Papers look for patrons

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who covers religion for National Public Radio, is a superb reporter. Hagerty, who previously covered legal affairs, is a probing questioner and a good storyteller.

Millions of people get the benefit of her reporting because of a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The grant pays Hagerty's salary, one of several beats at NPR funded by philanthropy.

"If it weren't for the foundations, we wouldn't have the diversity of beats we have," said Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR, which is a nonprofit. NPR, not the foundations, decides which stories to cover, she said. Fifteen percent of NPR's budget comes from gifts from donors. "It's a very, very major part of the funding piece for us," Schiller said.

As the NPR case shows, foundations already play a role in financing journalism. But such funding has been rare at daily newspapers. About 40 people from across the country gathered at Duke University this week to talk about how nonprofits might play a larger role in underwriting journalism at daily newspapers.

Last year, nearly 6,000 newsroom jobs disappeared in the United States. The cuts have continued this year, including 27 jobs at The N&O last month.

For the most part, newspapers don't have a readership problem. At The N&O, our readership in the Triangle is higher than ever, counting print and online. That's true for many newspapers. "It's not the journalism that's the issue," said Lauren Rich Fine, a former analyst for Merrill Lynch who was at the Duke conference.

The issue is a sharp drop in advertising. At most papers, about 20 percent of revenue comes from newspaper sales. The rest comes from advertising. Classified advertising used to provide nearly 50 percent. Much of that business has migrated to the Internet. Then the recession hit, and many other advertisers pulled back.

That's where the discussion about foundations picks up. Jay Hamilton is an economist and director of Duke's DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy. Hamilton says newspapers provide a public good often without receiving compensation.

For example, coverage of public schools can lead to a higher quality of education. But residents get that benefit whether they buy the paper or not. "Nonprofits may have a role to play in helping to correct this market failure," Hamilton said.

As newspapers struggle to develop new sources of revenue, we might look toward the public radio model. At The N&O, we've experimented with taking money from outside groups.

Last summer, a science foundation paid for a reporting intern. This year, the Association for Women in Sports Media will pay for a reporting intern. We also will have an intern and a year-long reporting fellow financed by the Collegiate Network, an association of independent college newspapers that says most of its papers, but not all, lean right.

In each of these cases, the money comes with no strings attached; we choose the interns and the stories they work on.

I might ask foundations to fund a science reporter, a beat that has gone unfilled at The N&O for two years. As long as we make the editorial decisions and tell you about the funding, this could provide quality reporting for The N&O, as it has for NPR.

The more reporters on the street (or in the lab, the courts or the classroom), the better.

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