Message me
The Chicago News Cooperative, in conjunction with WTTW, will produce local content for the New York Times, beginning next month.
New non-profit news org signs on with New York Times
mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com - 4 weeks ago - 471 views
16 Comments Have your say. Vote up the best responses. ↓
Reactions on the web
Latest tweets linking to this story (Share url: http://windycitizen.com/weDm)
Latest tweets linking to this story (Share url: http://windycitizen.com/weDm)
Invite your friends
Top Media Stories This Week
1
Comments
Here's Phil Rosenthal's post about the same story. He adds a few more details about funding and background for the people who are involved in this initiative.
Sounds like my kinda guy --
Oh my stars and garters!
Well it appears we know who'll be writing this new NYTimes section now, eh?
This is big news. I heard this was brewing back at a conference in May but was not aware of the wattage of the people involved.
Choice bits:
O'Shea is currently on the board of Creative Loafing. It'll be interesting to see if the Reader gets involved in some way.
I wonder if this means the Trib won't be involved with the new group.
And from the Tribune piece John links to above:
More sites popping up every day...good thing there's a place to get the highlights...
Am I missing something, but is this not just Trib refugees who got the MacArthur Foundation to give them money to basically keep doing the same stuff they were doing before, only now on a quasi-freelance basis?
I'm not saying it's a bad idea - looks very interesting in fact - only that it's not super-innovative. The secret sauce looks like big shot connections to deep pocketed foundations.
That's exactly what this is! These are the heavy hitters and high rollers in Chicago who've been looking for a third act. Looks like they found one in teaming up with the NYTimes.
How big of a snub to the Tribune is this?
Maybe we don't need innovation so much as just a fresh start without tons of debt and bankruptcy hanging around their necks.
John Cook at Gawker has a somewhat different take: New York Times Hires Gang Who Killed Chicago Tribune to Kill Tribune
That's cold.
This guy's a poet:
He also sounds incredibly bitter.
His thesis about the Tribune sucking is irrefutably true. The voice of the suburbs indeed!
I don't get this criticism of the Tribune.
Do you yell at a dog for not being a cat?
The Trib's always been about telling people in the suburbs what's happening in and around the city.
If you want real city news, pick up the Sun-Times or the Reader. I don't understand why this Gawker guy's so irate about who's reading the paper. Sounds like an elitist twit with a larger vocabulary that me.
Anybody with a bird's eye view on this thing that's clearer than mine care to comment upon the whole non-profit angle of this whole deal?
Is it because traditional investors don't have access to credit and capital like they used to, and these massive foundations are the only ones with money to spend these days?
Does this foretell a higher level of charitable involvement in the production and dissemination of news, as the capitalist model does yet appear to be sustainable, nor may it ever sustain the same level qualitatively and quantitatively as the news business did in the heyday?
If the rest of the nonprofit world is anything to go by, any "higher level of charitable involvement in the production and dissemination of news" will be short-lived, and leave those dependent on foundation largesse high and dry just about the time the agency is showing signs of getting off the ground. The capitalist model may not be sustainable, but the nonprofit model definitely isn't--at least not when "nonprofit" is confused with "having access to huge foundation bucks." Foundations 1) are now taking the hit from last year's recession, and will spend less money accordingly, and 2) have the attention span of fruit-flies.
Nonprofits have never had access to capital, which is why they consume human capital instead. If nonprofits and for-profits are on a level playing field now, it's only because the for-profits are suddenly as isolated from credit and market support as the nonprofits have always been.
The most interesting model I've heard proposed is one not for newspapers but for theater companies. A wise managing director has proposed adopting the Community-Supported Agriculture model, in which consumers become the source of working and growth capital in return for "reaping a harvest" of whatever the agency provides--new plays, or advocacy, or--serious journalism?
I speak here not as a freelance journalist but as the Nonprofiteer, with 20-plus years' experience in that benighted sector.
Welcome to the WC! Smart people talk about local stuff on here. If you're this Kelly Kleiman then we're thrilled to have you aboard.
Your point about nonprofits not having access to financial capital....and so living off of human capital strikes a chord. Don't pro news organizations employ tons of interns as well? Or are you thinking more of broad swaths of volunteers? How might volunteers help a news org?
The non-profit model seems pretty iffy for newsgathering to me as well. In order to be secure, to attract good people, and to grow, you need to be making real money providing a service that offers true value to people.
One documentary explored organic co-operative farming & demonstrated that a refreshed approach can become commercially successful by recruiting consumers to purchase their food with sweat equity.
Windy Citizens, help me with the Netflix movie's title,
Fortunately for the Community-Supported Agricultural model, people actually need food in order to survice. The product being offered by these farms is a special brand of a human necessity.
News on the other hand, at least the sort of journalism that I assume we're talking about, strikes me as a special brand of a luxury.
Can you continue breathing without updates on how your leaders are doing? Sure.
So how does the food model translate over? What would that actually look like for a news org?
Post new comment