Making Nonprofit News examines the essence of nonprofit journalism on multiple levels of analysis, explaining how individuals, routines, organizational makeup and outside institutions all affect news production at nonprofit news organizations. The book argues that the market model itself – not simply the journalism industry – impacts news workers, news content and outside influence on the organization. Essentially, nonprofit journalism organizations are influenced by forces consistently impacting the industry as well as those previously not involved in journalism. Drawing on three years of in-depth interviews with more than 30 journalists at nonprofits, site visits and more broad research on nonprofit journalism, this book is a sociological study of how nonprofit status affects journalistic work. The book further conceptualizes the forces impacting newswork and examines the social institutions now on the boundaries of journalism due to their connection to nonprofit journalism. Exploring how nonprofit news is disrupting the industry’s very idea of news, news values and news processes, this is a helpful text for academics and researchers with an interest in journalism, media industries, media sociology and not-for-profits.

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic decline in the presence and influence of legacy news organizations. This decline has led to tremendous growth in news startups, which have attempted to fill the gap left by their legacy counterparts by producing the quality public service journalism upon which the health of U.S. democracy depends. If legacy news organizations, with their existing infrastructure, are failing, can these startups do any better? This question lies at the heart of Journalism Without Profit. Magda Konieczna explores three prominent news nonprofits: the Center for Public Integrity, one of the oldest and largest of its kind; the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, a university-based watchdog news organization that relies on others to publish its work; and MinnPost, an online news website. Through in-depth study of the practices of each newsroom, Konieczna isolates one common behavior that will contribute to their success: the way these organizations collaborate and share stories. Though this emergent behavior differentiates news nonprofits from the mainstream journalism from which they arose, it also ties the two forms of journalism together, as news nonprofits attempt to share stories with mainstream publications. In other words, the very behavior that may enable these organizations to do better than their mainstream counterparts also limits their ability to evolve much beyond them. In one of the first major books to focus on nonprofit journalism, Konieczna investigates the major questions that will open the field up to further study. Where did nonprofit news come from, and where is it going? Who funds it, and why? Ultimately, Konieczna offers a new way to think about the seismic changes in journalism that are defining the 21st-century.

In 2009, a bipartisan Knight Commission found that while the broadband age is enabling an info. and commun. renaissance, local communities in particular are being unevenly served with critical info. about local issues. Soon after the Knight Commission delivered its findings, the FCC initiated a working group to identify crosscurrent and trend, and make recommendations on how the info. needs of communities can be met in a broadband world. This report by the FCC Working Group on the Info. Needs of Communities addresses the rapidly changing media landscape in a broadband age. Contents: Media Landscape; The Policy and Regulatory Landscape; Recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.

New business models have splintered journalists’ once-monolithic professional culture. Where the organization once had little sway in the newsroom, in today’s journalism ecosystem, owners and management influence newsgathering more than ever. Using rich interviews and participant observation, Patrick Ferrucci examines institutions with funding mechanisms that range from traditional mogul ownership and online-only nonprofits to staff-owned cooperatives and hedge fund control. The variations in market models have frayed the tenets of professionalization, with unique work cultures emerging from each organization’s focus on its mission and the implantation of its own processes and ethical guidelines. As a result, the field of American journalism no longer shares uniform newsgathering practices and a common identity, a break with the past that affects what information we consume today and what the press will become tomorrow. An inside look at a fracturing profession, The Organization of Journalism illuminates the institution’s expanding impact on newsgathering and the people who practice it.

Media Management: A Casebook Approach provides a detailed consideration of the manager’s role in today’s media organizations, highlighting critical skills and responsibilities. Using media-based cases that promote critical thinking and problem-solving, this text addresses topics of key concern to managers: diversity, group cultures, progressive discipline, training, and market-driven journalism, among others. The cases provide real-world scenarios to help students anticipate and prepare for experiences in their future careers. Accounting for major changes in the media landscape that have affected every media industry, this Fifth Edition actively engages these changes in both discussion and cases. The text considers the need for managers to constantly adapt, obtain quality information, and be entrepreneurial and flexible in the face of new situations and technologies that cannot be predicted and change rapidly in national and international settings. As a resource for students and young professionals working in media industries, Media Management offers essential insights and guidance for succeeding in contemporary media management roles.

Based on extensive research into weekly rural publishers and rural readers, Reviving Rural News demonstrates that a new financial approach to community journalism is urgently needed and viable. This book provides historical context for the state of local news, examines the influence of journalistic identity and boundaries that have prevented change, and offers practical guidance on how to adapt the financial strategies of weekly newspapers to the habits of modern readers. Findings are grounded in robust data collection, including surveys, focus groups, and a year-long oral history study of a small weekly newspaper group in the United States. A new model known as Press Club is presented as a template via which memberships, events, and newsletters can better engage community journalism with its audiences and create a more sustainable path for the future. Reviving Rural News will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of local, community, and rural journalism as well as practitioners looking to bring about real-world change in journalism organizations.

A detailed argument of how our government has interfered in the direction of America's media landscape that traces major transformations in media since the printing press and charts a path for reform. In Saving the News, Martha Minow takes stock of the new media landscape. She focuses on the extent to which our constitutional system is to blame for the current parlous state of affairs and on our government's responsibilities for alleviating the problem. As Minow shows, the First Amendment of the US Constitution assumes the existence and durability of a private industry. Although the First Amendment does not govern the conduct of entirely private enterprises, nothing in the Constitution forecloses government action to regulate concentrated economic power, to require disclosure of who is financing communications, or to support news initiatives where there are market failures. Moreover, the federal government has contributed financial resources, laws, and regulations to develop and shape media in the United States. Thus, Minow argues that the transformation of media from printing presses to the internet was shaped by deliberate government policies that influenced the direction of private enterprise. In short, the government has crafted the direction and contours of America's media ecosystem. Building upon this basic argument, Minow outlines an array of reforms, including a new fairness doctrine, regulating digital platforms as public utilities, using antitrust authority to regulate the media, policing fraud, and more robust funding of public media. As she stresses, such reforms are not merely plausible ideas; they are the kinds of initiatives needed if the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press continues to hold meaning in the twenty-first century.

Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or 'open government'. These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making. However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an era of professed transparency. In examining how transparency and open government initiatives have affected the accountability role of the press in the US and the UK, it also explores how policies in these two countries could change in the future to help journalists hold governments more accountable. This volume will be essential reading for all practising journalists, for students of journalism or politics, and for policymakers.

Facebook, the Media and Democracy examines Facebook Inc. and the impact that it has had and continues to have on media and democracy around the world. Drawing on interviews with Facebook users of different kinds and dialogue with politicians, regulators, civil society and media commentators, as well as detailed documentary scrutiny of legislative and regulatory proposals and Facebook’s corporate statements, the book presents a comprehensive but clear overview of the current debate around Facebook and the global debate on the regulation of social media in the era of ‘surveillance capitalism.’ Chapters examine the business and growing institutional power of Facebook as it has unfolded over the fifteen years since its creation, the benefits and meanings that it has provided for its users, its disruptive challenge to the contemporary media environment, its shaping of conversations, and the emerging calls for its further regulation. The book considers Facebook’s alleged role in the rise of democratic movements around the world as well as its suggested role in the election of Donald Trump and the UK vote to leave the European Union. This book argues that Facebook, in some shape or form, is likely to be with us into the foreseeable future and that how we address the societal challenges that it provokes, and the economic system that underpins it, will define how human societies demonstrate their capacity to protect and enhance democracy and ensure that no corporation can set itself above democratic institutions. This is an important research volume for academics and researchers in the areas of media studies, communications, social media and political science.