Some of you have suggested that we ink-stained newspaper wretches seem like a bunch of charity cases. Now comes proof positive that you were (at least partly) right.
Every few days in recent weeks, there's been a new report about the advance of nonprofit journalism in California.
Philanthropists big and small have stepped up to fill the financial void left as advertising -- and staffing -- at traditional news outlets has withered away.
Sponsors announced the biggest and most ambitious of the new nonprofit reporting endeavors last week as San Francisco venture capitalist, philanthropist and bluegrass aficionado Warren Hellman pledged $5 million to create a new journalism operation in the Bay Area.
That development came not long after organizers unveiled plans for a watchdog journalism start-up in Orange County and as another upstart expanded to Los Angeles, with plans to pay for community reportage by getting readers to donate $5, $10 or perhaps $100 each per story.
Nonprofit journalism's newest players will be following in the footsteps of others, including the Center for Investigative Reporting, which this month kicked off its "California Watch" unit with a project that ran in more than 30 media outlets statewide.
It's hard to imagine that at current scale the nonprofit upstarts will completely patch over all the news holes that have been left behind by traditional news operations that have hemorrhaged advertising dollars and top-flight reporters.
But readers can expect to see more stories from the philanthropic news teams picked up by for-profit media outlets.
It's heartening to see smart people like Hellman -- whose donations have also supported free clinics, a killer bluegrass festival and the ballet -- acknowledge that good journalism represents another crucial thread in a city's social fabric.
"This is a start-up and I'm putting up the start-up money, which has driven my family to maybe think they ought to appoint me a conservator," quipped Hellman, a onetime Lehman Brothers exec, who said he had become concerned in recent years about declining scrutiny of the Bay Area's government, arts and culture.
Although Hellman's San Francisco venture is unnamed and potential editors are still being interviewed, the project has substantial partners in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and KQED, the public television and radio station, both of which will provide reporters and expertise.
