> why don't we make all companies 501c3's! That will fix EVERYTHING!
I don't think that's the point. The point is that for things like journalism (not, duh, all companies) you can get someone else to pay for it. It's a relatively new invention (probably since the birth of CNN) that journalism had to be a profitable venture, so this just says it out loud: we're not in it for the profit. It turns out that there's a tax benefit (you can get people to support it for selfish reasons), but really it's no different from, say, NPR.
That doesn't mean it's free. They pay writers, they pay their hosting bill.
Doug is worried about how we're going to pay for journalism when the ultimate consumers don't want to pay; I say: that's sort of been the model all along.
/jordan