Formation | 2009 |
---|---|
Type | 501(c)(3) |
27-2614911 | |
Registration no. | C3250040 |
Membership (2023) | 425+ |
Staff | 20-30 |
Website | inn |
The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a non-profit consortium of nonprofit journalism organizations. The organization promotes nonprofit investigative and public service journalism by supporting its members and the nonprofit news industry as a whole.
INN was founded as the Investigative News Network in 2009 at a summer conference held at the Pocantico Center in New York with journalists from the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting, among other newer organizations. The result of that conference was the Pocantico Declaration with the intent to share resources and collaborate on projects. [1]
Two papers in 2010 described a trend in news media where watchdog journalism was being done increasingly outside of mainstream newsrooms. [2] [3]
INN was granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in March 2012, 19 months after applying. [4]
In November 2014, the board of INN met to conduct a strategic review of the organization. During that meeting the board decided to refine the organization's and to change its name from "Investigative News Network" to the "Institute for Nonprofit News". In March 2015, the board voted to terminate the organization's first CEO, Kevin Davis, and appoint data reporter Denise Malan as the interim CEO while a search was conducted to find a permanent replacement. [5] In September 2015, Sue Cross, formerly a consultant and before that a long-time employee of AP was hired as the new Executive Director and CEO. [6]
INN says its membership is open to independent, nonprofit news organizations that: [7]
As of July 2023, INN had over 425 members, [8] up from 189 in March 2019 [9] and 60 in 2011. [10]
Examples of notable members include:
As a 501(c)3 non-profit education organization, INN provides coordination, training, support services and financial sponsorship to its membership. It has published educational resources and training materials, including a whitepaper, "Audience Development and Distribution Strategies", [11] and regular articles by experts in the fields of business and journalism.
In 2011, INN joined the Thomson Reuters media platform. [12]
In 2011, INN also launched the INNovation fund with the Knight Foundation to support experimentalism in nonprofit journalism. [13]
In 2012, INN developed "Project Largo", a WordPress theme and CMS platform for news websites based on NPR's Project Argo that is used by member organizations in New Orleans, Connecticut, Maine, Iowa, Oklahoma and elsewhere. [14] [15]
In 2013, INN's CEO Kevin Davis consulted on a nonprofit media working group for the Council on Foundations to produce a report titled "The IRS and Nonprofit Media." The report urges the IRS to update its approach to granting charity status to non-profit journalism organizations. [16]
In 2013, INN member I-News merged with Rocky Mountain PBS and Denver-based NPR affiliate KUVO in what is a first of its kind merger between public broadcasters and INN members. Mergers of this type are expected to continue as nonprofit newsrooms look to create efficiencies in serving communities across media and platforms. [17]
Since 2016, INN has partnered with NewsMatch, an initiative supported by several national foundations that match donations from individuals to nonprofit news organizations. [18] [ non-primary source needed ]
In 2021, TheNew York Times highlighted how communities where local newspapers were shuttering followed INN's playbook for how to start a nonprofit news organization, which it found were becoming more prevalent. [19]
In 2021, The Associated Press reported on how INN was helping to form The Rural News Network, a collaboration that started with 60 rural nonprofit news organizations [20] and has grown to 70 in 2022. [21]
Daily Maverick is a South African online news publication and weekly print newspaper, with offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It claims to have a readership of approximately 10 million readers per month. It was founded in 2009 by Branislav Brkic, who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the publication, and Styli Charalambous, its Chief Executive Officer.
Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization focused on issues affecting the San Diego region.
MinnPost is a nonprofit online newspaper in Minneapolis, founded in 2007, with a focus on Minnesota news.
ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won six Pulitzer Prizes.
The American Independent Institute is a nonprofit organization which funds liberal investigative journalism efforts. According to the organization, its aim is to support journalism which exposes "the nexus of conservative power in Washington." The current institute, started by David Brock in 2014, is a relaunch of the former state-based digital news-gathering network known as the American Independent News Network.
The Colorado Independent was a nonprofit media organization, first reporting news via its online website that was started in July 2006, later revitalized again in September 2013 under new Colorado-based management.
The Franklin News Foundation, previously the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, is an American online nonprofit news organization that publishes news and commentary from a conservative and free market, limited government perspective on state and local politics. Its journalism platform is called The Center Square, rebranded from Watchdog.org. Founded in 2009 in North Dakota, the organization moved to Virginia and is now based in Chicago.
The Global Editors Network (GEN) was an international association of over 6,000 editors-in-chief and media executives with the mission of fostering digital innovation in newsrooms all over the world. GEN had three main programmes: Editors Lab, the Data Journalism Awards, Startups for News, as well as an upcoming hub for the international data journalism community. The organisation’s flagship event, the GEN Summit, gathered over 830 participants from 70 countries. The GEN newsletter was read weekly by more than 13,800 subscribers. It is a non-profit, non-governmental association.
DocumentCloud is an open-source software as a service platform that allows users to upload, analyze, annotate, collaborate on and publish primary source documents. Since its launch in 2009, it has been used primarily by journalists to find information in the documents they gather in the course of their reporting and, in the interests of transparency, publish the documents. As of May 2023, DocumentCloud users had uploaded more than 5 million documents. Many of them are accessible via a public search portal.
Philanthrojournalism or nonprofit journalism is the practice of journalism funded largely by donations and foundations. The growth in this sector has been helped by funders seeing a need for public interest journalism like investigative reporting amidst the decline in for-profit journalism outlets. Transparency and diversified funding streams have been put forward as best-practices for nonprofit outlets.
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.
The Malheur Enterprise is a weekly newspaper in Vale, Oregon. It was established in 1909, and since October 2015 has been published by Malheur Enterprise Pub. Co. It is issued weekly on Wednesdays. Early on, it carried the title Malheur Enterprise and Vale Plaindealer. As of 2018 its circulation has been estimated at 1,207 to 1,277.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) is "an international association of nonprofit organizations that support, promote and produce investigative journalism." The association is headquartered in the United States, and its membership is open to "nonprofits, NGOs, and educational organizations" that are active in investigative reporting and data journalism. As of February 2021, GIJN had 203 member organizations in 76 countries.
Mississippi Today is a nonprofit news organization based in Ridgeland, Mississippi. It was founded in 2016 by former NBC chairman Andrew Lack. It is focused on watchdog journalism related to Mississippi's state and local government, economy, environment, public schools and universities, and criminal justice system.
Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and entrepreneur. She was a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impact of technology on society. She was a senior reporter at ProPublica from 2014 to April 2018 and staff reporter at the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2013. Angwin is author of non-fiction books, Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (2009) and Dragnet Nation (2014). She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.
Susan Smith Richardson is an American journalist, news editor and media executive. She is the former managing editor at The Guardian US. Prior to that, she was the chief executive officer of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. Until 2019, she was editorial director of newsrooms for the Solutions Journalism Network and was previously the editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter. In 2002, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. From 2011 to 2013, she was editor of the Texas Observer magazine and from 2004 to 2007, she was an editor for the Chicago Tribune. She has served on the board of directors for the MOLLY National Journalism Prize, named after journalist Molly Ivins.
Chalkbeat is a non-profit news organization that covers education in several American communities. Its mission is to "inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families by providing deep, local coverage of education policy and practice." It aims to cover "the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education". Its areas of focus include under-reported stories, education policy, equity, trends, and local reporting.
City Bureau is an American non-profit organization based in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is a non-profit newsroom that aims to produce civic journalism that brings journalists and communities together in a collaborative spirit. It was founded in 2015, and soon after won the March 2016 Sidney Award. City Bureau has since won awards from the Online Journalism Awards for their Documenters.org project, a $1M grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and trained over 80 journalists, held numerous public meetings, and co-published articles with numerous outlets.
States Newsroom is a U.S. tax-exempt organization that serves as an umbrella organization for state-focused news outlets with progressive editorial outlooks. Launched in 2019, it began as a sponsored project of the Hopewell Fund, a left-leaning nonprofit that does not disclose its donors. It grew out of NC Policy Watch, a progressive think tank in North Carolina founded by Chris Fitzsimon. Fitzsimon is States Newsroom's director and publisher.
The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization managed by Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consulting company that advises left-leaning donors and nonprofits about where to give money and serves as the hub of a politically liberal "dark money" network in the United States. The Hopewell Fund serves as the fiscal sponsor for various left-leaning political projects. The Hopewell Fund spent over $127 million in 2020, and is one of the five largest nonprofits associated with the Democratic Party.