
The IRS has granted nonprofit status to a daily newspaper - cpeterso
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/11/meet-the-salt-lake-tribune-501c3-the-irs-has-granted-nonprofit-status-to-a-daily-newspaper-for-the-first-time/
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grubb
Just my two cents: I grew up in Utah and did my undergraduate degree there.
The Salt Lake Tribune is a great newspaper (I subscribed while living in the
state) and it has been rough watching them downsize and lose some great staff
over recent years. I am very much of the opinion that good local journalism is
a necessity for holding people accountable. For example: the work the Salt
Lake Tribune received a Pulitzer for [0]. Anything to help good local
journalism continue and survive is nothing but a win in my view.

[0] [https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/05/07/salt-lake-tribune-
win...](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/05/07/salt-lake-tribune-wins-
pulitzer-for-campus-rape-coverage-praises-victims-for-sharing-their-stories/)

~~~
NorthOf33rd
I’m still here and this is incredibly important for our community. The tribune
is the only major news outlet not owned by the LDS church, and is an important
tempering force. Over the years they’ve given up some of their autonomy due to
joint operating agreements with LDS Church owned Desert News, but without them
salt lake would be a large metro without a non-church controlled newspaper.
Which is really strange to write down.

Salt lake looks poised to elect its first LDS mayor in something like 50 years
today which I think speaks volumes to the weakening of slc secular news
sources. One could argue that it’s due to the modernization of the church on
some key issues, but based on the coverage of the candidates, I’m not so sure.

On a national scale, I’m really hopeful this trend continues. Newspapers do
incredibly important work on “boring” local issues that no one else is able to
do.

~~~
catacombs
> The tribune is the only major news outlet not owned by the LDS church, and
> is an important tempering force.

In Utah. Let's make sure that distinction is clear.

~~~
pc86
Do you think people are confused that most major metropolitan areas are not
controlled by religious groups, or that Salt Lake City is in Utah?

~~~
irrational
In my experience, most people outside of the USA are not very familiar with
anything between NY and LA. Usually I have to tell people, I live in Oregon
which is north of California. Oh, California, yes we've heard of California. I
doubt the majority of the world has even heard of Utah or has any concept of
where it is or that SLC is the capital of the state.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Utah... is that the place with the large rocks in the desert? Lots of mormons?
It shows up from time to time. Oregon I have no idea. Only thing that comes to
mind is the Oregon Trail?

~~~
irrational
Oregon was the end of the Oregon Trail, but the trail itself extended 2000+
miles back to Missouri in the center of the continent.

------
calderarrow
One of the subtle considerations when discussing non-profits is that any
organization can be a non-profit, but in order to get tax exemption you have
to meet certain requirements related to your mission and how your organization
is organized [0]. One of the exempt requirements is education, and there are
numerous ways in which it could be argued that a local news outlet can operate
as a medium for educating local constituents of important events.

I spent a number of years working in public accounting in the DC area, almost
exclusively with non-profit organizations on both the audit and tax side. Tax
exempt organizations come under a fair amount of scrutiny, because of how
valuable their tax exemption status is, and the government checks everything
from executive compensation to programatic expenditures. Most have to get
audited annually, and you can read their audited financial statements just
like how you could read Apple's or Google's [1].

A key note about tax exempt organizations is that as soon as they start to
earn income from activities that compete with typical for-profit
organizations, they have to pay corporate taxes on that income. I saw some
people implying that Amazon could become a subcompany of WaPo and avoid taxes,
which, while technically is in the realm of possibility, would have 3 major
consequences: firstly, the 501(c)3 non-profit parent organization can't make
dividend-like disbursements to shareholders, so the money would be tied up in
the non-profit, secondly, excessive compensation to employees could result in
massive punitive taxes [2], and thirdly, the revenue that WaPo would receive
would most likely be taxable unrelated business income. Bezos would be better
off keeping Amazon separate and donating cash to WaPo -- at least then he'd be
able to get a write off.

[0] irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exempt-purposes-
internal-revenue-code-section-501c3

[1] There are several sites, but guidestar.org is the one I've mostly used.

[2] irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/intermediate-
sanctions-excess-benefit-transactions

------
yoelo
The requirement of 401c(3)s to be "non-political" looks like a pretty weird to
someone that doesn't live in the US. Why do non-profits have to work with that
suppression while for-profit companies won't? Does anyone here know the
historical context for this?

~~~
jacquesm
I'm sure there will be some that will use any article on the opinion page that
criticizes the government to use this to fight the non-profit status. After
all, if there is one thing that stands out in the political landscape at the
moment it is that the government is at war with those segments of the media
that are critical of it.

~~~
chc
This might make for an interesting relationship between the paper and the LDS
Church, which is itself a 501(c)3 that gets involved in politics a lot.

~~~
vonmoltke
Many non-profits have one or more sister 527 organizations that actually do
the electioneering and other political activities.

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equivocates
The Texas Tribune is a non-profit[1] and has been so for 10 years.[2]

[1]:
[https://www.texastribune.org/about/](https://www.texastribune.org/about/)

[2]: [https://www.texastribune.org/series/10th-
anniversary/](https://www.texastribune.org/series/10th-anniversary/)

~~~
chrispeel
The Texas Tribune appears to have been created in 2009 as a non-profit. In
contrast, the Salt Lake Tribune was founded in 1868, and has been for-profit
until now. I believe the unique thing about the SL Trib is its transition from
for-profit to non-profit.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Tribune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Tribune)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Lake_Tribune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Lake_Tribune)

------
miiiiiike
Tax-deductible support of local news is a fantastic idea.

~~~
eru
Why?

Creating yet more loopholes doesn't sound like a good idea.

~~~
matt4077
"Yet more loopholes" is what happens when you refuse to think for yourself and
instead need to cram everything into tiny, generalising, categories. A better
framework for evaluating policy is to ask if their objective is worthwhile and
if their mechanism is fit:

Local news is dying/dead in many regions, yet it is essential for the
functioning of democracy. Asking people to make informed decisions without
reliable reporting works about as well as a thermostat without a thermometer,
i. e. it doesn't.

Since everyone profits when others make better decisions at the voting booth,
there is a direct argument to be made that the benefit of people subscribing
to a local paper goes not to them, but their community, especially since
important stories also tend to reach non-subscribers.

Assuming one agrees with that point and isn't part of the all-journalists-are-
corrupt-marxist-crowd (or the alternative some-blogger-can-do-it-better-
crowd), one would want to find ways to support local news. But direct
subsidies run into obvious problems.

Reducing taxes would then be an obvious way to allow journalism to function:
Its benefit is proportional to revenue and therefore preserves the market
mechanisms.

Books and newspapers actually are exempt/partially exempt from VAT in many
countries. But VAT just isn't a relevant factor in most of the US.

You can consider this "just a loophole" in the way that "don't put arsenic on
pizza" is "just another regulation".

~~~
VLM
How is local news essential to democracy or help make better voting decisions?

For example, according to Patch (which is not nonprofit) this morning, if I
exclude the vast amount of advertising and pathological fake news and focus on
actual local coverage, in my hometown the local electronics recycling program
is temporarily moving because of road construction, and three miles across
town the police have reported three recent delivery package thefts.

How would either story influence me being more or less likely to vote for
Trump in 2020?

There's been an intense cultural shift towards not making informed decisions
in the voting booth; one MUST either vote along demographic identity lines or
optionally follow groupthink or keep very, very quiet lest suffer possibly
violent consequences. If those cultural trends change, then there would be
motivation for informed voting. However, "everyone in charge" at this time
likes the system and its a disinformation to pretend informed voting is
relevant at this time. The problem at this time isn't "voter education" but
"conform to your group or be punished".

~~~
toast0
Local news won't help much with informed voting for national candidates,
unless there's something specific going on like President X is working to
close down the local industry etc.

It can be very helpful for informing about local candidates. Even the nearby
metropolitan newspaper isn't going to tell me about the incumbent running for
reelection who only showed up to one board meeting in the last term; I need
the local county newspaper for that.

------
elcapitan
Time for Bezos to register the Washington Post as nonprofit and make Amazon a
subcompany.

~~~
mieseratte
Exactly my thought! This has "tax loophole" written all over it.

Company gets to subsidize favorable propaganda, while at the same time getting
a nice tax write-off.

Edit: For those downvoting, would you care to elaborate? I don't see how this
won't be abused. What am I wrong about here?

~~~
cartoonworld
I would imagine a non-profit isn't able to well.... profit as much. And if I
know one thing it is that a rich guy loves his money as much as a preacher
loves the Lord.

~~~
jtbayly
Non-profits are allowed to profit all they want.

The NFL is a non-profit org.

~~~
lostapathy
The league is - the teams are not.

~~~
jtbayly
That's what I meant. Apparently it changed. But so what? The league itself
made enough money to pay Roger Goodell $44M in 2013. As a non-profit.

~~~
lostapathy
I kind of figured you did, but I wanted to underscore the difference because I
feel like this fact is usually trotted out for (and gets) a knee jerk.

To be fair, I think it's a dumb state of affairs too, but overhyping problems
is often counterproductive.

~~~
jtbayly
Well, I do think it (was) dumb, but I also didn’t bring it up to show a big
problem. I just wanted a counter-example to the claim that profits are limited
at non-profits.

------
corodra
I'm going to push away the dubiousness due to the LDS issue and I'm going to
assume that the SLT is a good newspaper in the following comment. To be
forthright in my bias, my general views on Utah are not that great though...
stemming from their stupid fucking criss-crossing streets and over usage of
concrete barriers in the middle of the road all the fucking time.

Cough, excuse me.

I'm really curious about the repercussions of this. If this works out decently
for them, I'm pretty sure other news outlets of all shapes and sizes will
follow in the next few years. Maybe this is good. There's a potential here to
revitalize the news system in general. They won't be so dependent on pandering
to a select few corporations and bullshit advertising methods. Maybe this will
bring some more unbiased... wait, no probably not. Not being funny, that just
made me realize the folly. If donations are going to be a big play, the only
way to really get good donations is to appease a certain viewpoint. I don't
know... maybe there's a way to mitigate that? It does say no more political
endorsements... eh... I doubt that'll happen. I was hoping to have a good,
happy train of thought on this one. Then I remembered that all humans are
assholes.

Fucking hate driving in Godless wasteland of a state.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Criss-crossing streets? You mean, a grid system? What's so bad about that?

~~~
corodra
Yea grid roads are unique to only utah... seriously?

Continously flow intersections and diverging continuous intersections. You end
up driving on the left hand side and drive all wonky. Its terrifying to
encounter the first time and makes no logical sense. They brought it to
colorado springs and it's so amazingly pointless.

~~~
catalogia
I'm not sure I understand the problem, but perhaps 'jughandles' as used in New
Jersey are the solution?

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rolltiide
the thing that sucks about 501(c)3 is that there are no deductible expenses
any more

So they can be used in conjunction with other entities to really amplify the
tax benefits

If you think of them like 401k on steroids It can help, as deductible
contributions are unlimited up to 50% income and anything above that rolls
over into the next year, and you can do a bunch with asset prices and
velocity.

Different parts of the tax code pull deductions before or after AGI, so you
can game this forever all while the masses can only express their discontent
by targeting “income tax rates” and the edgiest of them all says “marginal
income tax rates”

------
Illniyar
What is a "legacy newspaper"? Is it just a newspaper?

~~~
tomhoward
“Legacy” just means _old_ or _traditional_ or _hailing from a past era_ , as
distinct from publications that have been newly developed in recent times for
modern markets and technologies. It’s also distinct from established media
orgs like PBS that have been nonprofit from the start.

------
coldtea
How is that strange? All kinds of media are/can be nonprofit where I am
from...

~~~
catacombs
Who is saying that's strange? There are many non-profit news organizations:

* ProPublica

* The Texas Tribune

* NPR and all its affiliates

* PBS

~~~
coldtea
> _Who is saying that 's strange?_

The grandparent (yoelo) who started this thread, for one:

"The requirement of 401c(3)s to be "non-political" looks like a pretty weird
to someone that doesn't live in the US."

> _There are many non-profit news organizations_

Which is orthogonal, what's strange is why such a law, that they should be
"non-political" exists...

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frankydp
It is my opinion that in order to retain freedom of the press protections an
organization should be required to be non-profit, not specifically 501c3 of
course.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Having a non-profit tax status doesn't prevent you from paying large salaries
if you make more money. That really wouldn't do anything to take away the
incentive the press has to sell more news.

------
NoblePublius
Why doesn’t Bezos do this to the Amazon Post?

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zacharytelschow
Plenty of newspapers have been unprofitable for a long time. Oh wait...
Headline was slightly different ;)

------
jonny383
Great - the IRS is now giving tax-free status to the mormon church's for-
profit arms.

~~~
richeyrw
You understand that the Salt Lake Tribune has traditionally been dedicated to
being critical of the Mormon church? Right?

~~~
NorthOf33rd
They lost some of their teeth after the joint publishing agreement with
Deseret News, but other than npr they are the only major news outlet of any
medium in salt lake that is willing to be critical of the church. And it’s not
like KUER has much airtime devoted to local news.

