Foundation Support for L.A. Times Education Project Raises Questions

A new local-education reporting effort started by The Los Angeles Times is being supported in part by nonprofits the reporters may be covering, like those whose mission is to overhaul public education, The Washington Post reports.

Critics are concerned the arrangement presents a conflict of interest and could lead to unfair coverage.

The Times has said foundations, including the K&F Baxter Family Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, would provide $800,000 for “Education Matters,” which will cover two journalists’ salaries for at least two years.

The Broad Foundation has developed a proposal to create 260 new charter schools in the city. Eli Broad, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist and the foundation’s chairman, has repeatedly expressed an interest in buying the newspaper.

Representatives of the city’s largest teachers union are among the chief critics, arguing that readers will no longer know whether they can trust the paper.

Other news outlets, including nonprofit NPR, also acept grants to support some areas of their coverage.

The Times says the grants will not influence the paper’s reporting. “There is no editorial control or say that the funders have on our newsroom,” said Mitra Kalita, the Times’s managing editor for editorial strategy. “As an editor, you want to ensure that this distance does exist. … The integrity of the news side is fundamental to what we’re doing.”