Steve Waldman was the lead author of “Information Needs of Communities: the Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age. He wrote on the Knight blog about the recently released report by the Foundation Center—and supported by the Knight Foundation—on the growth in foundation funding for media.
The Foundation Center’s report on foundation funding of media is crucial, well done, fascinating, often encouraging and occasionally disturbing.
I start with the premise that philanthropy needs to put more money into journalism. By giving both advertisers and readers more choices, the digital revolution has been a boon to some aspects of media (storytelling tools, distribution, publications) and devastating to others (support for labor intensive accountability reporting). In the face of that kind of market failure—one that can have profound effects on the health, safety and well-being of a community—philanthropy must step in. Read the full post.