Who watches the watchmen?

If one of the roles if an independent media outlet is to keep a critical eye on the mainstream, corporate media, who watches the indies?

Apparently, Slate.com columnist Jack Shafer does, as evidenced by his raising of this question in the Sept. 2009 article, "Nonprofit Journalism Comes at a Cost." In it, Shafer asserts that both commercial news and nonprofits "often find themselves constrained by the hidden agendas of their masters" — the "masters" being advertisers in the commercial media sector and foundations in the independent.

Shafer also writes that indies' reliance on foundations is simply substituting one flawed business model for another. Since no studies have been published on these "new" business model, there is no content analysis by which to judge its success.

Still, comparing the two means of reaping revenue is like comparing apples to oranges. I won't say its unfathomable for an independent outlet to tailor content to appease its financial supporters, but the process doesn't seem to run as rampant and obvious as it does in the mainstream.

Commercial news organizations by and large pretend to have no bias, no ideological position on the stories they report; as such, they also pretend to not align with advertisers' interests, though they cave to them.

The difference in independent media is the exposition of bias. The outlets make clear the perspective from which they report news, and the foundations that fund them do so because they have similar ideologies.

However, the independent media business model, while it is the lesser of two evils, is far from perfect. Something is wrong if ProPublica's editor makes half a million dollars annually. But this seems to be the exception, not the rule.