Non-Profit News Takedowns: Sometimes The Work is Done For Me

I was going to take this apart -- Nonprofit news sites don't make money! They can't make money! They pay their editors too much! Or too little! Their names suck! People suck! -- and then I read into the comments and discovered smart people had it mostly taken care of. Which is good, because goddamn, people:

You’ve only focused on one slice of the nonprofit news world. What about financially healthy institutions that set up nonprofit news enterprises as off-shoots of their main business? Think about Kaiser Health News — an example of a for-profit institution doing nonprofit news. Or Human Rights Watch, where I work. We’re hiring award-winning journalists and winning webbys for repackaging the material that our researchers collect all over the world. And we have more than 70 researchers — more than the NYTimes and the WashPost have foreign correspondents, put together. You can call it journalism, or you can call it something else, but we’re helping to keep the American public informed. And we ain’t making a profit.

Non-profit news operations have been around for centuries. Non-profit newspapers covered the Spanish American War. The wankery happening right now is about a series of investigative reporting and local reporting sites, which is fine if that's what you want to yob off about, but at least make the distinction so it sounds like you know what you're talking about.

Another commenter points out, in response to a bit about how non-profits rely on magic money (tell that to the ones I volunteer for, which take in cash for everything from admission to services) which will never materialize, that non-profit newspapers or news sites are in fact allowed to accept advertising, web or otherwise. That some have set themselves up not to do so or haven't done so yet doesn't mean it's forbidden or impossible. The income disclosure requirements are just a little different, and even that varies state to state.

I do want to address this, though: 

Because in the old-fashioned terrestrial printing or broadcasting models, the organizations could always get a base audience just by virtue of the fact they existed. The magazines were on the newsstand, in the newspaper boxes on the street, on peoples’ doorsteps; the TV or radio stations were right there to be stumbled upon by potentials viewers or listeners.

On the web there is no de facto or built-in audience. You have to come up with something to draw attention to yourself.

Erm. Newspapers stopped being relevant to their communities when they stopped reminding their communities they existed, when they sat back and took for granted that their audience would pick them up on the way to the train. Newspapers for decades spent money on billboards and train ads and goddamn newspaper boys yelling headlines on the corners because they needed to market themselves. I've made the point many, many times that the Internet doesn't reduce this need, but to say it only exists on the Internet, that you don't need to build an audience for everything, is just incorrect. 

Case in point: My second newspaper job out of school was with a small suburban daily in an area experiencing wild population growth. Suburbs popping up all over. We couldn't figure out why our circulation was declining and our competitor's was growing until we figured out that they had a deal with area developers where if you bought a house, you also got a subscription. They had stacks of papers and flyers in every real estate office.

People move into and out of communities big and small all the time. If you don't remind people who you are and why you exist, you're dead. As many, many papers now are, and the marketing problem is a big part of the why.

By this logic, TV shows don't need to throw up glossy ads or garner free publicity (another thing Wyman ignores) because they're just there, on the TV, and people will catch them as they scroll through the channels. Newspapers have to do things to draw attention to themselves as well. If they didn't, would we really see them sponsoring every community festival all summer long in an effort to get their names out there?

You can read the original for more fun stuff, like how non-profits are allergic to sex (oh, the stories I could tell) and excitement, and how non-profits never break even or even turn a profit.

A.

Comments

[Jude]

Y'know, at some point, you just want to take these fuckers by the lapel and scream at them, in spittle-flecked rage, that YOU FUCKING HAVE TO SELL YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING NUMBNUTTED GOATFUCKER.

I mean, god DAMN. Motherfucking Coke and Pepsi spend a small country's GDP on advertising. Why? Because they see their market shares start to slip if they don't.

Yes, it's ridiculous, but, apparently, without constant reminders, people will begin to forget that Coca-Fucking-Cola exists.

If they'll forget about Coke, motherfucker, they'll forget about anything. Tell people who you are, where you are, and why you're relevant.

Sweet Jesus. These fucks are so similar to the abstinence-only crowd. "This is the way it should be, and people are wrong for doing otherwise!" No, asshole. People are how they are. Deal with reality instead of putting your fingers in your ears and singing meaningless syllables at the top of your voice.

[Lex]

One of the things I put on my 2004 list of Things I've Learned in 20 Years in Newspapers -- and I had some personal insight into this from also having spent about seven years in radio -- was along the lines of: "The smallest daylight-only AM radio station in America probably knows more about marketing itself than does the biggest newspaper." Six years on, I have no reason to think that has changed.