Editor's Perspective

The Rise of NonProfit News

By George White

When veteran journalist Paul Bass launched a nonprofit Internet news site in 2005, it was not clear that it would succeed. After all, the New Haven Independent (www.newhavenindependent.org) was an operation that required foundation funding. It also had an unusual mission – to focus its reporting on health issues and community affairs.

The New Haven Independent has actually grown and can now be seen as the model that many are now adopting – in part – to create nonprofit digital news operations.

Like the Independent, these new journalism ventures rely on foundation funding. However, instead of focusing on health and community, these new reporting enterprises are dedicated to covering health or local affairs – not both. Nonprofit digital journalism is clearly ascendant, meeting challenges and filling coverage gaps left by a receding newspaper industry.

Filling the Health Coverage Gap

Much of the effort to create news operations dedicated to health care coverage is motivated by a need to better inform the public on wellness, medical care and health policy.

A recent study by Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that only 1 percent of reports by news organizations concern health policy. The survey involved a sample audit of newspapers, cable and network television newscasts, radio programs and Internet news sites and in 2007 and the first half of 2008.

Here are some of the recent health news ventures:

• Florida Health News was created with foundation support in March 2007 by Carol Gentry, a former newspaper reporter.

• The Center for Health Care Journalism will soon be launched with the support of the California Health Care Foundation. The project will be overseen by Michael Parks, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times. Journalists hired by the center will work under the auspices of the USC Annenberg School of Communication.

• Kaiser Health News, an independent news service financed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, will begin its operations early in 2009. Kaiser Health News, which will be headquartered at Kaiser's Washington, D.C. building, will be headed by two veteran journalists – Laurie McGinley and Peggy Girshman.

Focus on Community

Mission-focused nonprofit digital journalism is not new. When ProPublica launched in early 2008 to provide investigative reporting in the public interest, it joined a category that includes the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the New America Media ethnic news collaborative – digital nonprofits that have proved their sustainability.

However, most community-focused nonprofit news operations are relatively new. Consider these recent ventures:

• Voice of San Diego, like the New Haven Independent, was formed in 2005. It receives funding from the San Diego Foundation.

• The Forum, based in Deerfield, N.H., also began its operations in 2005

• ChiTown Daily News was launched in 2007. It has a news staff but also provides training to citizen journalists and assigns them to cover dozens of neighborhoods.

• MinnPost, initially funded by four families, was also created in 2007. It’s managed by a former editor and publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

• The St. Louis Beacon began its operations in April 2008 with a challenge grant from a member of the Pulitzer family. It’s headed by a former St. Louis Dispatch editor.

Additional Ventures on the Horizon

More geography-focused nonprofit sites will soon emerge on the net. For example, the California Media Collaborative was formed in 2007 to devise strategies for coverage of critical state issues. It was founded with foundation support by Louis Freedberg, a former editorial writer and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.  

“This initiative,” says the organization’s mission statement, “is based on the premise that the turmoil in the news industry should not be left to the media to resolve, but needs the involvement and support of key California constituencies, including the non-profit sector, academia, philanthropy and civic leadership.”

The Collaborative is now working to establish CalExpress, a multi-media news and content provider focusing on California issues such as education, public safety and immigration. 

Also, some digital sites that operate on a for-profit basis may soon convert to nonprofit status. For example, the Seattle-based Crosscut, launched in 2007, may make the swithch.

David Brewster, publisher of Crosscut recently explained why such a move is under consideration:

“The more we have studied this community-media model the more it looks like an important new way to help local journalism survive many adverse economic trends, and the looming bad economy. It puts the public interest back into journalism, and it helps to reconnect readers/members with the site in ways that the interactive features of the Web make more natural and illuminating. A nonprofit board, dedicated to the longterm mission of public education and more thoughtful approaches to the news, assures that the site remains locally controlled and mission-driven for decades into the future. And, as this New York Times story points out, these websites can do lots of original and hard-hitting reporting, even with small staffs.”

This wave of new digital dedicated to coverage of community and health should come as no surprise to Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent. In a report on his news operation in 2007 for Context, a communications journal published by the UCLA Center for Communications and Community, he reached the following conclusion:

“There will be room for everyone in this expanding media landscape. After years of pessimism in the corporate newsroom, I’m now optimistic about the prospects of better journalism and improving health coverage.”