{"id":5696,"date":"2026-03-27T17:33:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=5696"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:33:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:33:03","slug":"consensus-reality-is-a-public-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/27\/consensus-reality-is-a-public-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Consensus reality is a public good"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"806\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2-806x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5697\" srcset=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2-806x1024.png 806w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2-236x300.png 236w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2-768x976.png 768w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2.png 1006w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 806px) 100vw, 806px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This comment by Ryan Cooper came to me from Mark Histed. It has stuck with me, and Mark has repeated the idea a few times. For years now, I&#8217;ve been annoyed at how hard it is to find good news sources. Conventional media can be compromised by multiple sources (gaining\/retaining advertisers, billionaire owners), as can publicly supported media (government grants, donors), and social media is a thicket of grifters, echo chambers, and bots. Thus, the news that is easiest to find is often low quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But maybe I shouldn&#8217;t be so annoyed. Maybe I just needed to learn a bit more about other models out there. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-LGHtc_D328\">Like Mr. Rogers learned from his mother: &#8220;Look for the helpers.&#8221;<\/a> Here are some examples. Maybe none of them are perfect, maybe you know better sources (please do share), but it&#8217;s wonderful that people are working on this public good. Here are some items:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The McKnight Foundation has funded <a href=\"https:\/\/knightfoundation.org\/research-and-impact\/\">efforts in this area<\/a>. I&#8217;m fond of them because they are based not far from where I grew up, and they funded some early work in my own lab. Excellent people. Excellent organization.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theajp.org\">American Journalism Project<\/a> is one of the efforts McKnight has helped to fund. They focus on helping local news sources develop.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lenfestinstitute.org\">Lenfest Institute<\/a> is focused on local news too. And they control <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\">the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Guardian\">The Guardian<\/a> is a non-profit organization, and has been for a long time. Profits go into journalism, not shareholders or owners.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Texas_Tribune\">The Texas Tribune<\/a> is non-profit too. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/about\/\">CalMatters<\/a> is a non-profit near me&#8211; a 501(c)(3) for over a decade.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\">The AP<\/a> is a non-profit too, funded by newspapers, mostly. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Consumer_Reports\">Consumer Reports<\/a> has been non-profit and independent for 90 years.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are others as well, and it&#8217;s a motley crew, like <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ProPublica\">ProPublica<\/a>,<\/em> and also <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mother_Jones_(magazine)\">Mother Jones<\/a><\/em> and <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Christian_Science_Monitor\">CSM<\/a><\/em> (both of which are secular, despite their titles). <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to consolidate your own news feed, try this: <a href=\"https:\/\/findyournews.org\">https:\/\/findyournews.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the model of non-profit news can work. I admire PBS, NPR, and related organizations as well. They are filled with good people doing good work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m doing this post for two reasons. The first reason is above: highlighting examples of successful non-profit news organizations covering politics and current events in a way that can help cultivate a <strong><em>consensus reality<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second reason is to simply core dump some ideas of how to do more of this. And do it big. Here goes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Completely decouple funding from operations. <\/strong>Start with a big endowment, and only operate on surplus. Generally that&#8217;s about 4% of the endowment annually. Accept donations, but 100% of donations have to go to the endowment. This way, the operations are never dependent on donations or any source of new funds. The fiduciary board\u00a0<em>must<\/em>\u00a0release the 4% annually and has zero power to veto specific stories or fire editors. Spending growth only grows as the endowment grows. This alone is a huge piece of the puzzle. But it&#8217;s not the whole package. Governance can still be corrupted. So how do we address that? Here are some ideas:<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Distributed governance<\/strong> across multiple classes of stakeholders who nominate and elect leadership: (i) <strong>Internal<\/strong>, like staff reporters and editors&#8211; they care about the day-to-day operations and professional standards; (ii) <strong>Academics<\/strong>, like journalism and history profs&#8211; they care about getting it right long-term; (iii) <strong>Audience<\/strong>, like a random lottery of long-time subscribers who get to vote for leadership positions&#8211; they care about the product and how they can consume it; (iv) <strong>Librarians<\/strong>, they care about value, fact-checking, and archiving. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Regular turnover with ethics guardrails<\/strong> to ensure fresh, constructive leadership. Five-year, non-renewable terms for editors and other leaders. Top personnel cannot join a political campaign or a lobbying firm for three years after leaving, funded by a &#8220;severance tail&#8221; from the endowment to ensure they aren&#8217;t auditioning for their next job while in the editor&#8217;s chair.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Open source reporting<\/strong> processes to ensure that every story includes a public appendix of all raw transcripts, data sets, and conflict-of-interest disclosures for the writer. Sources can remain anonymous, of course, and editors can provide additional confidentiality as warranted.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Public Ombudsman<\/strong> who is a paid, high-profile, independent critic hired for a non-renewable term whose only job is to publicly eviscerate the organization&#8217;s own biases and errors every week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>None of these items are a silver bullet, and even in combination it cannot account for every corrupting influence. But it&#8217;s a start. And it&#8217;s not a particularly exotic start either&#8211; there is precedence for much of this. So whenever a billionaire buys a newspaper or media outlet, if they aren&#8217;t doing a lot of this, then their intention should be suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve written before about <a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/11\/research-budgets-in-perspective-2020\/\">how a billionaire could do a big donation and instantly manifest a top tier research university<\/a>. It would actually take less to instantly manifest a top tier news foundation focused on current events and politics to create <strong>a public good<\/strong>. Top-tier media organizations like the AP or the Guardian spend about $350-500 million per year. $10 billion would do it. There are hundreds of people in the world with that kind of money. And honestly, even 1\/10 of that ($1 billion; thousands of people in the world have that kind of money) would do a lot and the foundation could build from there. That $40 million per year to start would already be more than the Intercept, the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, CalMatters, or many other impactful news organizations spend per year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-2.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This comment by Ryan Cooper came to me from Mark Histed. It has stuck with me, and Mark has repeated the idea a few times. For years now, I&#8217;ve been annoyed&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/27\/consensus-reality-is-a-public-good\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5698,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions\/5698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}