Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
Buying Grid gives The Messenger a boost in social, not just in staffing its newsroom
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
Nov. 14, 2009, 4:41 p.m.

Coalition of non-profit news organizations gets funding

The Investigative News Network, a coalition of nonprofit news organizations that met for the first time this summer, is getting closer to launch: They’ve raised more than $500,000, one of the group’s leaders said today.

We first wrote about INN after their meeting in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., where the leaders of more than 20 nonprofits discussed ways they could collaborate on journalism, fundraising, and back-office operations. At a Yale Law School conference today, Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, told me that INN had received funding commitments from a variety of sources, including six-figure donations from the Knight Foundation, Open Society Institute, and Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Buzz Woolley, a one-time venture capitalist who helped found the Voice of San Diego, has also pledged two annual gifts of $100,000. With other, smaller funders, the total amounts to more than a half-million dollars, Buzenberg said.

Lois Beckett explained some of INN’s ambitions after the Pocantico meeting:

The network’s back-office collaborations may include teaming up for payroll and accounting, health care, libel insurance, web development, or legal and other services, as well as creating common templates for time-consuming documents like a memorandum of understanding. The collaborations, in addition to aiding exisiting news sites, could make it easier for startups to enter the field.

At Yale today, Buzenberg put it this way: “We can be the back office. We can create economies of scale.”

POSTED     Nov. 14, 2009, 4:41 p.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
Buying Grid gives The Messenger a boost in social, not just in staffing its newsroom
With the brand comes more than 80,000 followers on social media — roughly 80,000 more than The Messenger had before.
Are BuzzFeed’s AI-generated travel articles bad in a scary new way — or a familiar old way?
I was Buzzy once.
Public radio can help solve the local news crisis — if it will expand staff and coverage
“Local public radio has a staffing problem. Stations have considerable potential but aren’t yet in a position to make it happen.”