Nonprofit News and Political Endorsements
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I am sort of a news hound. Not that I used to walk around with newspapers when hard copy was the biggest thing. For a while, law school had pretty much destroyed my inquisitive side and I preferred to have Barbie or Ken pick out and read the news to me on TV. Law school made me want to know only the holding, maybe a little of the dissent, and “is this going to be on the exam?” The law school version of “just the facts, ma’am.”
Blogging has rekindled the news hound in me. From Northwestern University, though:
The loss of local journalism has been accompanied by the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation, political polarization, eroding trust in media, and a yawning digital and economic divide among citizens. In communities without a credible source of local news, voter participation declines, corruption in both government and business increases, and local residents end up paying more in taxes and at checkout.
. . .
Newspapers are continuing to vanish at a rapid rate. An average of more than two a week are disappearing. Since 2005, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025. Even though the pandemic was not the catastrophic “extinction-level event” some feared, the country lost more than 360 newspapers between the waning pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022. All but 24 of those papers were weeklies, serving communities ranging in size from a few hundred people to tens of thousands. Most communities that lose a newspaper do not get a digital or print replacement. The country has 6,380 surviving papers: 1,230 dailies and 5,150 weeklies.
The National Trust for Nonprofit News is working to preserve local newspapers, though I imagine the jury is still out on whether the effort will succeed. Here in Chicago yesterday, I saw two older and obviously retired gentlemen in random clothes — whatever they happened to grab from a clothes basket, it looked like — sit in Starbucks for at least an hour and a half talking and reading the newspaper, sections of which were strewn in front of them. Trust me, sitting around in public wearing ratty t-shirts and mix match socks in a coffee shop, maybe some old Chuck Taylors, that is an art. Almost Norman Rockwellian. Who even sits on the subway or coffee shop shrouded by a newspaper anymore? Newsprint was probably a lot better for our eyes than radiation. Anyway:
A nonprofit that aims to maintain local ownership for newspapers will buy 22 papers in Maine, including The Portland Press Herald and The Sun Journal of Lewiston. The National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that was started in 2021, will buy the papers from Masthead Maine, a private company that owns most of the independent media outlets in the state, including five of its six daily papers. Masthead Maine’s owner, Reade Brower, had signaled this year that he was exploring a sale. The deal includes the five daily papers and 17 weekly papers, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the chief executive of the National Trust for Local News, said on Tuesday. Ms. Hansen Shapiro said Maine residents had told her organization that there was an opportunity for nonprofit ownership after Bill Nemitz, a longtime Portland Press Herald columnist, asked readers in April to donate to help a nonprofit organization preserve local journalism in the state.
And from one of the papers thrown a lifeline, The Portland Press Herald:
“This is the most independent route I think I could have taken that maintains both the independence of the press and continuity for staff and readers,” Brower said. “I believe they want to continue to run this as a sustainable business, which I like, and I don’t believe they will try and drain resources, which I like.” Neither Brower nor Hansen Shapiro would disclose the sale price, saying terms of the deal are confidential. Besides the Press Herald, the deal includes the Sun Journal in Lewiston, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, the Times Record in Brunswick and 17 weekly papers in southern and western Maine, including the Forecaster group.
The more common method of “saving” local newsprint unfortunately involves private equity acquisitions followed by severe staff cuts that pretty much gut the tradition. So acquisition by nonprofit organizations represents another example of altruism mediating the negative [or positive, depending on your point of view] impacts of capitalism.
A while ago, I dismissed the idea that nonprofit news could endorse political candidates. Call me a romantic, but I always appreciated newspaper endorsements even if I disagreed. Local reporters, after all, typically have studied a candidate’s positions much more than the average reader and local news used to send questionnaires to candidates or invite them to a sit down to discuss their positions. And they did so without as much explicit bias as say, the Wall Street Journal. But what if the National Trust for Nonprofit News set up some sort of corporate structure, similar to a 501(3) that owns a (c)(4) through which it engages in political activity? NTNP could similarly drop those 22 newspapers into a (c)(4), segregate its donations so that they are not used for political endorsements and then allow the newspapers to engage in their traditional functions, including endorsing political candidates. It could work, right?
darryll k. jones