Well endowed?

The op ed piece in The New York Times this week called "News You Can Endow" has raised new/old questions about the future of journalism.

They're relatively new in the ongoing discussion about how newspapers will work online, but the solution proposed has actually been around for some time.

The two Yale financial experts who wrote the piece suggest that conventional newspapers could survive if we "Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities. Endowments would enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down."

As some of the reader who responded through letters to the editor to the piece have noted, becoming nonprofit entities wouldn't necessarily enhance newspapers autonomy. In fact, because of tax laws on how nonprofits may be involved in politics, it could significantly reduce the ability of a newspaper to make candidate or issue endorsements.

I have seen several specialty publications -- focusing on a narrow range of issues -- that operate as nonprofits. I think that can work if you're readership is a relatively small group of like-minded individuals, but it becomes much harder to sustain as a model for a general readership news source.

But I'm not a Yale financial expert.