{"id":61,"date":"2015-07-03T20:33:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T20:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/?p=61"},"modified":"2015-07-03T20:33:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T20:33:42","slug":"rockefellerization-of-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/2015\/07\/03\/rockefellerization-of-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockefellerization of the News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday morning, May 16<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host<\/strong>: Martin Reynolds, The VOICES Project, Bay Area News Group<\/p>\n<p>Attending: Michael Stoll, SF Public Press<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reynolds<\/strong>: Will explore the acquisition of profitable legacy media outlets by nonprofits. We\u2019ll focus on newspapers in this instance but there could be other opportunities. Get a sense of the research out there. What might be a property ripe for this? It could be big or small.<\/p>\n<p>Planning by June 15 a convening call of interested participants from Pocantico gathering<strong>. <\/strong>In the meantime, we\u2019ll research past proposals for acquisitions by Media Workers Guild and others:<\/p>\n<p>*Speak to key sources who can provide context and director before call:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Community foundations<\/li>\n<li>Media finance consultants<\/li>\n<li>Union people<\/li>\n<li>Tax professionals<\/li>\n<li>Large donors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is really about assessing the viability of this approach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outcomes<\/strong>: Improve the quality of local news by changing the mission from just making money to enrich for-profit companies \u2026 to supporting and sustaining journalism and community information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reynolds<\/strong>: In a specific market that I\u2019m very familiar with, the organization has continued to be profitable even though there have been year-over-year declines. My experience has been with a number of these markets, there is still great opportunity there for viable business if you embrace some of what we\u2019re talking about. There is some real potential there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Michael Stoll<\/strong>: There is the possibility of foundations making program-related investments that would and could be involved in buying a profitable business.\u00a0\u00a0 This has been talked about at different properties. It would be good to survey them to find out why they did not work. Smart people thought about making it almost work and it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Taking the lead on this will be <strong>Martin Reynolds<\/strong>, Senior Editor \u2013 Community Engagement, The VOICES Project, Bay Area News Group; and <strong>Michael Stoll<\/strong>, Executive Director and Editor, San Francisco Public Press<\/p>\n<p>The Pocantico participants <strong>Kevin Davis<\/strong>, formerly of Investigative News Network, <strong>Craig Aaron<\/strong> of FreePress and <strong>Ricardo Sandoval-Palos<\/strong> of the Fund for Investigative Journalism pledged to help with this. <strong>Michelle Garcia<\/strong>, freelance journalist and filmmaker, also agreed to assist where she could in some of the research. There is a nice collective group to explore this.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Who Does What by When? <\/u><\/strong><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Action Steps:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>James Head \u2013 East Bay Community Foundation \u2013 Michael Stoll<\/li>\n<li>Chris McKay \u2013 Ownership Associates &#8211; Finance consultant for media \u2013 Martin Reynolds<\/li>\n<li>Carl Hall \u2013 Martin Reynolds<\/li>\n<li>Mark Carter \u2013 Get contact from Bain Capital<\/li>\n<li>Clint Riley \u2013 Sued the Chronicle twice\n<ol>\n<li>Molly de Aguiar, from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation will talk to folks at the Silicon Valley Foundation on our behalf.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday morning, May 16 Host: Martin Reynolds, The VOICES Project, Bay Area News Group Attending: Michael Stoll, SF Public Press Reynolds: Will explore the acquisition of profitable legacy media outlets by nonprofits. We\u2019ll focus on newspapers in this instance but there could be other opportunities. Get a sense of the research out there. What might [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-session-notes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/pocantico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}