George Soros' Media Conspiracy

Before the FCC approved Comcast's purchase of NBC Universal earlier this month, it strongly suggested to Comcast that as the new owner of 10 local NBC affiliates, it should invest in partnerships with nonprofit news organizations such as Voice of San Diego.

Comcast agreed. But now some conspiracy theorists have cooked up an even better story as to who was behind the deal. Turns out, it was none other than financier/philanthropist George Soros -- or so we are told by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

He writes:

There’s just one problem with this: Voice of San Diego is a member of INN (Investigative News Network) which is funded by the Open Society Institute, the URL of which is “www.soros.org.” Yes, these “non-profit” journalism centers are funded by George Soros. ... People who have an economic interest in the fall of the American economic system ... are completely free to invest in newsrooms but they are not free to cut a deal with the FCC to have the inclusion of their group be a mandate for a merger.

If it sounds like some important context is missing from this statement, that's because it is. Nothing in the FCC order requires Comcast to partner with INN members or any other specific nonprofit news organization.

Breitbart also fails to mention that INN members get funding from a wide range of funders, including libertarian groups. The catch: Contrary to Breitbart's claim, the funders don't get to dictate what is covered and how. It's an important distinction, one that separates journalism from public relations. It's a simple concept, but apparently not one that Breitbart is intellectually capable of making.

Consider the source: Breitbart may be best known for doctoring a video of Shirley Sherrod, the former Georgia director for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to make it appear that she was practicing reverse discrimination against white farmers. Earlier this month, Sherrod sued Breitbart for defamation.

Comcast's Christmas Present To Nonprofits

It won't come as a surprise to many when, later this month, the Federal Communications Commission approves Comcast's plan to buy NBC Universal and the 10 local affiliates that the network owns.

But when the order comes out, look for a late Christmas present from Comcast: As first reported by The New York Times, the cable giant will lay out an ambitious plan to partner with nonprofit news organizations in at least five communities in which NBC owns stations (see the list below) for at least three years.

In a letter to the FCC sent two days before Christmas, Comcast spelled out some of the details of its plan. The partnerships, Comcast said, would include "story development, sharing of news footage and other content resources, financial support, in-kind contributions, shared use of technical facilities and personnel, on-air opportunities, promotional assistance, and cross-linking/embedding of websites."

Notably absent was any formal commitment of financial resources. But those kinds of specifics are likely to be forthcoming, assuming the FCC approves the deal. As Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice told me Tuesday evening: "Look for the order when it comes out. There will probably more detail in there."

The partnerships are an attempt to respond to the hollowing out of local TV newsrooms as the broadcast affiliate model continues to crumble. Comcast says it is committed to "hyperlocalism," which it defines as "local news, local public affairs, and other public interest programming," and to providing "free, over-the-air broadcast service" through the 10 NBC-owned affiliates.

The letter goes on to explain that the partnerships would be modeled after the working relationship between nonprofit voiceofsandiego.org and KNSD, the NBC-owned affiliate in San Diego. That partnership began as an informal sharing agreement in 2006 and since has grown to include some financial support from KNSD, as Scott Lewis, CEO of voiceofsandiego.org, explains in an interview with Investigative News Network.

Lewis is cautiously optimistic about what could develop. The arrangement with KNSD works so well, he said, because it is built on relationships and trust that have evolved over time. And he notes that while the model cannot be thrust on unwilling or uninterested parties, it certainly can be replicated by those who see its potential.

"By investing in it, if it worked, it could be a mutually beneficial innovation," Lewis told me in an email. "Public gets better more in-depth stories and fact checks on local news like the ones we help with. And NBC is able to make it at least pay for itself. And then groups like ours can have it as part of their portfolio of distributors for our content, which is then just one part of our revenue portfolio."

Indeed, there is precedent for cooperation beyond San Diego. Texas Tribune, for example, has cooperated with KHOU in Houston, lending out its reporters to discuss public affairs stories. And in the print arena, ProPublica has established relationships with newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. As Lewis notes, the key for nonprofits is getting partners to see the value in supporting the nonprofit as a community asset.

Whether Comcast will commit real resources to the partnerships remains to be seen, but indications are that it will -- if only because it must do so to win FCC approval of its NBC deal. Some data points:

* Through its Future of Media initiative, the FCC has expressed a strong interest in fostering new models for underwriting public-affairs journalism.
* Notably, it was the FCC -- not Comcast -- that contacted Lewis to learn about the relationship with KNSD.
* The Dec. 23 letter from Comcast lays out a detailed plan for reporting to the FCC every six months for three years on how well the partnerships are faring -- not the kind work most companies take on unless they have to.

Does it matter whether it took some nudging from the FCC for Comcast to recognize the gem of a partnership it will gain in San Diego? Or that as NBC's new owner, it can help build an innovative, private-sector response to the decline of local public affairs reporting? Not at all. A gift is a gift, regardless of any ulterior motive, and Comcast's offering could well become a model for others to emulate.

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NBC owned and operated stations:
KNBC Los Angeles
KNSD San Diego
KNTV San Jose
KXAS Fort Worth
WCAU Philadelphia
WMAQ Chicago
WNBC New York
WRC Washington DC
WTVJ Miami
WVIT Hartford-New Haven

A Modest Proposal For (De-)Funding NPR

Shortly after the November midterm election, resurgent House Republicans proposed cutting funding to National Public Radio -- which incoming Speaker John Boehner called "a left-wing radio network" -- by forbidding local stations from using government funding to buy NPR programs.

It was a ham-fisted approach inspired by NPR's firing of commentator Juan Williams and it went down on Nov. by a vote of 239-171 with lame duck Democrats helping provide the big margin of defeat. No doubt, NPR will be a target again once the new Congress is sworn in. So how can NPR -- which in actuality gets the much of its funding through various forms of philanthropy and sponsorship -- make its case for government support?

Like Boehner, a lot of Republicans think NPR is biased against them, despite evidence to the contrary. But maybe the real problem is one of constituency. Maybe Republicans don't feel like they have much at stake in sustaining NPR.

If that's the case, maybe they're right.

NPR doesn't get funding directly from the federal government. Member stations receive grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent nonprofit that distributes federal money to public broadcasters, and that was the pressure point of the Republican proposal. Those stations pay fees to NPR for programming and technical services, which together account for about half of NPR's annual revenues.

Each grant is considered on its own merits. But when all those grants are added up by state, a clear pattern emerges: Some states get a lot less than others on a per-capita basis. And if you look at a list of the have-nots of the CPB grant system -- the 20 states that got less than $4 million apiece in 2009 -- the list includes 12 of the 22 states that John McCain won in the 2008 presidential election. In other words, the issue might be that Republican-leaning states don't have as much at stake. So if Republican members of Congress go after NPR, they are unlikely to suffer political consequences.

So here's a modest proposal for the incoming Republican House majority: With $478.8 million in grants in 2009, CPB represents less than a rounding error in the nation's $1 trillion-plus deficit, and any proposal to de-fund CPB is certain to be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. So why try to kill it? Instead, why not reallocate CPB money in a way that benefits Republicans and their districts?

It wouldn't be hard at all. House Republicans could devise a new formula that allocates CPB money to states according to the number of people who voted for McCain in 2008, a big Democratic year. Such a formula would go a long way to help places that arguably could use additional boost for local media. Alabama, for example, would get more than twice as with big funding increases include Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina. And if they don't like the programming that NPR is sending them, they have the leverage of their increased grant money to demand change.

I'm not a big fan of government funding of journalism. But the fact of the matter is that government subsidies are everywhere -- from CPB grants to favorable mailing rates and tax deductions for individuals' grants to 501(c)3 organizations such as the Franklin Center. If Republicans really want to cut government funding of journalism, they have a lot more work to do than "executing" NPR, as GOP elder statesman Pat Buchanan suggests. Until then, they shouldn't kid themselves about what they would accomplish by blocking NPR's public revenue stream.

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Public Media "Have-Nots": The 20 states with the lowest CPB grant totals in 2009

Rhode Island $774,711
Wyoming $982,129 *
Maine $1,582,392
Montana $1,623,470 *
South Dakota $1,636,221 *
Vermont $1,693,422
West Virginia $2,192,000 *
Idaho $2,192,525 *
Mississippi $2,225,238 *
New Hampshire $2,227,215
Hawaii $2,522,417
Connecticut $2,834,282
Alabama $2,887,913 *
Arkansas $2,952,858 *
Oklahoma $3,146,341 *
Nevada $3,184,697
Kansas $3,356,566 *
North Dakota $3,386,257 *
South Carolina $3,513,303 *

* denotes state won by McCain in 2008

Source: Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Andy Alexander's Wake-Up Call

Nonprofit news organizations got yet another wake-up call Sunday morning from Washington Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander.

In his regular column today about an environmental story produced by the Center for Public Integrity, he took Post editors to task for publishing the story without telling readers what CPI is and why the Post is publishing its work.

More than a dozen readers simply hadn't heard of CPI, Alexander wrote. But one reader he cited by name -- Douglas H. Green of Washington, D.C. -- took issue with CPI. Green said CPI "often gives a biased, anti-business view on environmental topics," according to Alexander.

What's troubling here is that although CPI has a 20-year track record of excellence, and although Alexander's own investigation found that the story had been thoroughly vetted by Post editors, the Post's failure to explain itself and CPI to readers opens it to accusations of bias from readers who have their own interests to protect.

As we learn from Alexander's column, Green is a lawyer who represents electric utilities on environmental issues. As it so happens, the story, entitled "Obama administration gives billions in stimulus money without environmental safeguards," names electric utilities that got stimulus money for job-creating projects while also being granted "exemptions from a basic form of environmental oversight."

Are these companies among Green's clients? Quite possibly. It might be that Green has some skin in the game and in fact is the party that harbors a biased view of the issue. We don't know because that information isn't disclosed, either.

But we do know that accusations of bias -- whether because of funder pressures or reporters' own political views -- remains one of the great, nagging criticisms of nonprofit news organizations. To protect themselves, and indeed, to remain viable news providers for the long haul, they and their publishing partners among legacy media need to do a better job of explaining how the model works and why it benefits readers.

RIP, New Mexico Independent

On Wednesday, the New Mexico Independent ceased operations after its parent organization, the American Independent News Network, ran out of money to keep the online publication going. By all accounts, the Independent was aggressive in covering state government, and its presence will be missed.

But the lesson here is one of the importance of building a sustainable model -- and how hard that is to achieve. The Independent, which has eight sister publications still operating in states from Colorado to North Carolina, ran out of money in part because it had received grants from supporting foundations on a year-to-year basis, according to David Bennhehaum, president and CEO of the American Independent News Network.

Here's part of what he said to the New Mexico Business Weekly:

Bennehaum concedes one problem with the business model was that the creators of the network only secured one-year commitments from foundations for what was a multi-year project. Many of those commitments expired in the first quarter of 2009 — right after the financial meltdown in fall 2008. As a result, many funders were not in a position to recommit.

Ouch.

Could Bennehaum have anticipated the impact of a downturn in the economy? Maybe. Should he have insisted on multi-year commitments such as the rolling, three-year, $10 million-a-year commitment the Sandler Foundation has made to ProPublica? Again, maybe. But had he done so, he probably never would have gotten off the ground.

Nonprofits Among The ONA Finalists

Congrats to the many nonprofits named among the finalists for the Online News Association's 2010 Online Journalism Awards. They cleared out all competitors in the general excellence, micro- and small-site categories, and placed one of three finalists in each of the medium- and large-site categories.

Here are the highlights:

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Micro Site
* California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting
* Gotham Gazette
* St. Louis Beacon

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Small Site
* ProPublica
* The Texas Tribune | texastribune.org
* voiceofsandiego.org

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium Site
* Mother Jones

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Large Site
* NPR: NPR.ORG

Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism, Small Site
* The Center for Public Integrity: Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice
* ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Frontline: Law and Disorder
* voiceofsandiego.org: Out of Reach

Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism, Large Site
* NPR, ProPublica, Frontline: Brain Wars: How the Military is Failing the Wounded

Do-It-Yourself Nonprofit Journalism

At last: A comprehensive tool kit for those interested in starting their own nonprofit news sites, courtesy of Brant Houston, Andy Hall and the Knight Citizen News Network.

The best thing about the tool kit may be the advice that comes with it -- things like taking time to assess whether you're really up for all the work and frustration that comes with launching a new enterprise. And some great tips, like finding another 501c3 to act as fiscal agent.

Brant and Andy clearly put a lot of time, energy and passion into this project. Kudos for a great job.