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Key links:
Primary website:
voiceofsandiego.com
Primary Twitter:
@voiceofsandiego

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit online news organization that focuses on in-depth and investigative reporting on civic issues.

The site was founded in 2005 by venture capitalist Buzz Woolley and veteran San Diego journalist Neil Morgan, funded by $355,000 of Woolley’s own money as a way to fill what they saw a gap in local government reporting.

Its annual budget is about $1 million, and it has about 10 newsroom employees, though it laid off four employees in December 2011. About 12 percent of the site’s revenues as of 2014 came from community and corporate sponsorships, with 45 percent coming from major donors such as Woolley, 28 percent from foundations (including the Knight Foundation), and 15 percent from individual donors through a membership program. As of September 2009, Woolley had provided the site with $1.3 million of the total $3.5 million in donations over five years. Voice of San Diego also makes some money from syndicating its content and is seeking to grow its membership model. In 2014, it received a $1.2 million joint grant with MinnPost from the Knight Foundation to improve attraction and retention of members.

Voice of San Diego has a relatively modest but steadily growing web audience, with just fewer than 100,000 unique visitors per month as of late 2009. The organization has won numerous journalism awards, and its investigations have forced several city leaders to step down.

The site was founded on the principle of civic engagement, and it has worked to encourage online discussion, making civic participation half of its two-part mission and hiring its first engagement editor in 2010.

Voice of San Diego also emphasizes explanatory journalism, producing regular “explainers” and factchecking features.

It launched a redesign in 2013 with an emphasis on multi-story narratives and social interaction among users.

Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis talks about the value of explainers:

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
Nov. 6, 2023 / Andrew Donohue, Voice of San Diego
This is the beginning of the end for The San Diego Union-Tribune — s the Fourth of July approached last year, The San Diego Union-Tribune prepared to do something it’d never done in its 154 years of existence: For one day, the newspaper wasn’t going to print an actual paper....
Aug. 6, 2020 / Joshua Benton
In the arena: Ken Doctor is moving from “media analyst” to “media CEO” with Lookout, his plan for quality local news — The easiest way to criticize a journalist is to point out the distance between their position and the subject they’re writing about. How can you be an education reporter if you don’t have kids or pay property...
July 11, 2018 / Per Westergaard and Søren Schultz Jørgensen
54 newsrooms, 9 countries, and 9 core ideas: Here’s what two researchers found in a yearlong quest for journalism innovation — The news media most successful at creating and maintaining ties with their readers, users, listeners and viewers will increasingly be media that dare challenge some of the journalist dogmas of the last century: the dogma...
June 18, 2018 / Christine Schmidt
A look at how foundations are helping the journalism industry stand up straight — Foundations across the U.S. are helping journalists watchdog the powerful — but who’s watching the foundations? The state of the journalism industry might be much more tattered right now if not for philanthropic ...
June 12, 2018 / Christine Schmidt
A definitive playbook: How to DIY a local nonprofit news outlet — A decade ago, if you decided to create your own nonprofit news outlet to focus on local issues, you were largely operating without a playbook as an early entrant to the local nonprofit news scene. Now, with dozens and do...

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: May 1, 2014.
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New York is a weekly magazine and daily website that primarily cover the culture and politics of New York City. Founded in 1968 by Clay Felker and Milton Glaser as a competitor to The New Yorker, and known for its witty and often irreverent writing style, the magazine quickly established itself as a cradle of…

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