Recently in Philanthropy Category

The Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) presents findings from a new report by Geoffrey Cowan (pictured, left), USC University Professor and CCLP director, and David Westphal, CCLP senior fellow and USC Annenberg executive in residence. The report, Public Policy and Funding the News, is sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The report “analyzes some of the financial tools that government has used to support the commercial press throughout our nation’s history -- from postal rate discounts and tax breaks to public notices and government advertising. It documents cutbacks across a range of sectors and presents a framework for the consideration of policy options to place the industry on a more secure financial footing.” Refreshments will be served. RSVP requested. To RSVP, email kmbrowne@usc.edu

9:30 a.m. National Press Club, 529 14th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C.

Public broadcasters face grave risks of losing credibility and trust through increasing commercialism of their work, says David Fanning, founding executive producer of the award-winning series Frontline.

It is "shameful" he says about the ways some public stations use pledge drives to market products for local sponsors. "This is our deepest embarrassment as public broadcasters...we spend more of our energy and promotional time pushing programs that have nothing to do with our mission."

Fanning delivered remarks at the annual James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting in November before an audience of public broadcasting leaders, community leaders, scholars and students.

This article appeared as an op-ed in the Sunday, Dec. 13, edition of Newsday.

Will news nonprofits bankrolled by foundations and philanthropists be pillars of the future media ecology?  To judge by the fast decline of mainstream media's business model, and the fast rise in philanthropy-funded journalism, it's starting to look that way.

This has been an extraordinary year for the creation of new-media organizations and Web sites, and a big reason is the money that foundations and wealthy individuals are investing. Thousands of community news sites have been launched, and most of the prominent ones are nonprofits.  Just in the last month or so we've seen launch announcements about the Bay Area News Project (with $5 million from Warren Hellman), the Texas Tribune ($4 million from John Thornton and others) and the Chicago News Co-operative (grant money from several foundations).

One of them is fueled by a $2 million investment and embarked on a plan to establish community news network in 50 American cities.  Another is a south Los Angeles site serving a neighborhood just 1 square mile in geography.    One has been in the community news business for six years; another is just now starting to monetize his site.

These were among the news sites represented at Friday's "Entrepreneurship and the Community Web" conference at the University of Southern California.  To my knowledge, anyway, it was the first time a large group of community news sites had ever gotten together in California.  It was obviously overdue.  The participants fed off each other's zest for their work, and left Los Angeles with a productive list of good ideas.  You can watch the entire daylong meeting here -- and read another account by analyst Peter Krasilovsky here.

Remarks prepared for delivery Dec. 1 at Federal Trade Commission workshop on "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?"

Today, anyone can aspire to be a news provider, and increasingly, people and organizations are deciding that’s exactly what they want to be. It’s this process -- many voices instead of few -- that is fundamentally transforming our news ecology. 

The new players come in all sizes and forms, including the traditional for-profit model.  I'll focus here on nonprofits and also on non-news organizations that are quickly emerging as news producers.  These newcomers are not making up for all the resources shed by mainstream media.  But they are making up for a significant, perhaps growing, share.  And in places like San Diego and New Haven, you can argue that a more robust news environment has already taken hold.