Two business models for newspapers
The traditional newspaper is dying, and two recent opinion articles in the Guardian call for new business models to be implemented.
Bruce Ackerman‘s choice is for national endowments, that would be mainly targeted at investigative journalism, since “Each national endowment would subsidise investigations on a strict mathematical formula based on the number of citizens who actually read their reports on news sites,” Ackerman writes.
Dan Kennedy advocates a change of the law that governs non-profit institutions. According to that law, non-profit institutions can only benefit from a tax-exempt status if they don’t “influence legislation” or “participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates”. Kennedy writes that the law was enacted by a biased Lyndon Johnson and is not compatible with the first amendment. If that part of the law is suppressed, newspapers will be able to apply for non-profit status.