I disagree; corporate funding (ads and advertisers) need not have influence over the institution itself in order to place ads in a news source. From a journalistic standpoint, your value is based upon how trustworthy you are as a company. If you are trustworthy, you have readers, and you will never be short on advertisers.
Readers can stop reading if the newspaper stops agreeing with its viewpoints perhaps even more readily than advertisers can. Coming from Utah most of the uber-conservatives that live near me mock the New York Times as propaganda yet watch Fox News and call it "truth." Unfortunately, as was mentioned offhand in Aaron Sorkin's "Newsroom," today, "People don't choose the opinions they want, they choose the facts they want." Reader supported is just as prone to bias as is corporate supported.
> If you are trustworthy, you have readers, and you will never be short on advertisers.
This works extremely well with small publishers or niche markets: Mother Jones can criticize Monsanto while publishing ads for organic food, and Penny Arcade can make fun of Blizzard while still running Blizzar ads (they can always run ads from Valve instead if they don't).
But for a mass market publisher like NYT, a large advertiser with a steady ad budget absolutely wields an influence over content, even if they never say a word. Suits at media companies have every incentive not to rock the boat, and so soften stories, or simply focus more effort on news that is unlikely to threaten ad revenue (ie, crime and celebrity news). Occasionally, this kind of self-censorship is blatant, like the infamous Fox/Monsanto milk hormone story, but usually the effect is subtle, like the warping of a gravitational field.
Admittedly, readers do create their own distortion effect on news, perhaps even bigger than advertisers. But since that's a factor either way, I still see reduced reliance on advertising as a positive trend in mass media.
>corporate funding (ads and advertisers) need not have influence over the institution itself in order to place ads in a news source.
That's only as true as long as the source in question can continue to exist without the support of the advertisers. As supplemental income (like NPR does), it's fine, because if an advertiser tries to throw their weight around, the outfit can just tell them to get lost.
However, if advertising is a primary source of income, that gives the advertiser a disproportionate amount of power over the content of that source, because every battle can become "Do this or we drop funding".
Readers can stop reading if the newspaper stops agreeing with its viewpoints perhaps even more readily than advertisers can. Coming from Utah most of the uber-conservatives that live near me mock the New York Times as propaganda yet watch Fox News and call it "truth." Unfortunately, as was mentioned offhand in Aaron Sorkin's "Newsroom," today, "People don't choose the opinions they want, they choose the facts they want." Reader supported is just as prone to bias as is corporate supported.