[mieseratte]

As a sibling comment mentions, non-profits aren't always "above board" in reality, e.g. the NFLs or Susan G. Komens of the world.

The position that I'm coming from is that a newspaper isn't always meant to be particularly profitable, e.g. in my small city our major paper is owned and underwritten by a wealthy real-estate family.

While the paper does good reporting in other areas, including having won a recent Pulitzer, they never publish anything negative about the local real-estate and development. You will never find a piece critical of development or developer mistakes in this paper.

If you're of the mind that papers can and are used as a way of laundering business propaganda for the owner, allowing it a non-profit status would then allow it to be a money-sink. The owning family can now provide donations to the non-profit paper which serves the business interests in the PR sphere. These donations can be written off. This means the tax-payer is now further subsidizing their PR efforts by virtue of a tax write off.

[cartoonworld]

Thanks, didn't consider that angle and also that non-profit might be a nonsequiter.