As landscapes evolve, there are moments when you suddenly perceive them differently. Maybe you see a new limb on a tree, maybe a storm blows through or maybe there's no catalyst at all. For whatever reason, you suddenly see the results of slow, constant change.
The Berkman@10 conference earlier this month was such a moment for me -- I was struck by the richness and vitality of young non-profit institutions like Global Voices, Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation, and my view of the news business changed.
For years, I had deep respect for newsy non-profits, but viewed them as side-shows. I assumed that only for-profit institutions could operate on the scale needed to have broad impact. Global Voices, Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation all demonstrate that this isn't true. With a small budget, an ambitious mission and a platform that empowers, it's possible to build institutions that have enormous impact.
This fact is changing the news business. The industry is evolving from a handful of NYSE corporations running local monopoly newspapers to a complex mix of institutions. As Dan Gillmor points out, the news industry is becoming more like the arts industry. There are for-profit institutions (galleries, auction houses, news aggregators, mass-market publishers), non-profits (museums, theaters, advocates of investigative reporting and open data) individuals (artists, bloggers) and all sorts of other wild cards.
This is a view of journalism with fewer professional journalists. Careers in the arts are tough. Yet it's also an optimistic view that gets us beyond layoffs and circulation declines, and on with the business of inventing new ways to report the news.
The institutional landscape is changing, but journalism, like the arts, will continue to flourish.
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