Clark Hoyt provides yet more grist for the paradigm mill. In his Sunday, July 19, column, “One Newspaper, Many Checkbooks,” The New York Times public editor discusses how the paper is exploring new funding mechanisms for newsgathering beyond the legacy media method of advertising subsidies. Oh, ethical mechanisms, I should add. Mr. Hoyt makes it clear that immediately after The Times learned of The Washington Post’s latest gaff, which is now being predictably tagged with the mummified and geographically inappropriate toponym, salongate, the Times went into overdrive to insure all its news initiatives were ethically pure.
What Mr. Hoyt did not make perfectly clear, however, is whether they have taken advantage of a flap about whether their freelance policy leans toward the predatory side on occasion to test the water on alternative methods of paying for news. He admits the paper is actively looking, “searching for new streams of money” to pay the reportorial bills, even considering partnerships and alliances outside the old paradigm of legacy media.
But in a phone interview with Bill Mitchell at PoynterOnline published last Friday, July 17, Craig Whitney, an assistant managing editor who acts also as a standards editor, told Mitchell top editors have discussed it starting last year around The Times linkup with ProPublica for some partnered stories. But the tone of both pieces is “nothing, repeat nothing official.” The Times appears to want the full argument about maintaining editorial integrity debated before any new checks are written.
