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Voice of San Diego asks readers, or "members," to donate. To date, 800 members have each made a donation to the site of $1,000 or less. The balance comes from philanthropists, including Woolley himself, and foundations.

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"When you step into our newsroom, the one thing you're doing is public service journalism," he says. "We measure our success solely in the impact and the quality of our stories. We don't measure our success in hits."

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MinnPost has about 1,350 members, paying from $10 to $20,000 for the privilege, although anyone can still read their stories for free. "My view is that unless readers begin to pay a substantial portion of the cost of public affairs journalism," Kramer declares, "there will be a dramatic reduction in the amount of public affairs journalism being created."

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"I am so happy to not be at the newspaper," he says. "We're growing, there is freedom, we're all involved in a product that we really want to make as good as possible. Everybody has a certain amount of optimism that this can be something great."

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"I don't think that if the New York Times or the Boston Globe went nonprofit tomorrow they could sustain the size newsroom that the old model did," he says. "I don't think that the nonprofit model will get you there. I think it can create a lot of small success stories, but there is no way our model will support hundreds of journalists. It's just not going to happen."

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