Results matching “nonprofit journalism the fu”

The European Fund for Investigative Journalism, or Journalismfund.eu, launched in February 2009 with a plan to raise funding for investigative reporting that involved cross-border collaboration in Europe.

"In Europe we can see that politics, business, even organised crime all cross borders, while journalists and their coverage are often focussed purely on a national target group and are reluctant to cross borders," director Brigitte Alfter explained in an interview last year.

Just over a year on, two investigative stories have been published and eight more are currently being researched, with groups of two to six journalists working on each. The money raised by Alfter goes towards travel, advice, time and making freedom of information requests. 

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, the journalism nonprofit launched by Ariana Huffington in September 2009, has produced roughly 50 stories since its inception.

Nick Penniman, executive director of the fund, estimated that his editorial staff of nine publish between three and five stories a week. Some are "deep-dive" pieces, requiring months of reporting, while others are "quick-strike" articles that are less in-depth.

The fund's articles are posted on their website and can be distributed by other news outlets free of charge under a Creative Commons license.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism and InvestigateWest both received grants of $100,000 this week from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a nonprofit based in Oklahoma City.

The Fund of Investigative Journalism announced news of the grant Tuesday. It will provide funds to help reporters continue investigative work in their local areas and states. The grant will also support investigations by reporters outside the mainstream media.

Community-funded news site Spot.Us introduced several new features and a streamlined design yesterday in response to user feedback. The updated format provides readers with a more interactive role in the journalism they help fund. Among the changes are story updates, the ability to create "assignments" for other users, and a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

The idea behind Spot.Us is simple: Stories begin when readers submit tips or journalist pitch stories. A price is set for the proposed article and Spot.Us lets the public donate to fund expenses for reporting.

The Associated Press' six-month pilot project to distribute content from four nonprofit journalism outlets has so far proven to be a disappointment, Nieman Journalism Lab reported Friday.

Through interviews with the participating nonprofits as well as the AP, Laura McGann of Nieman Journalism Labs found that AP members had used very little of the content provided by the nonprofits.

"We're not really seeing that many reprints and we're not really sure why," Mike Webb, director of communications for ProPublica, told McCann. "We don't know what it is," he said.

The Bay Area News Project, a nonprofit news and media organization based in San Francisco,  announced last Thursday that it had filled two key positions and had reached a deal to contribute content to the Bay Area edition of the New York Times.

The Bay Area News Project appointed as its CEO Lisa Frazier, a current partner at the consulting firm, McKinsey and Company.  Frazier has experience  advising online newspapers, information, and media companies on strategies for growth and marketing and sales.

Eric Newton, Vice President of the Journalism Program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, spoke at the FTC journalism workshop on December 2nd about ways the government could help journalism. He asserts that many governments at the regional or local level are held unaccountable because there is no local reporting; of the 3,248 counties and 30,000 towns and villages in the U.S. as of 2007, the Newspaper Association of America reported only 1,422 daily papers.

The Chicago News Cooperative is a startup news organization serving the local Chicago area as an internet-based nonprofit news service. 

California Watch is a nonprofit news organization based in Sacremento that supports local investigative journalism and will provide stories to news publishers when it is launched in December by the Center for Investigative Reporting. CW is the largest investigative team in California and is dedicated to serving the state's public through accountability reporting.

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

The New York Times plans to use a nonprofit public news service, the Chicago News Cooperative, to provide commentary and news stories for the NYT's two pages of Chicago local news to launch as a 'Chicago Edition' on November 20th. 

The report is quite detailed, and includes various examples and covers many topics, but focuses on local news and the value of quality journalism. Beginning with a history of the newspaper industry that culminates in its weakness in the face of internet news, Downie and Schudson explain the importance of investigative and accountability journalism for a democracy, holding it as a public good. 

In a heartwarming news source startup tale, the Bay Area News Project, a local news source for high-quality jounalism in the San Francisco bay area distributed primarily through online and mobile mediums, was formed through a partnership and cooperation of the local Media Workers Guild and philanthropist Warren Hellman.

Soon after EveryBlock's $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation expired, founder Adrian Holovaty announced his company had been acquired in August by MSNBC in a reportedly 'multi-million dollar' deal, sending eyebrows skyrocketing throughout the nonprofit world.

EveryBlock, a software platform for aggregating local news and information, received the grant in 2007 on the only condition that the code created to work its magic be open-source and published once finished. Now that Holovaty has started his company for free and profited from its sale, the Knight Foundation is looking to change its grant conditions for profit startups.

"We always hope that innovations Knight Foundation funds are supported by the marketplace," said Gary Kebbel, Knight's journalism program officer, citing the foundation's gratification at EveryBlock's move to MSNBC. But "It's a safe bet that grant agreements are going to change in the future," he told an audience gathered for the latest Knight News Challenge.

While remaining generous and innovative, the Knight Foundation could ask recipients to return part of a startup grant. "It might be a certain percentage, it might be a certain dollar figure, it might be the amount of the grant...What we're thinking about is creating another nonprofit that would receive that money, and that money would be either for the future development of open-source software...or it might be for community news," said Kebbel. The return conditions would apply only to companies that are sold after the grant period, not those that achieve commercial success.


Sources: Nieman Labs
paidContent

New nonprofit the Texas Tribune has acquired Texas Weekly, a newsletter for government and politics in Texas and has made its first hires, according to a press release. The online-only news outlet is scheduled to launch this autumn with a mission to promote civic engagement and discourse on matters such as public policy, politics and government.

Incoming CEO Evan Smith, who is leaving Texas Monthly to take up his new role, announced that Texas Weekly editor and owner Ross Ramsey will be the Texas Tribune's new managing editor. The first five reporters on the newsroom team were also announced: Brandi Grissom, Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw, Abby Rapoport, and Matt Stiles. All seem to have experience in covering state politics. 

The Associated Press is to create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to ensure that it is not misappropriated. It is intended that the news registry will serve as the foundation of an industry initiative to protect news content from unauthorised use online, according to a press release.

The registry will use a microformat for news that was developed by the AP and recently endorsed by the London-based Media Standards Trust, a nonprofit research and development organisation. Essentially, the microformat will encapsulate AP and member content in an informational "wrapper" that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage, the press release specified.

A young freelance journalist, Lindsey Hoshaw, is trying to raise money via Spot.Us for a story that could eventually end up in the New York Times. Hoshaw spoke with the NYT about investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its effect on the levels of toxins in local marine life, and then started looking for funding for the project.

Spot.Us, which supports crowd-funded journalism, usually receives pitches that do not have a specific publication in mind, and in this case both the company and the New York Times have taken care to make it clear that although both outlets are involved in the story, it does not represent collaboration. The trip that Hoshaw plans to take to cover the story will cost $10,000. It involves embarking on a month-long voyage to visit the Garbage Patch in the northern Pacific to study the levels of toxins in fish tissues. Out of the $6000 she aims to make through her pitch on Spot.Us (she will personally pay for the rest), over $4000 has already been donated. 

Poynter's Bill Mitchell reported that the New York Times is considering seeking funding from foundations to help support some of its news-gathering costs. Nothing is definite, however, and the paper has no intentions of becoming fully nonprofit, Mitchell was told by Craig Whitney, an assistant managing editor at the Times who serves as the paper's standards editor.

Whitney said the paper's editors "haven't reached any conclusions and haven't gone to any foundations" but that "we've begun to ask ourselves whether it would be possible to get the kind of support that NPR does from foundations for its journalism." He specified that such discussions began around the time that ProPublica launched early last year but have picked up in 2009.

A new investigative journalism project, InvestigateWest, has been set up by a group of journalists who worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which went online-only and shed many of its staff earlier this year. The new site aims to provide "high-quality investigative journalism about environmental, health and social justice issues across the West," according to a press release.

InvestigateWest is nonprofit and will produce work for online, print and radio and TV stations. It will distribute its multimedia content through individual partnerships with media organisations and through its own syndicated service. A core group of six journalists, who between them "have won or been finalists for every significant national journalism award for investigative and narrative work," will be supplemented by a network of correspondents throughout the West.