Leftists all over the world are frantically trying to find a way to fund newspapers now that consumers have abandoned them. It’s for the good of the country, democracy and the Free World, you see. There was talk of government bailouts until everyone rolled over laughing. Then there’s the non-profit model, wherein leftist foundations fund our traditional leftist investigative reporting. Of course they don’t see any of this as leftist, liberal or biased. It’s just normal. It’s what journalism should be.
But there’s been another idea: Create a national endowment for journalism:
On the private side, there have been calls for charities to endow newspapers or to subsidise political reporting. On the public side, the success of the BBC and American Public Broadcasting provides a paradigm that might be extended to the print media.
There is a third way out. We urge democracies throughout the world to consider the creation of national endowments for journalism that are carefully designed to confront the impending collapse of investigative reporting.
Expect the “national endowment” solution to gather momentum among the conflict-of-interest press, but don’t expect it to improve journalism any more than it improved the arts.
