The Tyee has received $20,000 in charitable funding to cover climate change issues. That funding is coming from The Bullitt Foundation, a Seattle-based charity. According to a notice posted on its Website, that coverage will "inform debate and understanding of solutions to complex problems that accelerate a transition to a low-carbon economy." In an interview with Public Eye, the Website's founder David Beers explained, "This is part of The Tyee's strategy for supporting independent media. We received some money from our readers and we're very grateful for that. Our investors provide a base level of funding that we're very grateful for. And that means 160,000 visitors come every month. So the challenge at The Tyee is how to beef up our content - how do we leverage what's already happening with the support from our readers and investors and bring even better content to our site?"
"One of our strategies is to partner with foundations in areas of coverage," he continued. "And, in this case, The Bullitt Foundation - which has a strong interest in solutions to climate change - decided to fund some reporting from The Tyee. And, other that agreeing on a general area of coverage - which is taking a rigorous journalistic approach to figuring out which green technology is the most promising - there's zero editorial direction beyond that. So rather than be 90 percent advertising dependant - which is what the old corporate model was - we have a very balanced set of revenue sources so no one source can skew our mission."
Ha ha... Ya right. The only thing that will "skew our mission" is dollars, that's how I see it.