The Pew Research Center/Knight Foundation held a conference in mid-September that assembled representatives from a number of the news sites as well as funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, to assess how the nonprofits are faring and what can be done to increase support of them from philanthropy, individuals, and sponsors. As of last June, according to a Pew study, there were 174 nonprofit news sites, ranging from such established and nationally known organizations as ProPublica, The Center for Public Integrity, and the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as enterprising regional news sites such as the Texas Tribune and MinnPost. Naturally some start-ups have faltered when money ran out, and others are still too small to be considered viable. But the entrepreneurial success of the most prominent enterprises and their capacity to diversify funding is a vital indicator that the concept of nonprofit, digitally-based news gatherers is gaining traction.

With the quality of the reporting gaining respect (and top-tier prizes, including the Pulitzer), there is inevitably a focus on how to provide the resources to enable the sites to pay their way. At its start, ProPublica received almost all of its $30 million in support from Herbert and Marion Sandler. By last year, the Sandler contribution was only 38 percent of the annual budget, with the balance from foundations and individuals. But to do work on the level of ProPublica is expensive. At my request, Richard Tofel, ProPublica's president, compiled this accounting of the cost of the Tylenol probe:

We conservatively estimate the cost of this coverage at $750,000; it could be more. This covers the reporters, news applications and web developers, editors, video production, social media and PR, travel, legal review, half of the public opinion poll etc. It does NOT include any costs of the work at This American Life.

Clearly, $750,000 is a very expensive story. On the other hand, what price do you suppose a parent with a young, feverish child might put on these disclosures? As a society we have to find the means to underwrite reporting of this magnitude. Of all the funding ideas that are mainly predictable—foundations, sponsored conferences (a particular specialty of the Texas Tribune), annual appeals, donor buttons on the sites—one notion that deserves far more attention than it has received so far came from Steven Waldman, the author of the Federal Communication Commission's massive 2011 study of the country's news media in the broadband era, including "shortfalls in robust accountability journalism." According to a report by Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute, Waldman told the conference that he believes that the tech companies that have grown in scale and revenues to a considerable degree from their distribution of news—Apple, Google, Verizon, AT&T—owe these nonprofit content providers a portion of their massive proceeds. "The winners of the new economy. . . . If they would put just a tiny bit of their wealth into this," Waldman said, serious journalism could thrive.

Waldman’s manifesto is on the money. Technology companies that have earned billions in a relatively few years could well afford to become backers of invaluable journalism that is one of the mainstays of their industry.

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