Alberto Ibargüen: Future of Journalism | The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Last week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted an open forum with Alberto Ibargüen, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The Knight Foundation has supported ProPublica:
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
And Spot.Us:
Spot.Us is ... an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.
Among the topics discussed were the Cardin bill:
With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks. ...
Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.
And the idea of operating newspapers as L3C entities, combining private capital and nonprofit structure.
The L3C is not a nonprofit. It is a for profit venture that under its state charter must have a primary goal of performing a socially beneficial purpose not earning money. The legislation was specifically written to dovetail with the federal IRS regulations relevant to Program Related Investments (PRIs) by foundations. This makes it a perfect vessel for PRI investment without the need for IRS private letter rulings.
