Editorial: The time is right for public grantmaking for Mass media

Editorial: The time is right for public grantmaking for Mass media

If you’ve read The Shoestring’s newsletters or fundraising emails in the last few years, or come to one of our events, you might have heard me say something like, “nobody has figured out the trick to funding local news, or else we’d all be doing it.” And it’s true. Display ads and classifieds — two of the pillars that supported legacy newspapers during their heyday — were both undercut by Google, Facebook, and Craigslist, and as readers began to…