Rebuilding Media in the Private Sector

Since posting one of my most popular columns ever here at BNET on Thursday, commenting on the layoffs at NPR, I have been flooded, ironically, with comments and inquiries about whether a possible solution to the current catastrophe sweeping traditional media might just be the non-profit business model employed by companies like public broadcasting.

According to several of the media execs I’ve spoken to in the past 48 hours, this growing interest in the non-profit model is due to the frustration they feel as they endure the downward spiral of their newspaper, magazine, television and radio companies. One longtime newspaper exec stated: “Nobody wants to change, really, until they have to, but now we do.” Another said “When I really looked at the nonprofit model, I got really excited, for the first time in a long time.”

I’m sorry to rain on this parade, but I disagree. To be sure, there is a place for nonprofit media, and I’ve devoted much of my energy throughout my career to helping establish and strengthen these institutions. But the U.S. is driven by private enterprise; therefore, the main engine rebuilding this industry must come from the private sector.

As wonderful as the work done by non-profits may be, we also need entreprenuerial busineses that can attract the capital necessary to build profitable businesses devoted to informing the public. That’s what my quest as a blogger is all about. How can we establish new, profitable companies?

If I felt that non-profits were the sole answer, I’d be posting elsewhere. This space is about inventing new business plans, pure and simple. Although the nonprofit model can produce great journalism, witness NPR,  a political economy such as ours will need more than that to thrive.

My renewed commitment to you, dear reader, is to explore the most creative business plans I can discover that might help rebuild our media sector, even as the old models fail and fall away from relevance.