Pick Your Poison, er, Publisher

By Michael Kinsley
WashPost
Friday, June 5, 2009

In myth and often in reality, newspapers used to be owned by grandees: wealthy and civic-minded individuals or families. Some, like the New York Times and The Post, still are. But many grandee families (their hands forced by rogue cousins who missed the lessons on noblesse oblige) have sold out to chains like Gannett.

In the burgeoning field of fretting about the future of newspapers, some think the solution is to recruit a new set of grandees. Others think a better answer is for newspapers to become officially what they are becoming in reality: nonprofit. Even as newspapers have sunk, there has been a rising tide of rich, media-oriented foundations. The grandee solution and the nonprofit-foundation solution have emerged as favorites because both offer a plausible answer to the question of how newspapers can survive without making money. Their answer is: Don't worry about it.

But which of these "models" (to use the modish term) is best?

(More here.)