Fascinating history. What do you make of journalism funded through grants and philanthropy ? I interned somewhere called the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK on one of their local journalism stories. I’m curious about such funding for journalism, as I found that it *still* ultimately lends itself to bias around what stories are given attention and how, as the philanthropy is often issues-based. But perhaps this also depends on the donor.
There’s never really a perfect form of funding that is completely separated from content decisions, and the work of journalists is basically to be aware of those structural biases and think about how best to mitigate them. Ultimately I don’t think it’s a bad thing because a lot of times it’s going to be funding investigative work that has lost most of its other sources of economic support.
Fascinating history. What do you make of journalism funded through grants and philanthropy ? I interned somewhere called the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK on one of their local journalism stories. I’m curious about such funding for journalism, as I found that it *still* ultimately lends itself to bias around what stories are given attention and how, as the philanthropy is often issues-based. But perhaps this also depends on the donor.
There’s never really a perfect form of funding that is completely separated from content decisions, and the work of journalists is basically to be aware of those structural biases and think about how best to mitigate them. Ultimately I don’t think it’s a bad thing because a lot of times it’s going to be funding investigative work that has lost most of its other sources of economic support.