Giving Compass' Take:

• More and more for-profit newspapers are creatively seeking to build relationships with philanthropies to garner more funding. 

• How will philanthropic funding impact newspapers if it becomes the primary source of capital? 

• Read more about who is funding journalism. 

In the good old days of newspapers, the sports section and the lifestyle pages helped pay for important investigative work and coverage of less sexy, but more socially vital topics such as education or the environment. Today, more for-profit newspapers are seeking out grants and charitable donations to help pay for their coverage.

The Guardian, which also asks readers to fund certain reporting projects, is currently using funding from several different philanthropies, including the Gates Foundation and the Band and Wyss Foundation for reporting on topics ranging from global development to biodiversity; this fall, the Chicago Tribune got a grant from the Pulitzer Center to fund its reporting on how climate change will threaten both industry and ecology on Lake Erie.

Beyond the grants themselves, some papers have begun hiring people specifically tasked with forging these relationships with philanthropies. In late November, McClatchy named Lauren Gustus to be its first director of community funding. Gustus, who also serves as regional editor of McClatchy titles in California, Idaho and Washington, has a 2020 goal of finding the funding necessary to launch eight different news labs across the country.

They would be similar to the lab focused on education McClatchy’s Fresno Bee launched in October. Each lab would have a minimum of four reporters, Gustus said. Gustus is also teaching newsrooms in those markets how to solicit from local philanthropic organizations funding for reporting projects.

Read the full article about philanthropic funding for newspapers by Max Willens at Digiday.