"Our study focuses on Sesame Street and sets out to examine how Sesame Workshop, as a ‘nonprofit’ organization targeting children, has been able to continuously transform and make itself relevant in a predominantly commercial children’s television landscape dominated by transnational ownership
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structures. The analysis includes an investigation of Sesame Workshop’s mission statements, organizational structure, annual fiscal reports, promotional material and other written sources from the 1970s to the 2010s. We focus on the Workshop’s own arguments and reasons for why their ‘non-profit’ status was, and still is, better at taking care of children’s interests than the for-profit companies. These understandings are held up against the, at times, very commercial logic guiding the workshop’s business model, and analysed within the economic and political context of children’s television in the United States and the Workshop’s key international target markets. Our theoretical framework draws upon insights from work on political economy and children’s media and comparative media systems." (Abstract)
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"In this study I set out to investigate whether non-profit journalism models, particularly URN, provide an effective bulwark against the challenges associated with market-driven journalism in Uganda's hostile socio-economic and political landscape. The study further sought to establish whether URN c
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an be considered a viable and sustainable journalism model that can be replicated. The unfolding collapse of traditional media models has given rise to outside-the-box innovations as the industry bids to not only survive but also safeguard journalism, and this has partly inspired the proliferation of non-profit outfits. While the US leads the way, non-profit organisations are becoming popular across the world.
Uganda's URN, founded in 2005, is credited for providing affordable and quality news to 85 radio stations and a couple of newspapers. The news agency is also recognised for raising the standard of journalism with its independence from advertising pressure and motivated journalists, as well as functioning as a de facto public broadcaster. URN's non-profit status has enabled it to stand out from the Ugandan media scene described in Chapter One where market-driven journalism impinges on the quality of media content. However, over-dependence on a single external funder, DGF, has exposed the model as fragile and unsustainable. With the current grant due to lapse in 2017, albeit the possibility of renewal, and URN unsure of what to do next, the model's precariousness has been laid bare. Nevertheless URN’s sustainability should be understood within its proper context. To its funders the news agency is not a journalism model but rather part of a media development programme seeking to promote good governance and accountability in Uganda. It is therefore difficult to replicate." (Conclusion, page 26)
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"At a time when news organizations are struggling to define and promote their own relevance, some argue that journalists should make explicit their efforts to contribute to democracy as well as the results of those efforts. This study focuses on one prominent nonprofit news organization, the Interna
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tional Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), that openly discusses the impact of its work in a way that may point to the beginnings of a new journalistic theory of democracy. We conduct a discourse analysis evaluating ICIJ’s own language about three of its high-profile investigative reports into global tax evasion, and discover four ways in which the organization makes reference to the impact of those projects. Ultimately, we argue that this focus onimpact—encouraged, at least in part, by the organization’s foundation funders—is leading ICIJ to measure its democratic role in a way that sets its behavior apart from traditional journalistic entities, presenting an opportunity for scholars to discuss journalism’s evolving role in democracy." (Abstract)
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"El presente artículo aborda la construcción del Índice de Rentabilidad Social en Comunicación (IRSCOM), que pretende recoger valores ligados al funcionamiento de los medios audiovisuales, eludiendo la visión mercantilista, potenciando la participación ciudadana y la transparencia en su gesti
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n. Este indicador es una propuesta que persigue corregir las deficiencias en la rentabilidad social de los medios para consolidar modelos mediáticos que respondan a lógicas centradas en la construcción democrática, la fortaleza de la pluralidad y la diversidad." (Resumen)
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"En octubre de 2009, la Ley 26522 inaugura un escenario inédito para las radios y televisoras del sector social-comunitario. La norma, por primera vez en la historia de la radiodifusión argentina, reconoce a todos los medios sin fines de lucro –incluidas las cooperativas- como prestadores legale
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s de los servicios de radiodifusión, les reserva un tercio del espectro radioeléctrico, no les impone restricciones para su funcionamiento, les asigna un lugar de representación en el Consejo Federal de Comunicación Audiovisual, y establece un fondo de fomento. La Ley se basa en el paradigma de la comunicación como derecho humano [...] Desde entonces y hasta 2015, los medios sin fines de lucro del país contaron con las condiciones más favorables para su emergencia y desarrollo que se conocieron hasta ahora. No obstante, se enfrentaron también a nuevas dificultades y desafíos a resolver, tales como: las condiciones para su legalización, la fortaleza de la gestión institucional y económica para asegurar su sostenibilidad y crecimiento, la cantidad y calidad de producción temática y estética para disputar sentidos y alcanzar masividad, la formalización de sus relaciones laborales para evitar la precarización laboral, entre tantos otros. Para pensar políticas públicas que contribuyan a la resolución de estos problemas y para que las radios y televisoras no lucrativas puedan diseñar estrategias en ese sentido, fue y sigue siendo necesario contemplar aquello que distingue a estos medios de los privados y estatales, las diferencias entre los diversos tipos de medios no lucrativos, las particularidades de las regiones donde se desarrollan, las especificidades de las tareas desarrolladas por sus trabajadores, el contexto general en que se producen." (Presentación, página 5-6)
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"From April 28, 2009 to September 15, 2015, 658 journalism-related projects proposed on Kickstarter, one of the largest single hubs for crowdfunding journalism, received full – or more than full – funding, to the tune of nearly $6.3 million. These totals – both in terms of number of projects a
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nd funds raised – trail nearly all of Kickstarter’s other funding categories, from music, theater and film to technology and games. Nevertheless, the number of funded journalism projects has seen an ongoing increase over time and includes a growing number of proposals from established media organizations." (Pages 2-3)
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"Nonprofit news organizations offer the potential to become part of the bedrock of a strong local news and information ecosystem. The field of nonprofit news, as illustrated by the 20 organizations profiled in this study, has continued to scale its impact and inch closer toward more sustainable busi
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ness models. But progress has been uneven and for the majority of organizations in the study, sustainability is just a premise on the distant horizon." (Conclusion)
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"In the end, impact assessment comes down to a dialogue—about goals; how news informs, connects and engages communities; and how best to maintain journalistic integrity in the process. That’s why we’ve created this guide, which features both conceptual perspectives for foundations and nuts-and
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-bolts advice for nonprofit news organizations. We hope you’ll begin by reading the side that’s most relevant to you, and then be drawn into the conversation by reading the other side. We also hope it sparks dialogue about your own projects—among staff, and between foundations and newsrooms." (Introduction)
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"A new news disseminator has emerged to revitalize the profession of information gathering – the non-profit news organization. Adopting a framework of community trust, this article begins a scholarly response to the questions: Who are these non-profit journalists and what do they aim to accomplish
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? A rhetorical analysis of nearly 50 mission statements and ethnographic work on two case studies revealed a commitment to rebuilding public trust, to reclaiming community journalism, to re-emphasizing the “ordinary” citizen, and to pioneering collaborative news work by means of digital technologies. Our analysis demonstrated that many of these organizations, in considering news as a public good, work to re-conceptualize the industry for citizens, but depend upon a level of funding that might not be viable in the long term. However, this research posits that little in the way of true community trust can be achieved until these organizations discover a sustainable business model." (Abstract)
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"This report seeks to answer the two-pronged question, “What is ‘impact,’ and how can it be measured consistently across nonprofit newsrooms?” A review of recent, relevant literature and our informal conversations with experts in the field reveal growing ambitions toward the goal of developi
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ng a common framework for assessing journalism’s impact, yet few definitive conclusions about how exactly to reach that framework. This is especially the case when journalism’s “impact” is defined by its ultimate social outcomes — not merely the familiar metrics of audience reach and website traffic.
As with all journalism, the frame defines the story, and audience is all-important. Defining “impact” as a social outcome proves a complicated proposition that generally evolves according to the constituency attempting to define it. Because various stakeholders have their own reasons for wanting to measure the impact of news, understanding those interests is an essential step in crafting measurement tools and interpreting the metrics they produce. Limitations of impact assessment arise from several sources: the assumptions invariably made about the product and its outcome; the divergent and overlapping categories into which nonprofit journalism falls in the digital age; and the intractable problem of attempting to quantify “quality.”
These formidable challenges, though, don’t seem to deter people from posing and attempting to find answers to the impact question. Various models for assessing impact are continually being tinkered with, and lessons from similar efforts in other fields offer useful insight for this journalistic endeavor. And past research has pointed to specific needs and suggestions for ways to advance the effort. From all of this collective wisdom, several principles emerge as the cornerstones upon which to build a common framework for impact assessment." (Abstract)
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"The growing nonprofit news sector is showing some signs of economic health, and most leaders of those outlets express optimism about the future, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. But many of these organizations also face substantial challenges to their long-term financial well-be
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ing. The report finds that large, often one-time seed grants from foundations help many of these nonprofit news outlets get up and running. But as those grants expire, many organizations do not have the resources or expertise necessary for the business tasks needed to broaden the funding base. More than half of the nonprofit news organizations surveyed by the Pew Research Center in late 2012 (54%) identified business, marketing and fundraising as the area of greatest staffing need, compared with 39% who said the top need was for more editorial employees. In addition, nearly two-thirds of the nonprofits (62%) cited “finding the time to focus on the business side of the operation” as a major challenge—compared with 55% who cited “increasing competition for grant money.” Most nonprofit news organizations are small, with minimal staffs and modest budgets. Indeed, 78% of the survey respondents reported having five or fewer full-time paid staffers—including 26% with none." (Overview, page 1)
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