Subscriber owned, i.e. subscribing involves buying a voting share in the enterprise. Endowed. Donor-driven is just one among many non-profit models.
Also, PBS has a variety of content and I don't think I know anyone who watches their news. Scarcely any of their content, but they have a few good things. I don't think they are taken very seriously as a news organization -- much less than NPR, for instance.
Yes, they get government funding and have a public mission. But they also aren't entirely funded by tax dollars.
I do think they have a weird bias that they are very oblivious to, but I don't think it's exactly a pro-government bias. It seems more like a don't-be-controversial bias where the goalpost for that keeps shifting.
Create one "donations to non-profit news" bucket, that people could freely contribute to (with tax advantages, like the election fund).
Then apportion that money out to all non-profit news organizations, according to some (readership) + (journalistic awards by their peers) weighting.
It removes the direct connection between donor and output, which is what we seem to want in news.
And it doesn't really answer a lot of the hard questions. Who is going to actually write the articles, what's their political angle, and what are their career objectives? And how do you handle delicate topics with evolving information in a neutral way?