UT Admissions Case Goes to High Court, Journalism Goes to Hell

[TexasTowelie]

I was just perusing some of the financial disclosures for the “nonprofit” online news service based in Austin called The Texas Tribune. And this, by the way, is a column about my own craft, journalism, which I will try to make as painless as possible because I know many of you did not take journalism in school for a reason.

Many of my peers in the business say the future is in what they call “nonprofit journalism.” That’s where you don’t try to make profit but seek backing from large donors instead. I don’t even get the concept. It sounds like nonprofit used car sales to me. Why donate? Oh, wait. Maybe there is a reason. That's what this column is about.

The Tribune discloses at the bottoms of its stories whether someone in the story has donated money to the Tribune in the past. At the bottom of the story I was reading, “UT Regent Hall Appeals to Texas Supreme Court in Fight With Chancellor,” I found the following:

Disclosure: The University of Texas System and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.

When I looked at recent IRS filings for the Tribune, I found the UT System gave the Tribune $196,243 in 2012 and $352,333 in 2013, for a total in those two years alone of well over half a million dollars, which, for an online news service without printing or distribution expenses is a damn sweet piece of change.

Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/ut-admissions-case-goes-to-high-court-journalism-goes-to-hell-8760740