End of the Independent

The nonprofit Washington Independent will shut down after three years of strong national reporting because of a lack of funds. From Aaron Weiner at TWI:

TWI has always relied on donations, primarily from foundations seeking to promote journalism in the public interest. Those donations began drying up long ago. I’m grateful to the American Independent News Network for keeping TWI alive long past the point when its expenses began exceeding its receipts. But it wasn’t sustainable, and today the bosses informed us they’re pulling the plug. On Dec. 1, TWI will begin mirroring the content of our network’s other national site, The American Independent. TWI’s reporters and I will look elsewhere for work.

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The crisis in the world of journalism today isn’t really about journalism — it’s about the bottom line. Reporters and editors everywhere are trying to find a way to keep their very good work alive. We thought our model had a chance. It put up a good fight.

Just how many journalists are out there?

The implosion of daily newspapers, the largest employer of professional journalists, has left behind a river of unemployed bodies, the victims of layoffs, downsizing, buyouts, attrition, and whatever else got people off the shrinking payrolls.

But the expansion of non-traditional media has, even in this down economy, offered some opportunities for transition into journalism jobs of a different sort. For example, public radio and nonprofits are expanding, though at a slow pace, offering some former daily reporters and editors new homes. Online sites, from AOL's Patch to the Daily Beast, are giving writers of varying experience a chance to resettle.

The quality of journalism from the new and expanding media is mixed, but then so was the quality of many newspapers. Nonetheless, it's hard to evaluate, in the middle of a massive upheaval, whether "good" journalism will thrive - especially since there's increasingly loud disagreement about what constitutes "good" journalism.

But for those tracking the numbers, Ken Doctor has a roundup of the jobs lost and jobs gained in recent years, which might give us a little a blurry idea of where things are headed. It's still an ugly picture for anyone out of work (or at a bad paper) who's uncomfortable with opinionizing, taking a pay cut, and for whom editing down video of a community meeting is torture. But some green shoots (a godawful phrase) are appearing.

Four today

1. A new news filter that promises unfiltered news. LAO

2. Howard Kurtz profiles the Center for Public Integrity. WaPo

3. Corporate puppets versus hometown publishers. Anniston Star

4. Lemon juice does not make you invisible. Errol Morris

The big merge

Wired has more on the big public media platform merger being shepherded by NPR president Vivian Schiller. From the story:

The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.

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The Public Media Platform will cross-pollinate news across those five networks, and will provide data analysis to help reporters inside and outside those organizations present complex information more effectively. Both will be subject to various licensing rules, but the idea is to allow member stations and eventually third parties to distribute this information however they see fit.

We’re going to spend the next six months figuring out exactly [the] rights [and metadata] issues, but the ultimate goal of this is to make this content available,” said Schiller. “Say there’s a blogger who is particularly focused on the BP crisis in the Gulf — they will be able to pull out still photographs, national and international reporting, reporting from local stations, video from PBS, data, and mash that all up together.

(found via Nieman Journalism Lab)

Has it come to this? Yes.

Grist's Jennifer Prediger (a former colleague at the Claremont Courier) donned a fox mask and asked for donations to keep the nonprofit website's environmental journalists on the payroll. Cutesy or not, direct appeals will have to become more the norm than the exception if important - but often neglected - forms of journalism are to continue to thrive.

Here's the video:

Another nonprofit watching California

In September, the Center for Investigative Journalism unveiled California Watch, a nonprofit investigative journalism unit, with the stated mission of exposing "injustice, waste, mismanagement, wrongdoing, questionable practices, and corruption" in California.

The Pacific Policy Institute today launched it's own version of the nonprofit investigative team called CalWatchdog. The Pacific Research Institute is a think tank with strong libertarian-leanings. The group promotes smaller government and free-market ideology and is associated with such think tanks the Cato Institute. But the nonprofit, investigative arm promises to follow traditional media standards:

CalWatchdog’s mission is to uncover governmental waste and shine the light on the misuse of taxpayer dollars. As part of a new wave of nonprofit, Web-based journalism, CalWatchdog adheres to traditional journalistic standards and focuses on improving government transparency.

The featured investigation on the site concerns the state water policy and was written by Wayne Lusvardi, a vocal libertarian and former MWD employee from Pasadena who's made his opinions known about state water policy known.

CalWatchdog's board of advisers includes former LA CityBeat publisher Will Swaim, former Republican analyst and now head of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics Dan Schnur, Chapman University professor Tibor Machan, conservative columnist Deroy Murdock, and Cathy Taylor, editorial director for the Orange County Register.

The more eyes on government, the better. But the genesis of this investigative unit does point up the increasingly blurry line between traditional newsrooms and ones born of ideological agendas. As we saw in the row over the Washington Post's partnership with The Fiscal Times, the blurred line can expose traditional media sources to charges of partisan favor. Nonprofit does not necessarily mean non-ideological.

Nonprofit journalism carries political baggage

A dispute over the Washington Post's decision to use of stories from the nonprofit Fiscal Times highlights the potential pitfalls for traditional media in partnering with groups that claim editorial independence but rely on money from groups with agendas.

From Politico:

Critics are calling on The Washington Post to stop printing news articles from The Fiscal Times, a new “independent digital news publication” funded by Peter G. Peterson, a former Wall Street financier and longtime advocate of changes to Social Security.

The Post and the new publication announced an agreement last month to jointly produce content “focusing on budget and fiscal issues,” and the first article from The Fiscal Times appeared in the Post on Thursday. Headlined “Support Grows for Tackling Nation’s Debt,” it described growing momentum for “a special commission to make the tough decisions that will be required to dig the nation out of debt.”

In a letter to the Post’s ombudsman, 14 academic and public policy experts on Social Security said the newspaper should “rescind the partnership, reserve opinion pieces for the op-ed page, and not allow itself to be a propaganda arm for ideologues who use fiscal distress as a stalking horse to destroy social insurance.”

The dispute highlights the new questions that can be expected to arise as mainstream newspapers and websites increasingly partner with nonprofit groups as a source of engaging, inexpensive content. The Post and other newspapers also use stories produced by Kaiser Health News, a project of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The group Campaign for America's Future has launched an email campaign to draw negative attention to the Post's partnership with The Fiscal Times.

Going big in Texas

The nonprofit Texas Tribune launched today. Aggregater, blogger, investigator, data miner, pollster, bloviater - the site promises to include all the best online journalism has to offer and with a defined mission to promote civic engagement.

From the editor, Evan Smith:

In true twenty-first-century fashion, we're approaching the task of storytelling across multiple platforms: text, audio, video, blogs, databases, mobile, social. We're treating you, the reader or viewer or listener or user, as if you're the customer, and we're busily puzzling through how best to meet your various demands. Our goal is to maximize your ability to personalize your experience; as we move to day five and day ten and day thirty, we'll be adding new and innovative ways to do just that.

The top story on the site is about the use of physical restraint to control or discipline disabled students. There are also several stories about state politics and the nasty race for governor.

UC Press goes Boom

The University of California Press plans to launch a scholarly magazine about California issues called Boom: A Journal of California.

From the release:

Headed by Editors Carolyn de la Peña, Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis and Director of the Davis Humanities Institute, and Louis Warren, UC Davis’ W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, the journal will include a wide range of works ...

... according to de la Peña, “To truly grapple with the crisis facing California, we have to gather new knowledge about who we are, how we got here, and what common ground can be built for the future. By featuring the work of researchers in multiple fields and combining that with community voices, we believe Boom will uncover fresh perspectives on the state we're in.”

Nonprofits have lots of room to bloom given the gaps left by the cuts to statewide coverage at California's largest newspapers.

A new voice from behind the Orange Curtain

A new nonprofit online newsroom called the Voice of OC hopes to get off the ground by the end of the year. The website, which will model itself after the Voice of San Diego, will cover public affairs in Orange County and be edited by former Orange County Register reporter Norberto Santana Jr., the Los Angeles Times reports.

The initial funding for the site comes from the Orange County Employees Association, which kicked in $140,000. Supporters hope to raise $600,000 to cover first year expenses.

The nonprofit board for the venture includes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine Law School and trial lawyer Tom Girardi. Former LA Times reporters Harvey Weinstein and Dan Morain also sit on the board.

Labor unions, trial lawyers and journalists are not the first things that come to mind when thinking about Orange County....

California Watch debuts

The first story from California Watch lands today, the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and uses public records to evaluate how California's cities and counties spent the $1.9 billion in Homeland Security funds awarded to make them safer:

Under the state’s open-records laws, California Watch found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9/11.

The complete article is here.

California Watch was started by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.

Partners in journalism

Increasingly, large newspapers and newspaper chains have agreed to partner with nonprofit news organization to provide them with supplemental or specialty coverage of complex issues of the day. In one of the more recent pairings, McClatchy Newspapers has teamed with Kaiser Health News to keep a watchful eye on the health care debate.

Nonprofit news site launches

The latest in nonprofit news production comes from the Kaiser Foundation, which has launched Kaiser Health News, self-described as "an editorially independent ... nonprofit news organization committed to in-depth coverage of health care policy and politics."

The writing staff is impressive: Three successful newspaper reporters, from the LA Times, USA Today and Congressional Quarterly, serve as correspondents, and more hires are expected. The editors, hailing from the Wall Street Journal, NPR and the Baltimore Sun, have a fair track record of success themselves - including a Pulitzer and a Peabody.

From the Welcome page:

In these dire times for the news industry, the birth of a news organization is a rare bright spot. We hope Kaiser Health News will make a vital contribution by covering health care policy and politics, as well as trends in the industry and delivery of care. With an historic debate on the health system underway, we’re looking forward to having a front-row seat.

The website includes an interview with White House health care czar Nancy DeParle and a story about how New Jersey's health-care system illustrates the challenges ahead for national health care reform.

Kaiser Foundation President Drew Altman wrote about the site last month.

It's unlikely nonprofit foundations alone can save the news industry, but they can fill the niches left by newspaper downsizing. KHN is also accepting health-care stories from freelancers:

We welcome freelance ideas from professional journalists if they are about health care politics and policy. Right now, we are not taking freelance video or audio pitches. Please Contact Us, Attn: Peggy Girshman.

Congress to the rescue!

The plight of the ailing, failing newspaper industry has caught the attention of Washington pols. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Attorney General Eric Holder have made noise about relaxing anti-trust provisions to help Hearst unload the San Francisco Chronicle. Now a Maryland Senator has proposed legislation that would allow endangered papers to morph into nonprofits.

From Bennett Roth at CQ Politics (which is itself up for sale):

"We’re losing our local papers and it’s tragic. We need to look at a different model to save local newspapers,” said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin , D-Md.

Cardin introduced a bill Tuesday that would permit newspapers to operate as nonprofits, or 501(c)3 corporations, much as public broadcasting now does.

Under this arrangement, advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax-deductible.

Such a structure would require at least one significant change for most newspapers: They would not be allowed to make political endorsements, a staple of many editorial pages.

*The nonprofit-newspaper legislation could boost efforts by a Bay Area investor to takeover the Chronicle. SF Appeal

Accepting who you are

The San Francisco Chronicle wasn't making a profit, so why not turn it a nonprofit?

Three from ProPublica

The number of collaborative stories between the nonprofit newsroom of ProPublica and traditional newspapers seems to be on a steady rise. Here are two examples involving the San Diego Union-Tribune and the New York Times, respectively, and a third story ProPublica reported on its own:

Polluting our life line

The bribery business plan

Down and dirty at the SEC