[Gabe Schneider in Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism, 2025]

This is important:

"It’s not so much a prediction as a necessity: We must abandon publications and platforms that fail to center our values in favor of newsrooms that actually care for us, our families, our neighbors, and our future.

We are living in a system where our information needs are increasingly being sidelined due to shrinking newsrooms. What we’re left with now is a false choice: Many of the newspapers and platforms that remain are run at the behest of people with a minimal understanding of and interest in the success of our day to day lives."

Because the news industry has experienced (a word that is carrying a lot of water here) failed business model after failed business model, it's come down to rich people sweeping in to save it because they either believe in its importance or want to be seen as good. That's as true in non-profit journalism as it is for publications like the Washington Post.

This call to action for a course correction away from information controlled by the ultra-wealthy is spot on, but it has a prerequisite of the money coming from somewhere else. Many foundations are also effectively the ultra-wealthy funneling money into publications.

So how can newsrooms be genuinely independent? It comes down to not putting your eggs in one basket, increasing individual support as much as possible, making revenue-generating partnerships where they make sense, and becoming profitable by any means necessary. The Guardian has done a pretty good job of this, and as much as The New York Times is ridiculed for it, its games strategy probably does actually make a ton of sense.

"Whether the future is stronger union-run newsrooms or news cooperatives or nonprofits or even significantly more government investment in news, I won’t prescribe."

The form of the organization matters, yes (I think unions, co-operatives, and nonprofits are all great, for the record), but this is in some ways a parallel conversation to who is actually going to pay for it all.

#Media

[Link]