Options Do Exist

The failures of corporate, consolidated media are on display everywhere. Despite massive consolidation, these behemoths still can't seem to turn a profit.

But big media says "just let us consolidate some more--then everything will be fine--we'll make lots of money, and then PRESTO! The inevitable result will be some excellent journalism."

So, we are presented with only one option--the corporate media. There is no other way, we are told.

Well, not so much. Non-profit journalism is on the rise, big time. From the Christian Science Monitor:

There's freedom in not having to worry about making every possible reader happy, says managing editor Roger Buoen, formerly with the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. In his previous job, his bosses were preoccupied with attracting "readers who don't read the paper," he says. "If you had complicated stories, there were a few strikes against them off the bat."
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Meanwhile, in New York, a new nonprofit investigative-journalism organization is hiring about 25 full-time journalists to look at "people and institutions in our society that have power and have abused it, or have been entrusted with the public trust and have not lived up to it," says its general manager Richard Tofel.

Supported by philanthropic groups, ProPublica plans to hire veteran journalists – it is led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger – and offer its stories free to media outlets.

The project will help stave off the newspaper decline that threatens "a real loss to the health of our democracy," said Rebecca Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts and a member of ProPublica's board of directors in a statement reflecting the motives of many philanthropists who are funding such ventures.

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Options do exist, so try not to listen to the corporate media echo chamber.

Full article here.