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Primary website:
chicagonewscoop.org
Primary Twitter:
@chicagonewscoop

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate.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.

The Chicago News Cooperative was a nonprofit news organization that focuses on public-interest journalism.

The Cooperative was launched in October 2009 by James O’Shea, a former editor at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. It indefinitely suspended operations in February 2012 after a grant from its largest funder, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, fell through in part because of tax classification concerns.

While the Cooperative was operating, it employed around 15 to 20 staff members, seven of them full-time. From its launch through February 2012, the organization produced a two-page, twice-weekly Chicago news section for The New York Times that was distributed in the Times’ Chicago-area papers. It also supplied content for the Chicago public television station WTTW, whose parent company is providing the Cooperative with its nonprofit status during its startup phase.

Part of the Cooperative’s initial funding was provided by a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation, with two additional $250,000 grants from the Knight Foundation and the Media Development Loan Fund.

O’Shea had planned to turn the Cooperative into an L3C, or low-profit limited liability company, though those plans were put on hold pending clarification from the IRS. The IRS’ delay in ruling whether news organizations were eligible as tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations reportedly led to the MacArthur Foundation’s decision to drop the Cooperative’s grant.

Many of the Cooperative’s initial staff members were former Chicago Tribune employees, which prompted some criticism that the new organization might not be innovative — a criticism that was also voiced after the Cooperative’s shutdown. O’Shea and other Cooperative staffers said the Cooperative was built around traditional journalism practices, such as city hall reporting.

The Cooperative planned to fund its operations through a mixture of grant money, advertising, and a membership model (at $104 per year) to eventually wean the organization from foundation funding. It also planned to emphasize niche content, such as an education “News Interest Network” and Early and Often, a site built around the 2011 city elections that charged an initial subscription rate of $175, as well other possibilities such as verticals built around arts and culture or health and science, though those plans did not come to fruition.

The membership system was loosely based on the idea of a traditional cooperative, though members won’t be paid dividends. Instead, the surplus revenue would be invested back into producing journalism, O’Shea said.

Ann Marie Lipinski, who was hired as the new curator of the Nieman Foundation in 2011, sits on the cooperative’s board.

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
July 24, 2013 / Caroline O'Donovan
Let’s talk business: An interview with James O’Shea — CJR has an interesting and lengthy Q&A today with James O’Shea, the former editor at the Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, and Chicago News Cooperative. He talks about strategic decisions he made, and how companies...
March 19, 2012 / Justin Ellis
Passing the nonprofit test: A guide for nonprofit news outlets on how to get 501(c)(3) status — How can a nonprofit news organization maximize its chances of securing 501(c)(3) status from the IRS? The Digital Media Law Project is publishing a guide, and we've got a sneak peek....
Feb. 24, 2012 / Mark Coddington
This Week in Review: A nonprofit news dead-end in Chicago, and political meddling in Philly — Plus: News Corp. defiantly launches its Sun on Sunday, paywalls and aggregation debates, and the rest of this week's news about the future of news....
June 22, 2011 / James O'Shea
James O’Shea: Chicago News Cooperative is a new “town square” — Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its summer 2011 issue, "Links That Bind Us," which focuses on the role community plays in journalism. We're highlighting a few entries that connect with subjects we follo...
Oct. 14, 2010 / Ken Doctor
The Newsonomics of replacement journalism — While we don't know how many of those 13,500 jobs lost are in reporting, we can do some extrapolation. Using that same ASNE census, we see that a little less than half (45% or so) of newsroom jobs are classified as repor...

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: March 8, 2012.
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The Sacramento Press is a for-profit online local news organization that covers Sacramento, Calif. The Press was launched publicly in 2008 by Ben Ilfeld, who ran the site until 2013, when he sold it to local marketer David Terry. It had an editorial staff of three in 2012, along with numerous unpaid contributors, about 110…

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