The New York Times Will Seek Nonprofit Partners to Shore Up Revenue

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and his No. 2, Joseph Kahn, told staff members this weekend that the company will seek nonprofit partners to help offset the costs of its journalism at a time when advertising revenue continues its quicksand downward spiral.

In a memo to staff that was remarkable in its forthright revelation of the economic challenges facing the paper, Baquet and Kahn said that NYT administrative veteran Janet Elder will “build an operation that will allow The Times to seek philanthropic funding for ambitious journalism.”

“Over the past year a host of philanthropies and universities have come forward asking to help support our journalism,” they wrote Sept. 1. “Invariably, they say we are one of the few institutions with the independence and ambition to take on the largest subjects here and abroad. This is one of the most compelling developments in our business. Philanthropies across the country are providing money for big investigations, including our own ‘Fractured Lands,’ the magazine’s epic examination of the post-Arab Spring Middle East, which was funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.”