By Jill Langlois

According to some, non-profit is the new black. And according to others, all it seems to be is another trend that's failing to keep traditional journalism afloat.

San Francisco financier Warren Hellman has sided with the former, creating the Bay Area News Project in cahoots with KQED, the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and possibly The New York Times. There aren't many details available about the project, but a few things we do know: he wants the news organization to employ anywhere between 10 and 15 full-time journalists in its early stages, a CEO or executive editor will cost him well over six figures in salary, and he's going to do all of this with $5 million (U.S.).

And as Chris O'Brien says in his Idea Lab blog, "$5 million sounds like a lot. But it's not." In fact, Hellman will likely have to raise an equal amount of funds yearly in order to keep his project running.

Turning a for-profit business like journalism into a non-profit isn't going to save it. Interns are already working for a measly stipend, if they're lucky, and who's to say donors are going to have the money to continue to fund projects like these? Non-profit journalism is a nice thought, but it's eventually going to bring us right back to where we started: searching the "help wanted" ads.