To the Editor:
Re “A Future Without the Front Page” (“The Last Edition,” special section, Aug. 4):
It was good to see The New York Times focusing attention on the alarming decline in local news and ideas for reversing it. One important point needs to be highlighted: the proper and crucial role philanthropy should play. At the heart of the crisis is a collapse in revenue that funded the commercial model for local news.
When the market fails and critical services go wanting, philanthropy must step up as a loss leader to help finance the reinvention of local news as a public service. The old model for journalism produced huge cash flows that traditionally underwrote great local journalism. Reinvention requires making available the time, capital and level of risk taking that simply does not exist in the commercial market but fits squarely in the mission of philanthropy.
Imagine if every foundation in the country devoted just 1 percent of its giving each year to building journalism capacity. That would be about $600 million — far short of the revenues lost to digital disruption, but enough to give local news innovation the runway to reinvent the industry.
At the Revson Foundation, we have been following this model for 10 years. It works, as executives at Chalkbeat, WNYC, THE CITY, ProPublica and City Limits can attest. In the same way that philanthropists built our great cultural institutions, hospitals and universities that the market alone could not support, philanthropy must continue to play this vital leadership role for local journalism.
Julie Sandorf
New York
The writer is president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation.
To the Editor:
In Ohio, 32 percent of our newspapers have closed since 2004. By month’s end, The Vindicator will join them, making Youngstown the largest American city without a paper.
The remaining papers keep producing important journalism, but with a fraction of the resources. Ohio lost 43 percent of its newspaper journalists (reporters, editors, photographers and designers) between 2012 and 2018. That’s fewer people monitoring the city council, checking court dockets and scrutinizing school board meetings. Studies have linked newspaper closures to lower voter turnout, higher municipal debt and even more pollution.
This crisis demands public policy intervention. State lawmakers should increase support for public broadcasting and look to New Jersey, which created a publicly funded consortium supporting local journalism. Federally, Congress can make it easier for newspapers to become nonprofits. We should also tax Facebook and Google, which get the lion’s share of digital ad revenue and benefit from newspaper-created content. The revenue generated can also support journalism.
Let’s move past the hand-wringing and toward solutions.
Caitlin Johnson
Cleveland
The writer is communications director for Policy Matters Ohio.
To the Editor:
As a subscriber to the print New York Times and my local Desert Sun, and an online subscriber to my hometown Kansas City Star, I was overcome with sadness as I looked through your special section “A Future Without the Front Page.”
My assumption had been that it was all about the internet taking away readers. But no, that’s not the whole story. That old bugaboo shows its face once again: corporate greed. Conglomerates are draining every last thing of worth from local newspapers and leaving them to die. Capitalism run amok.
It’s an old story. It’s a plague upon this nation.
Kevin Wilcoxon
Indio, Calif.
To the Editor:
My biggest fear with the demise of local newspapers is something that you touch on: corruption. Without local investigative reporting, local politicians and municipalities will have a field day without having to look over their shoulders to see if someone is watching. Online publications have neither the manpower nor the financial muscle to go after the bad guys.
Richard Corso
Oceanside, N.Y.
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Stemming the Loss of Local Journalism
Opinion | Stemming the Loss of Local Journalism
To the Editor:
Re “A Future Without the Front Page” (“The Last Edition,” special section, Aug. 4):
It was good to see The New York Times focusing attention on the alarming decline in local news and ideas for reversing it. One important point needs to be highlighted: the proper and crucial role philanthropy should play. At the heart of the crisis is a collapse in revenue that funded the commercial model for local news.
When the market fails and critical services go wanting, philanthropy must step up as a loss leader to help finance the reinvention of local news as a public service. The old model for journalism produced huge cash flows that traditionally underwrote great local journalism. Reinvention requires making available the time, capital and level of risk taking that simply does not exist in the commercial market but fits squarely in the mission of philanthropy.
Imagine if every foundation in the country devoted just 1 percent of its giving each year to building journalism capacity. That would be about $600 million — far short of the revenues lost to digital disruption, but enough to give local news innovation the runway to reinvent the industry.
At the Revson Foundation, we have been following this model for 10 years. It works, as executives at Chalkbeat, WNYC, THE CITY, ProPublica and City Limits can attest. In the same way that philanthropists built our great cultural institutions, hospitals and universities that the market alone could not support, philanthropy must continue to play this vital leadership role for local journalism.
Julie Sandorf
New York
The writer is president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation.
To the Editor:
In Ohio, 32 percent of our newspapers have closed since 2004. By month’s end, The Vindicator will join them, making Youngstown the largest American city without a paper.
The remaining papers keep producing important journalism, but with a fraction of the resources. Ohio lost 43 percent of its newspaper journalists (reporters, editors, photographers and designers) between 2012 and 2018. That’s fewer people monitoring the city council, checking court dockets and scrutinizing school board meetings. Studies have linked newspaper closures to lower voter turnout, higher municipal debt and even more pollution.
This crisis demands public policy intervention. State lawmakers should increase support for public broadcasting and look to New Jersey, which created a publicly funded consortium supporting local journalism. Federally, Congress can make it easier for newspapers to become nonprofits. We should also tax Facebook and Google, which get the lion’s share of digital ad revenue and benefit from newspaper-created content. The revenue generated can also support journalism.
Let’s move past the hand-wringing and toward solutions.
Caitlin Johnson
Cleveland
The writer is communications director for Policy Matters Ohio.
To the Editor:
As a subscriber to the print New York Times and my local Desert Sun, and an online subscriber to my hometown Kansas City Star, I was overcome with sadness as I looked through your special section “A Future Without the Front Page.”
My assumption had been that it was all about the internet taking away readers. But no, that’s not the whole story. That old bugaboo shows its face once again: corporate greed. Conglomerates are draining every last thing of worth from local newspapers and leaving them to die. Capitalism run amok.
It’s an old story. It’s a plague upon this nation.
Kevin Wilcoxon
Indio, Calif.
To the Editor:
My biggest fear with the demise of local newspapers is something that you touch on: corruption. Without local investigative reporting, local politicians and municipalities will have a field day without having to look over their shoulders to see if someone is watching. Online publications have neither the manpower nor the financial muscle to go after the bad guys.
Richard Corso
Oceanside, N.Y.
Source: Read Full Article