![]() ![]() You do have the option and the opportunity of contributed revenue, which you don’t in a regular business. And what you might have sent to the Knight family or the Chandlers or the Sulzbergers or whoever, you simply reinvest in the business. Because you take a really well run business, make it not about shareholders-because it doesn’t have to be about shareholders to be really well run-it can just simply be logically run as a business. We’ve directly or indirectly funded literally hundreds of experiments, mainly in not-for-profit local news which, if run right, has a lot of possibility. What business models do you see working in the future? It’s a question of a model that can sustain local news. You end up with a situation where you get people like George Santos in Long Island.īack to your question: do I believe the crisis is financial, as in a crisis in the business-absolutely. You end up with a train crash that’s begging to happen in this democracy. The number of news deserts started out in the dozens-and now there are hundreds. It’s documented in the work that we funded at UNC’s, now being done out of Northwestern. And, in many, many hundreds of American communities, that work is not being done. And frankly, as much as I feel for them because they are friends of mine and I’ve worked with them for decades-in terms of the democracy, the critical issue is not whether they have a job, but whether the work is being done whether the information is being relayed. Just look at the tens of thousands of reporters who no longer have jobs. The work that used to be done to report on local activity is work that is simply not being done. Now most of us get news on instruments and applications that are not geographically based. That was true for school boards, for local government, for national government. And up until maybe 20 years ago, we have had an entire history of American government where local information was coupled to the geography of the electorate. You elect people by the city boundaries and you elect people by congressional districts. That’s what gerrymandering is all about-at least, it is a manifestation of this fact. We elect people by geographically defined districts. Is today’s world a more dangerous place for journalists? Can you say more about why you think this is happening? It does seem like many folks don’t trust traditional news and are turning to alternative, maybe dubious sources. The national shouting matches on cable news that we see nightly are talked about as if they were the same as investigative reports. Meanwhile, the crowd has moved from reliance on the local paper to news as entertainment. The only news operations that are really thriving are those that have a national product, and they’re easy enough to count because it only takes one hand! It’s the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, whose subject matter fits the nature of a technology that was once called the World Wide Web.īending that World Wide Web to local use has really been extraordinarily difficult. We have lost the ability to sustain local news operations. And that’s what Knight Foundation has been focused on for the last dozen or so years. If lack of funding means a lack of a business model that sustains journalism, then I totally agree. We’d have to discuss what lack of funding means. A recent Muck Rack survey of journalists found that the biggest problem facing reporters these days is disinformation and lack of funding. First of all, congrats on this great honor. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Northeastern Global News sat down with Ibargüen to discuss the future of journalism. Northeastern recognized his contributions over the weekend by awarding him with an honorary doctorate during commencement. Under his direction, the Miami Herald earned three Pulitzer Prizes. Prior to his time at the Knight Foundation, Ibargüen served as publisher of the Knight Ridder newspapers in Miami. A visionary philanthropist, Ibargüen used the foundation’s multibillion-dollar endowment to reimagine daily journalism and the arts in the digital age. Knight Foundation, has been at the forefront of the search for a workable business model to reinvent news. Steep revenue decline brought on by technological change-from the advent of the internet and social media, to the arrival of smartphones and now AI-has destabilized newspapers, leading to far less coverage of critical issues in communities across the U.S.Īlberto Ibargüen, who recently announced his retirement as president and CEO of the John S. It’s no secret that journalism as an industry has changed dramatically over the last few decades. ![]()
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