Crowdsourcing expert Jeff Howe examines the crisis of journalism, now that the funding for a advertising-based print model is drying up.

He starts by re-iterating the stillborn dreams for micropayment, then reviews proposals for creating “endownments” (the ‘trusts’ model), finally adding his own five cents with a collective licensing proposal.

1. The endowment proposals:

“Yale Chief Investment Officer David Swensen and financial analyst Michael Schmidt got the ball rolling on January 28th in a New York Times op-ed entitled, “News You Can Endow.” The authors argued that “by endowing our most valued sources of news we would free them from the strictures of an obsolete business model and offer them a permanent place in society.” It lent the imprimatur of two respected financial minds to a topic that’s been discussed in newsrooms for several years.

Later that day New Yorker writer and former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll weighed in with some compelling math: “If the Washington Post had a $2 billion endoment, it would be able to fund a very healthy newsroom. And this is before revenue from continuing operations—advertising, circulation, etc. …”

But this prospect comes with its own considerable problems. Coll returned to the subject a few days later to address some of the concerns brought up in the wake of his original post. For one, there’s a limit to the amount of philanthropy dollars available to news organizations—and some of that is already going to support innovative newsrooms like the nonprofit Voice of San Diego. Slate’s respected media critic Jack Shaefer poured some cold water on the endowment idea on February 3, pondering why, if these news-gathering institutions are so vital to ‘our democratic constitutional system’ (Coll) … not enough paying customers can be found to support them. “There’s something disconcerting about wanting to divorce the newspaper from market pressures.” This argument received a lot of traction in the blogosphere, whose members would like to see newspapers innovate their way out of their struggles. Easier said then done.”

2. Collective Licensing

“As for me, I have my own, somewhat half-baked idea: Collective licensing. These are generally mentioned in the context of the music industry, the general outlines of the proposal being that ISPs would collect some small monthly sum from its subscribers that would then be doled out to the labels based on complicated formulas relating to usage. The smart money is on collective licensing as the only route to sustaining a label in a world that shows no decline in illegal file-sharing. Which isn’t to say it’s gained much traction—outside the Isle of Man anyway. I wonder if such a program might be the way to support Internet content broadly.”