The GIJC had the honour of starting the day with a presentation from Stephen Engelberg, managing editor of the non-profit media organisation, ProPublica. The session sought to discuss ProPublica’s structure as perhaps a possible future business model for investigative journalism. However, with contributions from David Kaplan and Brant Houston, it is still very much apparent that there remains a big question mark as to future journalism business models, and how and where investigative journalism will take place.
ProPublica
Engelberg begins by explaining that before one can even begin to discuss ProPublica’s case, it is important to know that in American law, you can receive a tax deduction when donating money to non-profit organisations. This in itself is already an enticing tool for prospective donors and supporters. Then comes the question of business: how will it run? Where will they find the revenue? Well ProPublica has been extremely fortunate in that it received revenue from an American couple that offered the following guarantee: that they would not interfere in any way with editorial content. Lucky and rare. But as Engelberg points out, no matter how generous or wealthy a donor is, you must not be dependent on a single revenue.
Key philosophies
- Pro Publica’s aim is to create distinctive and important journalism. To find stories that generates change. There is a hunger for quality, in-depth journalism; however there is a problem of funding. How can this be solved?
- Hybrid funding by looking for various streams of revenue and small donations
- Possible future advertising revenue for the web, though one wants to be careful about what advertising they take, so as not to become too dependent.
- “Steal our stories”: every story on the site can be used by any other publication as long as it is published in its entirety, as it is available under the Creative Commons License, free of charge.
- Keeping the website dynamic with current and fresh information, as well as larger, in-depth reports.
Future predictions
Engelberg expressed an uncertainty about the future. He stated the following: « I have the conviction that journalists are really quite good at describing the distant past. The further we get from the past, the better of a chance we get to understand it. Yet, we are mediocre in chronicling what is happening in the present, and even worse at predicting the future. » There remains then a concern about the sustainability of non-profit organization as journalism business models, but Engelberg remains optimistic. In this digital age, « there very much is a future in internet journalism. » We are in the midst of a new delivery system. What then remains to be seen is how will this shape future journalism and how will the web affect the press.