Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Tow Foundation Founder to Serve on NP Board Taking Over Philadelphia’s Struggling Newspaper of Record
“If newspapers are having trouble turning a profit without deep annual cuts, how about becoming a nonprofit?” That was the question posed just a few months ago by an article in NiemanLab, a news industry publication.
Late Monday night, in a stunning development for a struggling business, that’s pretty close to what the storied Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister publications, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, reported that they would become.
Philly.com reported that owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest donated the entire Philadelphia Media Network (PMN), which runs all three of the outlets, to the nonprofit Institute for Journalism in New Media, part of the Philadelphia Foundation. The institute will be headed by a board composed mostly of journalism school deans and academic and foundation executives and will “focus on supporting” PMN. . .