Raising Money for the Future of Journalism

Thank you for the most helpful background here. (“Industry Insight: Fight for Survival Will Push More For-profit Toward Philanthropy,” May 2020) Here is my thinking on profits. Freedom of the press is profit dependent. I recall the story of the Washington

Post, and I think it may have been the Pentagon Papers or perhaps some aspect of Watergate. In any event, the ad department told the publisher, whose personal fortune was the newspaper, that if the paper ran with the story it would cost the Post $500,000 or perhaps even $1 million. Numbers don’t matter. The response is what matters. Still, I think. “Fortunately, we can afford that.” In the heyday of newspaper profitability, it was a $60 billion national industry, with a 40 percent, give or take, profit margin, reproduction, distribution and overhead of at least 50 percent, leaving the newsrooms with 10 percent of the $60 billion. I figure $6 billion. But, let’s be generous. Make it $10 billion.

So, the challenge is straight forward. How to raise $10 billion for America’s newsrooms and another $10 billion in profits to indemnify the newsrooms from external challenges. Without advertising, the external challenge indemnification can be cut to $5 billion in profits. So, would a household be willing to spend $29.99 a month for universal access to all of the newsrooms in America for each of their household members?...one requirement would be to instantly make paper news publishing a separate service at an additional price, though it should be at cost. The future may be a newspaper printed on a home printer that could be read with Apple Glass or the like. The future is going to be amazing. But the core question is how to raise at least $15 billion annually for America’s newsrooms. And can this be done with digital subscriptions totally independent of advertising? BILL GARBER Submitted on editorandpublisher.com