As newspapers scramble to put up paywalls, produce content for the iPad, or revamp their websites, others are trying to rely upon a nonprofit model, where revenue isn't driven by site traffic and journalists can feel secure enough to report on what's important rather than what sells. Some nonprofit news ventues, such as California Watch and the Texas Tribune, have thus far succeeded. But Alan Mutter, a journalist-turned-media consultant, writes at his blog that a nonprofit news model cannot sustain the future of the news.

According to figures he calculated himself, it would take $88 billion to fund the level of reporting provided by U.S. newspapers today. This daunting figure, which disregards newspaper and broadcast journalism, is about a third of the $307.7 billion given to charities in the U.S. in 2008.

But philanthropic donations are likely to drop over the next few years as the future of the economy remains uncertain, and news media would have to do quite a lot of work to ever reach that level of donations. In 2008, religion was the only U.S. sector to meet and exceed the 30 percent of donations newspapers would need were they to turn to a non-profit model. Conversely, newspapers raised a mere $141 million in philanthropic donations--.05 percent of money donated in 2008 overall.

Mutter suggests that the nonprofit model would only be successful if newspapers could find new sources of funding or persuade current donators in the U.S. to shift their funds to support news production. This remains unlikely--but perhaps it is possible for a suffering publication to combine donations and revenue earned from ad and subscription sales to stay afloat.

Source: Reflections of a Newsosaur