AP to offer its members free investigative reporting pieces from top nonprofits

Posted by Emma Heald on June 15, 2009 at 9:44 AM

The Associated Press will start distributing watchdog and investigative journalism from nonprofit organisations at no cost to its member newspapers on July 1, it announced at the 2009 Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference in Baltimore. It will be a six-month trial project involving four nonprofit journalism organizations, reported a press release.

The project is aiming to provide the nonprofits with an additional distribution channel, while making it easy for the AP's 1500 member newspapers to find and use this content. It will be provided via AP Exchange, the AP's web-based delivery system, at no cost to either the newspapers or to the contributing organisations. Exchange users will have the option of routinely displaying the nonprofit journalism in their news searches.

"We're seeing exciting growth in foundation-supported and other nonprofit journalism organizations that are producing public service journalism, which is at the heart of AP's news values," said Sue Cross, senior vice president, Global New Media & U.S. Media Markets. "As a news cooperative that enables its members to share content and provides them with a variety of choices, we want to foster an exchange that helps them easily access this journalism."

The four organisations are the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica. If the project is extended, other nonprofit journalism organizations may also be included. "Our principal aim at ProPublica is for our investigative stories about abuse of power and betrayal of the public trust to have impact and that comes from reaching the best possible audience," said Paul Steiger, Editor-in-Chief of ProPublica. "AP Exchange should contribute meaningfully to this objective."

Directors of the other institutions were equally enthusiastic about expanding the reach of their work. The AP deal means that stories which would previously have been published by one paper might now appear in many. As income declines at many newspapers throughout the US, investigative reporting has frequently been hit hard as it is both time and resources consuming, and organisations have been springing up to try to cover the gaps in traditional reporting, often funded by foundations. ProPublica, for example, was founded in 2007 and now boasts more than 20 reporters. The public interest journalism which such organisations provide plays an extremely important role in a democratic society, so the fact that it will be published more widely is welcome news.

Source: AP press release