Profits are killing journalism.

Publishers and editors care more about the bottom line than the quality of their reporting. Newsrooms are shrinking, as a result, and good stories have gone untold. The public is worse off because of it.

So goes one argument, at least, in the debate about public funding of journalism. It’s a hot topic that appears immune to any clear-cut solution, and it’s shaking the foundation of what it means to do journalism and the best way to do it. Among the big questions are:

Should public funding expand to cover the gaps left by the shrinking private news business? Could it expand without government support, and would this create conflicts? Would a heavily subsidized public media serve us better than the private media? If so, how?