Nonprofit Journalism

Looking for a way to do good journalism without having to pay the piper, in the form of corporate owners who are simply bottom-line oriented? There is a model in St. Petersburg, Fla., where the local Times newspaper is making a profit -- albeit a "mere" 20 percent margin per year -- and the owners are happy.

In fact, says editor Paul Tash, the Times doesn't want to post more than a 20 percent margin because that would likely mean that the ownership group isn't investing enough into the core business.

So who's the forward-thinking owner? Time Warner? Gannett? McClatchy? Actually, the Times isn't owned by any media giant, and there is no publisher-baron at the helm. Rather, St. Petersburg's newspaper is owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism-education organization started by former Times owner Nelson Poynter in 1975. Poynter bequeathed all his shares in the newspaper to the institute he founded so that it might serve as a training group for journalists and educators.

And it's succeeded on that count. So when you visit the Poynter Institute (I highly recommend a January-February seminar so you get out of the snow for a few days), make sure you thank the memory of Nelson Poynter for offering us an alternative model of running a newspaper. (And you, in fact, can do just that. There's a battered underwood typewriter at the institute where you can record your thoughts.)