The Ford Foundation’s unprecedented grant to The Los Angeles Times

[Commentary] Los Angeles Times editor Davan Maharaj announced that his paper, once a profit engine for multi-billion dollar corporate owners and still one of the most powerful news organizations in the country, will receive a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, and thus join the growing ranks of journalism outlets funded in part by major philanthropy. To be clear, $1.04 million over two years (the terms of the grant), represents only a tiny fraction of the LAT editorial budget, but the hiring of grant-funded reporters by the country’s fourth largest newspaper has meaning beyond the symbolic.

In his article on the deal, LAT media reporter James Rainey cited precedent such as the for-profit New York Times’s partnerships with nonprofit outlets in various states to produce local editions. It’s a noteworthy comparison, but The Texas Tribune and other nonprofits that partner with the NYT (1) are news outlets in their own right that produce a great deal of work beyond what the NYT reprints and (2) are paid by the NYT for their work. ProPublica is another nonprofit that works closely with for-profit media throughout the country, but it operates collaboratively with existing staff at partner organizations. A foundation giving money directly to a for-profit to supplement its reporting may simply be the logical extension of such partnerships, but its unprecedented as far as I know. There’s much to celebrate about for-profit/ nonprofit collaboration in general, and much to celebrate about the Ford/ LAT deal in specific. Thanks to the grant, the LAT—which laid off another seven journalists just this month—will be able to hire five new reporters to cover important beats including immigrant communities, the California prison system, and the Southwest border region. These beats—which deal broadly with issues of inequality and injustice, as per Ford’s goals for the grant—have long been under-covered by even the most financially successful newspapers (see the fifth season of The Wire).