With the launch of Kaiser Health News, the Kaiser Family Foundation now offers newspapers and bloggers a free, editorially independent source of high-quality, in-depth reporting on health issues. To the publications industry, it could be a peek at the future of content creation and distribution.
Health policy wonk and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein writes that the Kaiser Health News model “cleaves content production from distribution.” For Klein, this resembles the wire service model that Agence France-Presse pioneered in 1835 and AP and Reuters follow to this day. But without “the artificial strictures that the wire services place on themselves (short, dry, etc).”
Blogger Peter Suderman calls Kaiser Health News “exactly the sort of publicly minded, non-profit, niche journalism that I expect to flourish over the next few years as the news industry reshapes itself in reaction to the net.”
Until now, the prospects for non-profit journalism have been driven by investigative websites. For alt-weekly veteran Paul Bass and the New Haven Independent, or entrepreneur Buzz Woolley and Voice of San Diego, there was a regional void to fill. Political reporter Josh Marshall took a non-profit route to a commercial destination, transforming Talking Points Memo from a solo political blog into an investigative powerhouse by soliciting donations from his readership until he could grow large enough to sustain his enterprise with advertising revenue.
Kaiser Health News departs from those models. It’s an in-house initiative of a foundation, rather than a grant recipient. Instead of competing with existing (read: declining) newspapers in regional coverage, it’s trying to own a content niche nationally. The only comparable services in this regard are the business wire services. Since most papers have a daily business section, however, that can hardly be called a niche.
Perhaps the model is a one-shot deal. What other content area combines major media attention (around federal health care reform efforts) with a critical mass of 501(c)3 interest? The Kaiser Health News mark can already be found next to bylines in national news chains. Time will tell if it will remain there alone.
