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It's a question that can get lost in all the talk of business models and content creation: how might journalism best serve the public?

In Australia, the latest group to ponder this is The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, directed by a group of journalists, editors, academics and members of the community. Part of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University in Melbourne, it is setting up a project called YouCommNews, modeled on the American site Spot.Us, which will allow the audience to commission the stories they want to see.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Dr Margaret Simons, chair of the foundation, and to David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

Newspapers have not only lost significant advertising revenue in the last couple of years, they have also been losing government support in the form of subsidies in the last forty years, concludes a new study by the University of Southern California.

According to Poynter, a new study of historic subsidies and emerging trends tracks various tax breaks, reductions in postal subsidies first enacted in 1792, and upcoming cutbacks in public notices that government regulations have traditionally forced into American newspapers. The study provides valuable insight, if not clear-cut recommendations for print media to follow, about the thorny issue of government funding for media.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

A new non-profit news website has launched in Connecticut today, Poynter Online reports, with the dual aims of reporting the news and providing its readers access to resources that are hard to find online.

The Connecticut Mirror bills itself as "an independent source of news and information about our state's government, politics and public policy". It comes in time for an important state budget and an election year.

Editor Michael Regan writes that the Guide to Politics and Government his site offers provides "the most comprehensive information available any where on the state's elected officials".

Non-profit investigative news groups have been encountering many of the same financial difficulties as the newspapers they have been working with, according to the AP's Andrew Vanacore.

As newsrooms cut costs and staff, investigative non-profit groups like the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) have picked up where they left off, or more appropriately, what they left out. Charitable foundations and philanthropists have pumped tens of millions of dollars into these non-profit watchdogs to investigate issues like corruption and the environment, which some newsrooms lack the resources to cover.

Back in the day, before newspapers were home-delivered, middle-class men used to go to coffee shops to read the newspaper and debate important social issues. This Thursday, reporters at the non-profit investigative outfit California Watch have similar plans, except they'll be writing the news, rather than just reading it.

Staff members from California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting will hold an 'Open Newsroom' day, where reporters will work from cafes across the state.

Editor & Publisher, "America's oldest journal covering newspapers", has risen from the dead, following its acquisition by a boating magazine chief.
  
Editor & Publisher, an independent news organization reporting on all aspects of the newspaper business, has resumed publication in print and online following its sale on Thursday to Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc, as Poynter Online reports.

As the debate between Google and news publishers rages on, an opinion piece in The New York Review of Books has proposed a different solution: that Google should fund a new journalism venture.

A variety of new ventures have been established in response to the tough times the newspaper industry faces. These include non-profit news publications such as the Chicago News Cooperative, California Watch and the Texas Observer. Other organisations including ProPublica, Spot.us and The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism receive funding from community or philanthropic sources, and use the money to support investigative or public-interest reporting.

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

The guardian.co.uk is calling for local bloggers in Leeds to apply for a freelance position to help to cover news in the area, reports Mercedes Bunz in The Digital Content Blog. "Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010," said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

The news project will initially launch in three cities, Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and expand if successful. The job description states: "The successful candidate will be a confident blogger, know their yelps from their tweets, have a passion for local news and understand how to build relationships with the local community." Whilst a journalism qualification is desired, it is not required and direction and support will be received from the project's editor at the Guardian's London headquarters.

Sarah Hartley, the Guardian local launch editor said: "While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I've been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local websites and blogs. This experimental project reflects both the shifting nature of journalism and the reality on the ground."

Following up on an invitation last month, two of the three bidders for the Boston Globe have visited the newspaper in the past week. A group headed by Stephen Taylor, whose family owned the Globe before selling it to The New York Times Co., and Platinum Equity, a California-based firm that recently purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune, met with the newspaper's management team, the Globe reported.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that a group of residents from Orange County, California, are set to launch a non-profit news website by the end of the year. The project's initiators, who include retired state lawmakers, lawyers and newspaper reporters, hope that the Voice of the O.C. will act as a platform for watchdog, investigative and local journalism - areas particularly affected by newspaper job losses in recent years.

Joe Dunn, a former Democratic state senator who will chair the outlet's board of directors, commented that the new website aims to bridge the apparent gap between national and local news coverage, a symptom of staff cuts at the Orange County Register and the L.A. Times.

Remember how wonderful and magical it was when the musical motion picture, The Wizard of Oz went from black and white to Technicolor? The New York Daily News is about to undergo a similar transformation when it purchases new color printing presses that will allow the paper that once carried the logo "New York's Picture Newspaper" to print in color from cover to cover. Boston Properties Inc. chairman Mort Zuckerman has raised about $31.6 million in company stock sales to finance the presses, reported Bloomberg. 

"Wait till you see the way this paper is going to look four or five months from now. We are going to once again be able to be the picture newspaper in a way that nobody could have imagined," Zuckerman told Bloomberg.

Proving that readers still turn to newspapers for news, the most popular blog at the Sacramento Bee is The State Worker, which reports on California's civil servants. The blog had over 500,000 page views in June, about double that of the paper's 49ers football blog.

Bee journalist Jon Ortiz started The State Worker about a year ago, a fortuitous time for the blog although not for the state, seeing as that was when California first became mired in its budget crisis. According to Ortiz, the blog is read by a third to a half of the state's civil servants.

A Texan daily newspaper will start charging for access to its online content this week. The Valley Morning Star, which covers the city of Harlingen, will be the first of the 75 papers owned by the California-based Freedom Communications to impose charges for viewing its Internet edition. If successful, however, the group's other papers will most likely follow suit, as according to the Star's editor, Tyler Patten, the Star "certainly won't be the last" to charge for online content.

The paper will charge viewers 75 cents a day, or a $3.95 monthly subscription to view its Internet content. Those who currently have a 7-day subscription to the print edition will benefit from free online access. Regular receivers of the weekend and Sunday editions will be charged a reduced rate.

San Diego is set to be home to the new Watchdog Institute, which will provide "data-driven investigative journalism" to media outlets.  The venture is being led by Lorie Hearn, a senior editor of the town's only printed daily, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Institute and the paper will collaborate closely.  The details of the project were illustrated by in an email sent by U-T editor Karin Winner to newspaper staff last Friday.  The Institute team is comprised of the director, Hearn, two reporters and a data specialist, who will work closely with the newspaper staff on 'long and short projects'.  

The city of San Diego is a microcosm of the current battle raging between the new and the old for the headlines of local news. As American cities struggle to maintain their regional papers, online initiatives are springing up to fill the gap left in community reporting.  Now California's second largest city is covered by three reporting projects, functioning on very different business models.   

The classic first: the San Diego Union Tribune is the city's only newspaper, which has an apparently bleak future.  Revenue from advertising has dropped by 40 per cent from 2006.  In March, a buyout shop, Platinum Equity, eager for its first publishing venture, announced that it would buy the paper.  Last month the buyers revealed that 200 of Union-Tribune staff would be made redundant.  However, it seems that the cutbacks at the Union-Tribune have not damaged its online edition, which averages 1.3 million unique visitors a month and racked in an estimated $10 million on $18 million in sales last year.

The San-Diego Union-Tribune has made all of its employees sign a confidentiality agreement banning them from recruiting current or former employees to a competitor. The agreement lasts for two years, and means any staffers with the intention to create or join a rival company will be unable to recruit former colleagues.

It comes at a particularly inconvenient moment for any of the 192 laid-off employees who had any ideas of beginning their own venture, especially given that their last day of work was Friday. Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild, says that the Union-Tribune is "asking a lot, especially in this climate".

On December 25 2008, Carbondale-based newspaper the Valley Journal announced that the Christmas edition would be its last. The small Colorado town paper was unable to keep financially afloat and the decision was made to cease printing.

Deprived of the town's final stand-alone newspaper, locals began to miss out on vital community information such as birth and marriage announcements as well as updates on local infrastructure developments. However, it was the belated news of a friend's death that spurred Rebecca Young, Valley Journal's original founder, to take action: "I didn't hear of his death for a couple of weeks," she said. "I was so sad I wasn't at his service."

In response to Hearst Corporation's threats to sell the San Francisco Chronicle, House Speaker and San Francisco representative Nancy Pelosi urged the U.S. Justice Department to consider changing media ownership and anti-trust rules to save the newspaper. She has also arranged a hearing for the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on the survival of newspapers.

Since Hearst announced its intention in February to sell the Chronicle unless it could make cost reductions, the company has been negotiating cutbacks with unions. The California Media Workers Guild, the Chronicle's largest union, has already made concessions, including laying off 150 employees, and Hearst continues negotiations with labor union the Teamsters. Hearst has not yet reached a decision to sell, but under present antitrust definitions, it will be difficult for Hearst to sell the paper to its prospective buyer MediaNews, which owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

Since Hearst Corporation announced its intention to sell its papers or make job cuts, journalists have launched online wikis for both the San Francisco Post-Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in an effort to generate plans to create replacement organizations. A wiki is a web page designed to enable anyone who accesses it to participate by contributing or modifying content. In this case the creators hope the wikis will promote discussion and collaboration to find solutions to the demise of the papers.

Dwell editor Sarah Rich and Wired.com reporter Alexis Madrigal launched the San Francisco Post-Chronicle wiki on February 25 as a "space where people can hash out what daily news might look like if we could start over, start fresh, and build for a digital world." The wiki has over 80 members who can use the forum to make suggestions about distribution models, coverage plans, distribution models, and design.

The San Francisco Chronicle and the paper's largest union announced on Monday 9 March that they had finally come to a formal understanding on contract concessions, which according to directors, are essential for its survival. Just two weeks earlier, Chronicle owner the Hearst Corporation, had threatened to either sell or shut down the newspaper if it was unable to reach an agreement with unions and, in turn, make significant staff cutbacks.

Members from the California Media workers Guild are expected to vote on Thursday on the key changes to the agreement - it is expected that the majority will vote in favour - which have been given the all-clear by the negotiating committee. Included in the new terms is the ability for management to dismiss employees regardless of ranking, the guarantee that all members of staff to lose their jobs, or those who accept voluntary redundancies, will be offered two weeks' severance pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, as well as continued health-care cover, even in the event that the paper falls into administration.