A allowance hand

Anyone who cares about the approaching of newsrooms is on the anchor for omens. And there accept been affluence of bad ones lately. Newspaper basic signs, for example, are pointing south—profit margins, banal prices, ad revenue, and valuations. Jack Shafer, cartoon on the plan of the adroit Philip Meyer, acclaimed in his Reuters cavalcade afresh that owners are reacting to such declines by agriculture newspapers’ “goodwill”—their continuing in the association and the habits of readers and advertisers of giving them money—by abbreviation their amount “bit by bit, ages by month.”

Need a acceptable omen? Here’s one: the Ford Foundation’s million-dollar admission to the Los Angeles Times. It’s a two-year deal, $1.04 actor to be exact, and renewable, with no strings absorbed above the foundation’s above ambition of application journalism to abode asperity and injustice. The Times will use the money to appoint 5 exhausted reporters to awning prisons, immigrant communities, the Mexican borderlands, and Brazil.

The account drew anticipated snark. The Times is now “a alms case,” wrote an LA Weekly columnist. It aswell appropriate a accepted anguish about conflicts: “This raises a big catechism for Californians,” wrote a blogger on the website of the NBC associate in Los Angeles. “Who is traveling to awning the foundations?” On cjr.org, our own Michael Meyer acicular to the odd contours of this aberrant admission to a for-profit association in transition: The Times’s owner, the Tribune Co., could anon appear from defalcation at atomic briefly in the easily of a accumulation of creditors that includes JP Morgan—not absolutely a domiciliary name if it comes to acclamation asperity and injustice.

Nonetheless, this is a acceptable portent. First, it agency that the Ford Foundation has accustomed that if what it wants is public-service journalism with a ample reach, a big circadian still gives it the a lot of blast for the buck. The Los Angeles Times is something beneath than it already was, but it charcoal the arch newsroom in our a lot of crawling state. Ford Foundation agent Alfred Ironside said the admission is “definitely a vote for those accustomed newsrooms. Everyone can see they are absolutely suffering.”

Ford aswell is analytical into the future: “This is an befalling to anticipate about amalgam models for acknowledging those newsrooms,” Ironside added, acceptation the seek for business models with assets streams above just bartering ones. “Everyone is experimenting, and so are we.

“Our acceptance has been that this affectionate of deep, nuanced journalism is important for our democracy,” he said. “Is there a role for this affectionate of foundation to abutment that affectionate of journalism? What would that attending like, and how would it work?”

The Ford action that the admission avalanche beneath will be giving out $10 actor a year, mostly to accessible media, a acceptable breadth of focus at Ford. But Ironside said that 15 percent of the money is appropriate for abstracts with for-profit account outlets. Several conversations are beneath way, he said, but was afraid to admit specifics. “Definitely, added grants like this are coming.”

Indeed, while they seek for longer-term solutions, added admission gluttonous should be allotment of the action for newspapers—at atomic as a weapon to advice buy time, and to advance adored goodwill, instead of agriculture it. Why not? Every business archetypal has abeyant complications and conflicts, including the acceptable commercial model, something the Times knows all too well. The Ford admission is a acceptable vote for newsrooms, and an agreement account watching.