The decision of Washington Post owner/Amazon founder Jeff Bezos not to allow the paper’s editorial board to endorse a presidential candidate has stirred disappointment cum outrage among the paper’s readers — some 250,000 have gone so far as to cancel their subscriptions. Bezos, with the deepest of pockets, was once viewed as the Post’s savior — now he’s the devil in a Blue Origin rocket. His decision has also stirred those with an interest in sustaining local journalism, under dire threat from closing and shrinking newspapers, to propose what they see as an approach better than that of Bezos: not just a willingness to take the risk of losing money but an outright nonprofit model.

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Steven Waldman of the group Rebuild Local News offers details about such an approach: “A foundation or public charity would be created to house the Washington Post. . . . It would have an independent board, committed to its mission of public service journalism and independence.” In such a model, per Waldman, a nonprofit organization would own the newspaper, which itself could operate on a traditional profit/loss model — but this nonprofit could, crucially, also accept charitable donations and funnel funds to the paper.

To be sure, this is not a crazy model — it’s one currently supporting the Philadelphia Inquirer. But any model that relies on charitable — e.g., foundation — support brings with it a key risk: that foundation support would come with ideological strings in a way that a for-profit model, based on appealing to as many readers as possible, does not.

Consider the most significant funding source for nonprofit local journalism, a national philanthropic effort known as Press Forward, started in September, 2023 with $500 million from a core group of identifiably left-of-center foundations: MacArthur, Ford, Knight, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It expresses support, to be sure, for some incontrovertible basics of good local journalism, including “truth, accuracy and independence.” Covering the City Council in the process is pretty important, too, it might be added.

But the Press Forward initiative reveals clear biases much more worrisome than the alleged financial conflicts of interest that Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest persons, has related to Washington Post stories. Consider its April 2024 “open call” for applications for support from local-news organizations.

“For this open call, Press Forward is prioritizing organizations that are producing and delivering news and information to underserved audiences such as communities of color, linguistically diverse communities, low-wealth rural communities, and others not adequately served, reached or represented,” it reads. This language is consistent with the organization’s founding goals to “enable growth with equity and diversity of thought” and “to close longstanding inequities in media ownership, philanthropy, and journalism, so the future of local news in America is more relevant and better serves all communities, especially those that have been historically marginalized in media and democracy.”

This is funding à la NPR, of whom MacArthur is a long-time supporter as part of its interest in a “just, verdant and peaceful world.” Funding for causes is antithetical to serious journalism.

No serious newspaper should ever ignore any potential readers. Indeed, in my time as a general-assignment reporter, circa 1973, for the Middletown (NY) Times-Herald Record, I won my spurs, after my probationary period, by covering the travails of migrant laborers in the Hudson Valley’s “black dirt” onion fields, controversies over subsidized housing, and a performance for the local black gospel group’s anniversary. Good reporters look for good stories — whether about the factory’s workers or the factory’s owner.

But attaching strings to financial support in the allegedly fairer-minded nonprofit model ignores a key aspect of advertising-supported, for-profit traditional newspapers: the search for as many readers of any and all backgrounds as possible, not a sliver of the population interested in news with a selective focus. Press Forward may think it’s correcting for historical bias — but it’s actually introducing bias at the risk of ignoring what draws so many readers, from high-school sports to the advent of new local businesses.

Not surprisingly, Jeff Bezos, now demonized for not tilting the Post editorial page to the left, understands all that, as made clear in his statement justifying his non-endorsement decision. In light of his astounding business acumen and success, his rationale bears a close reading. Of newspapers, he wrote pointedly:

Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Financial support predicated on a specific worldview — it’s hard not to call Press Forward’s hardcore DEI — will simply not increase that credibility. Nor will a nonprofit model per se.

That more than 3,000 newspapers have closed over the past 20 years — most recently the storied Newark Star-Ledger — has without doubt created a local information vacuum. But filling it with quasi-journalistic propaganda is no substitute for news. We await a new, for-profit, likely digital model — but should not turn away from the market in misguided haste.