1) The IRS or Congress should change the tax code: Enact changes that would allow and encourage newsrooms to operate either as nonprofit or low-profit organizations. (read more about L3Cs here)
2) Philanthropists and foundations should increase support for newsgathering: Spur charitable support for news organizations of all shapes and sizes and to fund core operations, as well as new and exciting individual projects. (check out our online chat about foundation funding and journalism here.)
3) We should expand public media: We must increase funding and better direct NPR and PBS to focus on local news and accountability journalism. (learn more about Free Press' New Public Media campaign here.)
4) Journalism education is key: Universities should become institutional sources of news reporting. We need to broaden partnerships with universities and colleges and enlist journalism students to contribute to new and traditional models of journalism.
5) The government should establish a fund for local news: Using revenue generated through fees from broadcast licenses and other spectrum uses, the FCC should create a fund to support local news. This would be modeled after the National Endowment for the Arts.
6) We need to increase transparency and access to public information: All sectors of society must work to better collect, disseminate and organize public records and government data, which serves as the foundation for so many important journalism efforts.
Hopefully, this study will shed light on how to rearrange journalism today. A professor once told me, "When electric street lights were invented, fire didn't disappear. The face of electricity just changed." The face of journalism will cahnge, too.
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