paidContent - New York Times Considering Foundation Funding?
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
Is The New York Times considering taking money from foundations to fund its news ops? So says Craig Whitney, AME at the Times, in an interview with Poynter’s Bill Mitchell. I highly doubt this is an officially sanctioned view within NYTCo (NYSE: NYT), as the move, as the company is currently structured, is fraught with various political and financial pitfalls. Even if it does, it might be a separate structure on the lines of ProPublica, where funding something that would then feed into NYT, and even then probably not exclusively.
Whitney’s quote: “We’ve begun to ask ourselves whether it would be possible to get the kind of support that NPR does from foundations for its journalism…[but they] haven’t reached any conclusions and we haven’t gone to any foundations.” Which is probably what it will be for a while. Unless the ownership changes hands. This comes the same week that Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson told their staff in a memo that they would be able to manage the $1 billion debt the company is under.
By Rafat Ali