Entrepreneurship Versus Philanthropy: Can the Market Fund Innovation?

• In Event: Does Journalism Pay?

Abstract

As the number of news startups has increased and the influence and financial health of mainstream news has grown increasingly precarious, the debate about whether journalism’s future is entrepreneurial or philanthropic has intensified. Answering this question has proven challenging because studies have tended to examine a few organizations at a time, using metrics that aren’t necessarily comparable. This study puts forth a systematic method of examining the finances of news nonprofits to explore how successful they are at garnering entrepreneurial, as opposed to philanthropic, funding. Ultimately I find that few of the news nonprofits have earned meaningful levels of funding from outside of the philanthropic sector.

Author

• Magda Konieczna, Temple U