There is a silent crisis afflicting our democracy: the implosion of journalism as we have known it. Its most obvious symptom is the tens of thousands of journalists who have lost their jobs in the last decade. Those jobs were never refilled. Economists may call this destruction of traditional journalism “creative” but it is nothing less than a pressing matter of national security.
Nonprofits have been touted as a possible alternative to the collapsing business models of for-profit news. But a study released last week by the Pew Research Center points to the fragility of that model and also to the need for a more concerted effort to shore it up. The study identified 172 nonprofit news outlets throughout the U.S. – two-thirds of these were launched only since the 2008 financial crisis. While the recession has accelerated the closure of newspapers and the downsizing of news staffs throughout the country, it has given rise to a boom in nonprofit news.
