Thursday, October 01, 2009

No, no, no to ‘non-profit’ newspaper start-ups

Among other things, pay in corner office suites is NOT so “non-profit,” as Jack Shafer notes.

Second, some of these start-ups leaning heavily on student interns means an unfair wage advantage, AND poorer news quality; see here for more.

Third, back to Shafer. Non-profit journalism is at the whims of its donors just as corporate journalism is at the whims of its owners.

Beyond Shafer: Yes, a Talking Points Memo has been successful with fund drives, but despite the Wal-Mart touch, how many readers will pay — and pay and pay and pay — to become “donors” rather than simply subscribing?

In that vein, non-profit papers are no more ready to address the paywall situation than are “old media” newspapers, it seems. And, so, will be not much more successful at new media hoops until they do.

On the other hand, the idea of just letting newspapers die is stupid in general, and is “rich” coming from someone at Newsweek, struggling more than a lot of newspapers.

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