 news sites in existence, but there is not enough ad revenue to sustain them all, the sites will need more than ad revenue to continue.

As an example, Patch.com; news is the bait for the bundle/revenue.

The hyperlocal news sites are doing the work that other news sites are not, probably as a civic duty. Investigative journalism needs to be seen as a social good, worth sustaining.

There is some conflict and tension around funding of news sites and foundations. What is important to foundations might not be important to news sites.  It is important to negotiate relationships at the outset. As an example, NPR affiliate stations are encouraged to work with nonprofit ews sites, but it can be difficult to do. It’s important to “date before you get married.” Find common ground and step into it gently.

When foundations tire of funding journalism and news projects, who will step in and will they have an agenda?

Is there value in community foundations coming together to fund news model and sites and best practices? Would it be best to leverage resources? 

Should foundations work on funding and disseminating best practices for news? The logistics of how it gets done, rather than actual journalism. This might be a more comfortable space for community foundations who might be uncomfortable with the controversy around actual news.

A clash of cultures? Journalists pride themselves on being neutral and clearly community foundations have agendas.  Trustees want to know the impact of grants and saving news sites might not be among those priorities.

As an example, in Chicago, there is tension between Trust and the funding of a nonprofit public affairs program that did not move its agenda forward. They had different ideas about what was important.

Minnesota Public Radio is working with community foundation on finding issues to cover and sometimes funding. The community foundations can help people take action on the issues.

Internet rewards openness, traditional media not so much. This is part of the tension. Commercial media is used to creating gated communities by trying to keep the subscription model. Subscriptions worked in traditional news model.  There are acceptable substitutes for commercial/traditional media and using an RSS feed to gather what you want to read/see makes it easier to substitute from what you really want but are unwilling to pay for. May need to go to sources like NYT for something specific, but there are workarounds and other options.

Generating content costs money. A pay wall makes 90 percent of the audience go away (CNN app, for instance). Desire to return to a paywall is coming from magazine entities.

Discussion of public and anonymous comments on news sites: Owners (publishers or whomever) must be vigilant to address comments that are off topic. Sites with open and anonymous comments need a loyal audience. NPR is now pre-screening its comments with people who have a history with the site.

Revenue for online local news sources, are there limited to the kinds of money that would be acceptable? Political funds? Advocacy? Sometimes these ads are the only way people can find out about issues.

What about asking donors to give to a Journalism Trust (like the one in Vermont) or a Field of Interest Fund? Should community foundations be helpful in finding people with specific interests, watchdog, environmental, education and such? Community foundations can be an intermediary between donors and journalists.

When news reporting was profitable, it could go after and report on tough issues. But now there are financial constraints, and with community foundations funding would there be a reluctance to do so?

Transparency is important, but might not resolve the tension between news sites and funding sources. Just as important are clear pre-set boundaries. As an example, ProPublica, funders have no editorial input to what they do, report on. Firewalls exist. Kaiser Family Foundation is funding a news room, with firewalls.