A “reporting recipe” to dig up dirt like ProPublica
A core goal of nonprofit news organizations is to create impact. Foundations and donors expect evidence of journalism’s impact in a way that the local department store never did. Jack Shafer wrote a scathing critique of the nonprofit-as-impact driver not long ago, arguing that for-profit media is better insulated against donor whims because the audience is the client:
Nonprofit outlets almost always measure their success in terms of influence, not audience, because their customers are the donors who’ve donated cash to influence politics, promote justice, or otherwise build a better world.
(His view of the nonprofit drive to change the world is more jaded than mine. What for-profit newspaper writer got into the business not to change the world?)
Whatever your stance, the reality is here: Maximizing impact is a key part of nonprofits’ aims. Outlets like the Center for Public Integrity, The American Independent News Network (where I edited The Washington Independent), ProPublica, and others measure the reach and impact of their work to drum up support. They do this a number of ways. Center for Public Integrity published its work under a Creative Commons license to try to get other publications to reprint it and amplify the message. (They also participate in a young, and struggling, AP-nonprofit distribution program.) The Washington Independent tracks both media pickup and how its work resulted in real change. ProPublica partners with newspapers around the country in printing its stories — all of which is aimed at maximizing their journalism’s impact.
Today ProPublica is unveiling a new approach in increasing impact: a step-by-step reporting guide that shows how its reporters executed a major investigation, with the hopes that state-based reporters and interested citizen journalists will continue their work.
Reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber have created a guide that reverse-engineers how they reported a year-and-a-half-long investigation on how states handle disciplinary action against nurses. The results of their work were alarming, and its consequences were swift: One day after the Los Angeles Times ran a story on how it took years for the state nursing board to take disciplinary action, while allowing dangerous nurses to keep working, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger removed most members of the state nursing board. Newspapers in several other states have picked up on ProPublica’s work and run their own versions.
It took Ornstein and Weber over a year to research their series, but by making the state-based data available and building a guide on how to do the reporting, they say it should be much simpler and less time-consuming for another reporter to follow in their footsteps. The data alone should at least help “find the smoke” in federal reporting-requirement lapses quickly, so a reporter knows where to invest her time, Weber said. They’re both eager to talk to interested reporters, too. (You can contact them directly, or join in on a conference call that will be scheduled soon.)
“When you called all these different states, you realized you were talking to folks who had never talked to journalists before,” Weber told me. “It made me think it was so ripe for local reporters to take a look at this because, frankly, everyone is touched by a nurse.” The guide lays out seven broad steps for reporting out a regulatory board story, with details under each section, including relevant federal law. It also includes relevant links for certain states.
She added the guide’s methods could be applied to any regulatory board, not just those that govern nurses. “This gives them a map to say, ‘Okay, let’s go take a look at this’…They could maybe change the way these boards are overseen in their state if they find, for instance, they never disciplined anyone, which we found, and that just seems impossible.”
Ornstein told me he hopes this experiment, specifically pointing to the online database of disclosure data, creates real change — and impact. “If somebody has to pay $20 to get a copy of a disciplinary order against a nurse, if they’re looking for a home health nurse, is that something they’re really going to do? Is the state really helping them make a smart choice to protect them? I don’t think so. By pointing this out, we’re really doing a service.”
Laura McGann | March 4 | 2:11 p.m.
Tags: AP, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Center for Public Integrity, Impact, Jack Shafer, nonprofit journalism, ProPublica, Slate, Washington Independent
Scathing? My piece (http://www.slate.com/id/2231009/) was not scathing.
Here’s my gentle-as-bunny-fur conclusion:
Nothing I’ve written should be taken to disparage the good work produced by Mother Jones, National Public Radio, Harper’s, the Christian Science Monitor, or the Center for Investigative Reporting, to pick several nonprofits with good reputations. Hell, long ago I worked for a nonprofit magazine that did good work (Inquiry). Nor should anything I’ve said be automatically taken as a slam against the new nonprofits. But the rise of nonprofit journalism comes at a price. Be prepared to pay it.
Jack — You describe the rise of the new nonprofits in your lede as “spreading like a midsummer algae bloom.” I’d consider that a slam on its own. The rest of the article follows suit. As far as my story here, the key point I make is that there is controversy around impact as a journalistic mission. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I don’t think you’re disputing that claim.
Oh, Laura, what’s scathing about a rapid-growth metaphor? You’ll have to do better than that to convince me and your readers that my article was scathing.
–Jack
How about a hyperlink:
Nonprofit Journalism Comes at a Cost: The downside of nonprofit news organizations like MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, and The Washington Independent
To note a downside is to scath? I like some non-profit media! I used to work for a non-profit! If you need to turn me into a boogeyman for the purposes of your article, you’ll have to do better than that.
If you were a loan voice questioning whether journalists should concern themselves with impact, then yes, I’d be painting you as a boogeyman. We both know that’s not the case. Your article is a good example of the real debate that has sprung up around nonprofit news. And yes, it’s scathing. The bulk of the article tries to build the case that nonprofits aren’t trustworthy because of their underlying financial model. You don’t even include one example of how a nonprofit has addressed any of your concerns. The whole thing is a critical take. As far as your last graf, that’s not a conclusion. That’s a disconnected point not supported by the rest of the column.
Nowhere do I say you can’t trust non-profit media. Nowhere. My argument is pure caveat emptor. If you think that money flows to non-profits with no strings attached, you’re an inhabitant of fantasyland.
You warn readers of the dangers of nonprofits without any evidence that nonprofits take precautions to avoid situations where fundraising corrupts the editorial process. I notice you do extend that courtesy to the forprofit press. I’m not saying there are no strings attached to donations or that we shouldn’t make sure nonprofit journalism is transparent. But by offering no explanation of how this happens, you’ve written a completely critical — and what I’d call scathing — critique of nonprofit journalism.
I listened to NPR this morning, watched NewsHour and BBC World last night. Frontline is a part of my regular media diet. My magazine rack overflows with non-profit rags–Mother Jones, Reason, American Prospect, Commentary, Columbia Journalism Review, Harper’s, Nieman Reports, and more–hardly evidence of my lack of “trust” for non-profit media. I’m no enemy of non-profit media and your attempt to paint me as such is crap.
All types of news organizations face a potential conflict of interest with their benefactors. For-profit media may go easy on major advertisers, not to mention the interests of their corporate parent companies. Nonprofits may face similar concerns about stepping on toes of major donors.
I’m not sure either is better or worse than the other inherently. It comes down to the integrity of the individual journalists.
Jack, any writer should understand that writer’s intent is not as important as how people read the story. After reading the exchange of comments, I have to say you were sharply critical of the non-profit model. If you meant not to scathe, you should have written a more balanced piece (and Laura is right, the sop at the end did not blunt the edge of the overall piece). I have strong reservations about philanthropy funding for journalism myself and I might not have called your piece scathing, but your claim that it wasn’t is pretty amusing. If Laura read it as scathing, you scathed. Methinks you protest too much.
That said, thanks to Laura for calling attention to this great work by ProPublica and the extraordinarily transparent guide they presented for other journalists. That wasn’t scathing, by the way.
If I may venture a guess about why Jack Shafer views his column one way and his interlocutors another…
Jack sees his column as contrarian not to non-profit news organizations but to a utopian view of non-profit news organizations that he thinks some people (maybe a lot of people…) have. Thus, “If you think that money flows to non-profits with no strings attached, you’re an inhabitant of fantasyland.”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t attempt to say who does hold such an unsophisticated and unrealistic view, which is typical of the degraded state of debunking discourse today.
Meanwhile, his interlocutors at Nieman Lab read his column as fellow realists who are friendly to non-profit news organizations but never considered for a moment the idea of “no strings attached.” They don’t need to be disabused of a fantasy they haven’t had, so what they find in his column is a series of arguments “against” non-profits. Thus, “Jack Shafer wrote a scathing critique of the nonprofit-as-impact driver not long ago.”
Whereas in Jack’s mind that critique was directed not toward non-profit news organzations–which he says he supports– but toward the dreamy inhabitants of fantasyland, who seem to believe that non-profits are a “pure” public service because they don’t have a commercial imperative. About this view he is indeed scathing.
But again, since he doesn’t delimit who holds this view, or quote anyone in support of it, or provide any evidence at all that it has enough traction to be worth debunking in Slate, his column when read feels like an attack on the non-profit way, even though he put into it a number of qualifiers to make clear that this is not at all what he meant.
Thus, “Nothing I’ve written should be taken to disparage the good work produced by Mother Jones, National Public Radio, Harper’s, etc..” and “Every community should be fortunate enough to have a nonprofit like the New Haven Independent walking the beat for it.”
If I am right than the culprit here is the lame practice of writing against a view you have no intention of surfacing and documenting in the piece itself, instead gesturing toward it without actually affixing it to real people. This happens in Jack’s column in the following sentence, “But before we get out the party hats and noise-makers to celebrate the rise of nonprofit journalism, here’s the bad news….”
He’s not against non-profit journalism; he’s against the people with the party hats and noise makers. I think he should quit using this device because it generates a lot of misunderstanding and suggests Shaferian realism is rarer than it is. I doubt he will take my advice… but one can always hope.
Cheers.
The answer to Jay Rosen’s question of who holds “unsophisticated and unrealistic” views about the nature of nonprofit funding would include—but not be limited to—the daily newspapers covering the establishment of the nonprofit news organizations.
For instance, when Herbert and Marion Sandler set up Pro Publica in 2007, the papers that covered the event—the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Post—made only passing reference to the couple’s political activism, noting that the Sandlers were major donors to the Democratic Party.
In my Slate column, published the day of the Pro Publica announcement, I gave a more detailed account of their political generosity. In addition to donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns, they’d given the MoveOn.org Voter Fund $2.5 million in 2004 and dropped another $8.5 million on the 527 group Citizens for a Strong Senate in the 2004 cycle. CSS was formed by “a group of strategists with close ties to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards,” as the washingtonpost.com’s Chris Cillizza reported. In 2005, Herbert Sandler gave $1 million to the California stem cell initiative. They’ve also been benefactors of the progressive Center for American Progress as well as other left-liberal groups.
Ordinarily, reporters love to probe the intersection of money, politics, influence, and journalism—Rupert Murdoch’s political shenanigans are routinely examined inside the context of his news outlets’ coverage. All I’m saying is that the Sandlers, John Thornton, Warren Hellman, Pierre Omidyar, Randy Ching, and the other moneybags endowing nonprofit news deserve the same scrutiny we give for-profit news entrepreneurs. Is that too much to ask? Or is nonprofit journalism such a delicate flower that we should never question the motives of its founders?