Is The Future Of News Nonprofit?
As local newsrooms see staffing crater, some journalistic organizations like the Salt Lake Tribune are looking at different models to encourage public support.
The demise of local news organizations across the country feels like it’s happening in slow motion.
Once or twice every year, we hear about more layoffs, buyouts, and/or cuts at our local newspapers. Last year, the University of North Carolina released a comprehensive study that showed 1,300 U.S. communities have totally lost news coverage, far more than previously known.
The same question is asked over and over: how can journalism survive this era of online consumption and the demand for free news?
Many outlets are putting up paywalls requiring audience members to subscribe to get content. But others are looking at a different business model: becoming a nonprofit.
This is the road that newspapers in Philadelphia recently went down. And now, the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah is following.
“We’re not doing this for fun. We’re doing this because we need public support to survive,” says Fraser Nelson, Vice President of Business Innovation at the Salt Lake Tribune. She’s the person tasked with leading the paper’s transition to becoming a nonprofit.
“This is no way is a golden ticket to financial freedom,” she says. “What it does allow us to do is turn to the community and ask the community for a new kind of support and to deepen their commitment” says Nelson, who notes that the move also allows them able to obtain grants and other sources of funding available to nonprofits.
She says the change will not affect most of the paper’s coverage. One thing it won’t be able to do anymore: endorse candidates or issues. But Nelson says the paper’s editorial page will still provide strong opinion journalism to help inform readers how to vote.
