How a great nonprofit news organization would cover national politics

Unlike commercial news organizations, it would be accessible, explanatory, committed to fighting disinformation, and crusading.

(Part two of two. See part one: The commercial news industry is incapable of fulfilling its constitutional duties )

Imagine a national nonprofit news organization with a singular mission: To fully inform the electorate.

How would it operate differently than our commercial news organizations, which have failed so miserably?

I see four major differences. My ideal newsroom – freed of the obligation to chase advertisers and subscription dollars -- would be:

• Accessible. It would meet voters where they are, on a variety of platforms, would speak to them simply and directly, and would be free to all.

• Explanatory. It would take the time to define terms, explain processes, and unpack key issues. It would be unafraid of repetition.

• Committed to fighting disinformation. It would identify lies, track their spread, and fight the right-wing disinformation machine.

• Crusading. It would be an aggressive advocate for the citizenry, proudly populist, and unafraid to antagonize the powerful.

Accessibility

The best journalism in the world makes very little difference if it’s not being consumed by the people who most need to consume it.

But too often, the mass audience either can’t afford that journalism, doesn’t feel it’s aimed at them, or doesn’t see it at all, because media consumption habits have changed so dramatically.

Right now, paywalls are keeping some of the most important journalism in America away from the public. So the ideal nonprofit news organization would have no paywall.

The language would be simple and direct, rather than effete, convoluted and euphemistic.

And the news organization would use social media and other platforms not solely as a way of harvesting clicks (which doesn’t even work) but as a way to convey information to the public.

Do yourself a favor and read a brilliant essay by Rachel Karten, a social media consultant and newsletter author.

“The news needs to happen natively on these platforms, where more and more young people are going for their news already,” she writes. “Clipping a podcast or breaking down a full story on a social platform doesn’t devalue journalistic work or cheapen a media company’s brand—it simply meets people where they are.”

A national nonprofit news organization would meet people where they are – regardless of whether there’s money to be made by doing so.

Explanatory

The ultimate antidote to what ails political journalism today is context. (I first wrote that in 2019.)

Today’s newsrooms throw around terms without frequently explaining them (tariffs, anyone?) They assume a grasp of basic civics, rather than teaching it. Political processes are winked at rather than explained and exposed. Politics gets all the attention; governance gets almost none.

Economic stories in particular require context and perspective they rarely get in the mainstream commercial media. For instance, “We cover a banking story through the eyes of bankers, of whom there are relatively few, instead of through the eyes of the people who use banks, of whom there are millions,” says David Cay Johnston, the investigative reporter and co-founder of DCReport.org.

One reason the mainstream media doesn’t put information in context is that it often involves repeating something that’s been said before. Journalists in our top commercial newsrooms hate repeating themselves.

Journalists in the ideal nonprofit newsroom would repeat themselves all the time! Repetition is essential. As political consultant Aaron Huertas put it on Bluesky:

The most fundamental aspect of public communication is exposure effects -- you need to give people multiple opportunities to hear your message.

A nonprofit newsroom would constantly remind people how our political system is broken, and would explain how.

And when it comes to covering Trump, the newsroom would ceaselessly cast his behavior in the context of his authoritarianism, his corruption, and his desire for retribution.

There would be no amnesia, no de facto cover-up. No “we wrote about it already” excuses.

Fighting for the Truth

Here’s how historian Heather Cox Richardson explained our current information crisis to Jon Stewart shortly after the election:

We’re in a swirl of disinformation in this country, so that a lot of people who voted for Trump really truly voted for things that were the opposite of what they say they wanted. And that’s a real problem going forward

The ideal nonprofit newsroom would see that as a problem that needs to be solved, not just something to write about once in a while. And it would throw itself into solving it.

It would devote significant resources to tracking the spread of disinformation and explaining, in simple terms, who benefits from the lie and how.

It would explore whether and why certain lies are effective.

It would rebut the lies enthusiastically.

It would emphatically distinguish between media outlets that don’t lie and the ones that do -- between outlets that observe normal standards of evidence, are devoted to accuracy, and correct their mistakes, on the one hand, and propaganda networks that use lies, conspiracy theories, and nativism to build and captivate their audiences, on the other.

It would actively try to dissuade people from consuming the work of those liars.

And rather than operating on hunches about what works to inform readers, it would establish metrics. It would measure the extent of the disinformation problem, then see if what it’s doing helps solve it. And if it’s not working, it wouldn’t just give up, it would figure out why and try again.

Here’s my five-point plan:

1. Consult with experts in order to establish the body of knowledge that an informed electorate needs.

2. Do polling and interviews to determine what the public knows and doesn’t know.

3. Write ceaselessly about the stuff they don’t know, both exposing the lies and reinforcing the truth.

4. Monitor the numbers (publicly).

5. Adjust your tactics and repeat.

The ideal nonprofit news organization would also try to do a better job of explaining what journalism brings to the political dialogue, which NYU journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen succinctly concludes is “the practice of verification.”

“Journalists are the people who continually ask: Is that really true?” Rosen says. “Did that really happen? They are the ones trying to find the witnesses, the documents, the people.”

That’s the brand.

Crusading

“The finest journalists are idealists,” veteran newspaper journalist Paul Horvitz recently wrote in his newsletter, “and American journalism is at its best when it takes its public service role seriously, demands public integrity, and is motivated by conscience.”

I agree! My ideal nonprofit newsroom would relish its broader responsibility in a free society. And that means it would not shy away from conflict. In fact, in the model of Fox, it would delight in it as a way of engaging the audience.

The most important crusade for journalism right now is to expose and fight Trump’s authoritarianism and corruption, rather than normalizing them. But that’s only the beginning.

This ideal nonprofit newsroom would in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, encourage populist rage among the 99 percent against income inequality and the one percent.

It wouldn’t be afraid to antagonize the powerful.

It would routinely expose a campaign finance system that has legalized bribery.

It would stridently raise the alarm about climate change and expose the perfidy of the fossil fuel industry.

It would pressure corporate leaders to reinvest their profits, rather than pad their wallets with stock buybacks.

It would encourage support of local businesses rather than extractive chain stores and websites.

It would emphatically embrace pluralism and the positive role of immigrants.

And it would have fun doing it.

All of this would require the right tone to speak to the masses.

What’s the right tone? I asked Reece Peck, a professor at CUNY and author of the book, “Fox Populism.”

“Imagine the voice of NPR, its aesthetic,” he said. “The calm, professional, reserved kind of schoolmarm voice.”

“It’s the opposite of that.”

The How

So how do we get this ideal newsroom?

The easiest, quickest way would be for Jeff Bezos to turn the Washington Post – and an endowment -- over to an independent nonprofit with a board of esteemed, public-minded journalists. That would be a good start.

Another possibility: ProPublica – the wildly successful nonprofit investigative news organization – could spin off its Washington bureau and start doing non-investigative work as well.

Or, of course, we could start more or less from scratch.

Any solution inevitably involves philanthropy – certainly at first, arguably forever -- although over time I think a nonprofit national newsroom could raise substantial amounts of money in memberships from a supportive public.

It’s hard to see it breaking even – precisely because its aim would be to reach an audience that’s very hard to monetize.

(My whole point in part one was that the for-profit business model is incapable of sustaining a truly mass-media pro-democracy news organization.)

The commercial media can’t create an informed electorate. But a nonprofit might just be able to pull it off. And there are legions of journalists out there eager to do the work they were put on this earth to do. Someone should put us to work.