A prominent and long-standing online news digest based in Minneapolis has gone dark because the foundation that provided most of its funding pulled the plug.
Cursor provided a left-oriented news aggregator and filter for nearly a decade with a daily audience between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors. In 2004, it won the Utne Independent Press Award for Online Political Coverage.
But success can’t keep an organization’s well from running dry, especially if a single foundation provides the vast majority of its operating expenses.
Like Cursor, many online news services have turned to philanthropy to fund their operating costs. (The fact that they have operating costs belies the adage that there are no barriers to entry on the Internet.) According to the notice on Cursor’s website by editor Mike Tronnes, it would take $75,000 a year to keep Cursor afloat.
Online news services have been testing the philanthropic model of funding because the advertising model hasn’t worked. It seems like a good idea–big chunks of no-strings-attached money without all the funny feelings of chasing after advertisers and risking compromise of your editorial integrity.
But foundation funding brings hazards of its own. Foundations may line up to provide seed money but they are less interested in providing ongoing operating support. They also have changing priorities, fluctuating resources and, at the end of the day, accountability to a population that skews white and wealthy, just like advertisers.
This is the tension between capitalism and democracy. Capitalism wants to concentrate wealth and democracy wants to distribute power. So how do you get the people with money to fund the distribution of power to others?
The Cursor folks are right in wanting to build an alternative media infrastructure. They’re working on a problem for which no one has found the perfect solution. But it’s better to try than do nothing. Thanks to the folks at Cursor for their dedicated ten years of effort. You can donate to get Cursor back off the ground again at their website, but just to warn you, they need a lot of cash, not just a little, to make another go of it.
