Against the backdrop of a world widely damaged by COVID, the rapid decline of the U.S. economy placed the legacy newspaper industry in a detrimental bind. The already-waning industry, particularly community papers, remains prey to hedge funds and private-equity firms, but amidst public health and economic crises, it must also resist getting milked or being sold.

Steven Waldman, president and co-founder of Report for America, proposes a third option: donate them.

In “A Replanting Strategy: Saving Local Newspapers Squeezed by Hedge Funds,” recently published in alliance with the Center for Journalism & Liberty, Waldman suggests legacy publications can be saved by replanting for-profit newspapers into local nonprofits and public benefit corporations. He also presented his idea in a Zoom panel.

The way to do that, he says, is by creating a private, nonprofit “Replanting Fund” to aid and simplify the transition. In tandem to the Fund, Waldman calls for the development of public policy that will both incentivize chains to donate newspapers and to mitigate against harmful consolidation schemes.

This proposal is one of many Waldman has developed to support community journalism. Penning a landmark paper “The Information Needs of Communities” for the FCC in 2011, he’s also recently fostered policy solutions, such as providing tax incentives for the donation of newspapers and enacting legislation to slow mergers so communities have time to organize.

Read the full article on Medium.