Bulletin photos by Mary Catherine Adams

Bill Densmore, at right, moderated the “Journalism – The Nonprofit Option” panel the first day of the New England Newspaper and Press Association Convention. Stephen Taylor, at far left, makes a point as the other nonprofit-options panelists listen: from left, Joe Bergantino, Jeff Potter, Robert Lang, John Barth and Melissa Bailey.

Workshop panel says:
Nonprofit news model
plausible but difficult

By Kelly Glista
Bulletin Staff

Among the many questions in the air Friday, Feb. 5, and Saturday, Feb. 6, at the New England Newspaper and Press Association's annual convention at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, was this ongoing debate: Is there a plausible future for newspapers in being nonprofit organizations?

A Friday afternoon panel on the nonprofit model for journalism tackled some of the major challenges facing the news media today and how they might be solved, or not, by being not-for-profit organizations.

The panel on "Journalism -- The Nonprofit Option" was moderated by Bill Densmore, director of the Media Giraffe Project and New England News Forum at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The project is a nonpartisan and interdisciplinary research initiative in the journalism program at the university. Densmore is also a consultant and former fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.

On the panel were Stephen Taylor, principal of Densefog Group LLC of Milton, Mass., and former publisher of Boston.com and executive vice president of The Boston Globe, formerly owned by his family; Joe Bergantino, director of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University; Jeff Potter, editor of the Commons, an award-winning nonprofit community newspaper in Brattleboro, Vt.; Melissa Bailey, managing editor of the New Haven (Conn.) Independent, a nonprofit, hyper-local news Web site; John Barth, managing director of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Public Radio Exchange; and Robert Lang, a principal of L3C Advisors of Granite Springs, N.Y.

Taylor said he had no doubt that a nonprofit journalism model could thrive, but that his concern lies in whether there is a model that can stand the test of time, without spending 80 percent of the time and energy devoted to the initiative on just fundraising.

"I still do believe that the ultimate in independence comes from being self-sustaining," Taylor said.

Bailey brought her experience in sustainable nonprofit media to the discussion, as the New Haven Independent enters its fifth year of operation. The Independent, a local online publication founded by Paul Bass in 2005, has three major sources of money: grants from charitable foundations, sponsors, and reader donations. Bailey said having sponsors made more sense for the Independent than perhaps selling advertising space because of the limited traffic to the site, and that sponsorships have a limited effect on the editorial interests of the publication. The Independent also assisted a Connecticut community in re-establishing a defunct regional newspaper with a grant from the Knight Foundation.

The subject of advertisements sparked discussion among the panelists as they debated the conflicts of being a nonprofit organization that sells advertising space.

L3C’s Lang said it is always difficult to splice making a profit into the nonprofit sector, and that, although it works in niche initiatives such as investigative journalism centers, that still leaves a great need.

"That's not a whole newspaper," he said.

Lang said that for a large newspaper such as The New York Times to be endowed as a nonprofit would take about $2 billion.

The issue of the available financing in the nonprofit sector -- or lack thereof -- was something on which the panelists mostly agreed.

Barth said that even for a well-known organization such as the Public Radio Exchange, with close to 80,000 global listeners, finding and maintaining grant money is a challenge.

"Grant-supplied funding, especially in this environment, is very unstable," Barth said.

Bergantino said that for the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, much like for the Independent, advertising sales were unrealistic. But with many similar centers popping up throughout the country and a national network of them being formed, they might now be able to search out specific sponsors, he said. The complication for such centers lies in who is doing the sponsoring. Bergantino said that as an investigative center they would have to be careful about whom to be involved with.

He said there are ways of making money as a nonprofit organization.

"I think the term scares a lot of for-profit aficionados away," he said.

Panelists also brought up the issue of technology, saying that the innovations for smaller nonprofit startups are effective only as long as their readers can access them.

Lang noted that an online operation such as the Independent might not work for middle America, where broadband Internet is less common. Taylor warned, however, that it might be dangerous to assume that those places will be behind in technology for much longer.

Bailey said: "I think it's a time of innovation."

Densmore posed a final question to the group: Is it possible to have a great newspaper -- the kind that energizes and inspires a community -- as a nonprofit?

The panelists responded optimistically about the freedom allowed by local online news sources and the optimization of reader contributions, but noted the challenge of how to provide a decent living for those working on a nonprofit model.

"It's not an insurmountable challenge," Taylor said. "It's just a real challenge."

POSTED 2/9/10

'Grant-supplied funding, especially
in this environment, is very unstable.'

-- John Barth,
Managing director,
Public Radio Exchange,
Cambridge, Mass.