Philanthropic foundations are taking unprecedented steps to address the crisis in journalism and “serve as a firewall against the disappearance of critical news and information,” according to a new report from the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.
The report, Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders of the News is authored by David Westphal, a CCLP senior fellow and former Washington editor for McClatchy Newspapers.
Economist magazine still making a profit
While most other magazines are struggling, the Economist Group has once again posted profits during the troubled economic times. The magazine's Web site saw a 29 percent increase in earnings from January 2009 to March 2009. The publication did not maintain profitability without cutbacks, however. It has laid off about 130 of its employees over the course of the year to cut costs. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- June 22, 2009
Dumenco questions HuffPo's journalism
Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age chastises the Huffington Post for tabloid journalism and its departure from reporting traditional news. He cited the example of the Huffington Post's decision to publish articles such as “Megan Fox Walks the Red Carpet,” which draw numerous hits. Dumenco writes: "It likes to pretend that it's a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say, Maxim." Meanwhile, bloggers posting stories onto the Web sites get their information from other news organizations such as the BCC and the New York Times while these news organizations bear the costs of reporting. Read the Advertising Age post -- June 22, 2009
Online exclusive angers print readers
The Washington Post is hearing it from subscribers for its online-only posting a two-part article on the murder of Robert Wone. Subscribers argued that this was the kind of news they wanted to read, and online readers had the ability to read this story free of charge. The newspaper defended its decision not to post the article in print to save space for other articles in the newspaper. The author of the article, Paul Duggan, notes that online news posting offers a variety of advantages in comparison to printed news, in that it allows the writer almost limitless space to cover a story. Read the New York Times article. --June 22, 2009
CircLab seeks revenue for customized news aggregation
CircLabs is currently developing software known as Circulate that will track its users' viewing habits and deliver news and ads tailored specifically for the user. The software monitors and transmits data back to the news service automatically allowing the news service to send customized news and advertisements. Users will have the choice of either enabling or disabling the tracking feature. CircLabs says it will permit local ad placement and allow companies to charge for news subscriptions. Read the PaidContent.org article. --June 22, 2009
News aggregator raises $2.5 million from investors
The brainchild of Patrick Spain and Michael Wolff, the news aggregation site Newser has successfully raised $2.5 million in startup money. The money comes primarily from individuals, many of whom were involved in Spain's previous endeavors. Currently, Newser has about 2 million monthly visitors and, despite receiving just a fraction of the traffic that Yahoo and Google News get, is close to breaking even. According to its Web site, Newer is unique in that it compiles news from the top 100 news sources and provides readers with more comprehensive summaries of the stories being covered. Read the PaidContent.org. -- June 19, 2009
Niche site covers Phoenix's light-rail
After his first start-up online news operation failed to gain traction, former newspaperman Adam Klawonn has received a $95,000 Knight grant with an extremely narrow focus: to cover Phoenix's new light-rail system. The Daily Phoenix, as it has been termed, will report on stories such as crime in the areas surrounding train stops. Businesses will also have a chance to be included in twice-daily text messages about their company. Klawonn still needs to secure additional funding for his project. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- June 19, 2009.
Wikipedia to add video to its site
Wikipedia, the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia, is set to launch video on its pages. The site is hoping that more creators of content will make their videos accessible to the public domain. Until then, Wikipedia will feature content from the Internet Archive, which has 200,000 videos, Metavid, which stores congressional speeches, and Wikimedia Commons, which has 4 millions media files. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- June 19, 2009.
Organization lacking on the Kindle
The Kindle may or may not be the new newspaper, but Farhad Manjoo at Slate lists some areas that have room for improvement. His biggest point of contention is the way that news on the Kindle is organized -- or isn't. While traditional newspapers, and their Web sites, organize news stories by importance and relevance, the Kindle simply lists headlines under categories, without giving the reader a sense of the type of story they're about to read, its size or its importance. That means that reading the newspaper on a Kindle is much more cumbersome and time-consuming. Read the Slate article. -- June 19, 2009
Reader's Digest shifts to the right
Reader's Digest has, alongside many other general interest magazines, seen a worrisome decline in both subscribers and advertising revenue. To combat this trend, the monthly publication is turning its attention to more conservative values. As Mary Berner, chief executive of Reader's Digerst, put it: "I love my family, I love my community, I love my church." The publication is hoping that a shift in focus -- away from celebrities and toward the military, for example -- will turn its fortunes around. Read the New York Times article. -- June 19, 2009
News & Events
Symposium: How to fix a broken California, Tue., June 23
Leading journalists, policymakers and political analysts convene to examine the results of the May 19 special election and prospects for California’s future. Discussions will be led by Dan Schnur, director of the USC Unruh Institute of Politics and David Abel, publisher and former chairman of the California Assembly Speaker's Commission on State Local Government Finance Reform.
From a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on the future of journalism to a new tax cut for newspapers signed into law by the governor of Washington state, policymakers nationwide are responding to the crisis facing the news business.
“It's … a time of real hardship for the field of journalism ….. But it's also true that your ultimate success as an industry is essential to the success of our democracy,” President Obama told members of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Thanks to a grant from Carnegie Corporation, the USC Annenberg School for Communication’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) is launching a major new research project to document current and past government engagement in the news industry and assess new policy proposals.
How hot is the world of nonprofit investigative reporting these days? Hot enough to make Jon Sawyer, who runs an international reporting shop, full of envy at this week's gathering on investigative reporting outside New York City.
"We'd like to see the same energy in international reporting that we see on the investigative side," said Sawyer, director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
As was true at the recent Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, this week's meeting of investigative reporting nonprofits generated an unmistakable energy field. Which is an amazing thing, given how desperate the plight of investigative journalism seemed just 18 months ago.
Today, a nonprofit group featuring or specializing in watchdog reporting is being created almost every month -- a pace that emboldened leaders to take the first step this week toward creating a network connecting these mostly startup groups. Participants established a steering committee that swings into action immediately after the July 4 holiday, with Goal No. 1 being securing foundation support for a planning grant.
A group of investigative reporting nonprofits has endorsed formation of a new umbrella organization aimed at sustaining the burgeoning investigative nonprofit movement and bringing new prominence to its journalism.
A resolution, "Pocantico Declaration: Creating a Nonprofit Investigative News Network," was approved Wednesday by a diverse group of nonprofit leaders – established organizations like the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as newcomers like Texas Watchdog and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
The group's mission will be to "aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work and public reach of its member news organizations, including … their administrative, editorial and financial well-being." Here's the full text of the resolution.
Before they head for home Wednesday, about three dozen participants at an investigative reporting summit in New York are likely to launch planning for new organization uniting the growing number of nonprofits producing investigative journalism.
The new network, dubbed for now the "Investigative News Network," would be another significant step in the rise of nonprofit investigative journalism in recent years. Chuck Lewis, the godfather of so much in investigative journalism, called the initiative "truly historic."
At a conference outside Tarrytown, N.Y., Lewis laid out a possible scenario Tuesday for how the network might take shape: Secure a planning grant that would extend for up to a year; establish a new Web site displaying members' work; and begin posting content within 6-12 months. By the end of the year, he said, the organization would need to be established as a 501(c)3. Lewis predicted said the organization would inevitably go international.
What exactly is the gathering of investigative reporting nonprofits, now under way in Tarrytown, N.Y., trying to achieve?
Ostensibly, it's creation of an Investigative News Network -- a coming together of the growing universe of investigative reporting nonprofits. As Bill Buzenberg, director of the Center for Public Integrity, said at dinner last night, "Imagine what a 50-state network (of investigative nonprofits) might achieve?"
But as the conference swings into gear this morning, it's clear there are many different ideas of what the mission or missions of such a network might be. In Monday's opener -- a fascinating round of introductions from the 39 people in attendance -- several possibilities were put on the table, most centering around the new-media model of partnerships:
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