Investigative News Network (http://investigativenewsnetwork.org/)
There’s little public scrutiny when private donors pay to give police controversial technology and weapons. Sometimes, companies are donors to the same foundations that purchase their products for police.
ProPublica is a nonprofit organization.
If you value their work, please help support it.
Over the past year, three U.S. Senators have proposed bills to strip the NFL of its tax exemption, while more than 400,000 people have signed a Change.org petition urging Congress to act.
When a coal miner’s lungs finally gave out, his autopsy proved a top doctor was wrong — giving hope to thousands of other miners. The story of Steve Day and his final vindication.
For years, Texas cops left nearly 20,000 rape kits untested while perpetrators went free. Now some agencies are confronting that injustice.
Startups, sustainability, staffing, management, training, office basics — INN provides an overview of these and other business essentials for all news nonprofits.
INN exists to make the work of member nonprofit investigative newsrooms more sustainable and more widely seen. To that end, INN has negotiated syndication deals with two organizations at favorable rates so that you don’t have to. Want to sign up? Contact Lisa Williams at lisa@investigativenewsnetwork.org. Newstex
Newstex aggregates and curates content from media organizations, online magazines, top blogs, YouTube, and social media channels. Customers typically need content to round out a topically-focused website; they republish the content. What they syndicate: RSS feed of articles from your site, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
"We're going to do it American Idol style," says Kevin Davis in this video of a session at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference on nonprofit news business models, "I'll present what we've learned, and you critique it, from a global perspective." Want to hear more? See the complete video here.
The rising number of food imports into the United States is overwhelming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is tasked with inspecting much of the seafood, fruits, spices and other food items shipped from abroad, a collaborative investigation by two Investigative News Network members has found. FairWarning's reporting found many concerns with the FDA import inspection system. The FDA today rejects about the same number of shipments of foreign food as it did a decade ago – when imports were less than half the current level. The Food and Environment Reporting Network drilled down more closely on seafood, finding that though the FDA and some other federal agencies inspect a portion of imported seafood, the safety net still doesn't catch all of the potentially diseased or unsafe food. The FairWarning story also was published by some McClatchy newspapers and other INN members, and the FERN story was picked up by Medium.
Three INN members teamed up last weekend to offer the specialized training for about 25 reporters from non- and for-profit media companies in D.C. and around the country.
If you've ever found yourself wishing for a list of reporting, data and visualization resources among INN members, today is your lucky day! We are happy to bring you the INN Toolbox, a collection of searchable databases, Github repos, APIs, embeddable widgets and more that can help with reporting and online presentation.
The INN Fundraising Guide provides how-to resources on a wide variety of revenue streams for news nonprofits, and advice on developing capacity and strategies for fund development.
Kickstarter has launched a new category dedicated to funding journalism projects, the company announced on its blog today. Journalism is now one in a list of 16 categories, each with their own subcategories, including subcategories for journalism projects that are based on audio, photo, print, video and web.
"To us, that means it’s more important than ever to make sure journalists have the tools and resources to try new things — whether they’re professionals looking for innovative ways of funding and sharing their work, or ordinary folks with a hunger to tell the stories around them," the company said on its blog. Explore the journalism projects here and tell us what you think.
Today INN hosted a Google Hangout with representatives of the Knight Foundation on the topic of nonprofit news sustainability with the authors of Knight's recent report, "Finding a Foothold: How Nonprofit News Organizations Seek Sustainability." The report gives readers a deep dive into 18 nonprofit news organizations, how they bring in money to support their work, and how that's changed over time. Key questions addressed during this conversation include:
What's the right mix when it comes to devoting resources toward core editorial functions and efforts like marketing and fundraising? What are the most common ways news nonprofits create earned revenue? What doesn't work?
This report provides advice for growing earned revenue streams from audience development and paid distribution for the purpose of diversifying funding.
A few weeks ago, the Boston Globe announced the hiring of Laura Amico to join the digital site as news editor for multimedia and data projects. Amico has been the co-founding editor of the Homicide Watch along with her husband, Chris Amico, since 2010. In a farewell post published today in The Crime Report, Laura shares some of the lessons she learned as the co-founder of the data-driven project that focused on violent crimes. In the post, she opens up about the challenges of keeping Homicide Watch true to its mission, focusing on people and not just data, and departing the project for the Boston Globe. Below is an excerpt of the full piece, which you can read here at the Crime Report:
The motto of Homicide Watch is simple: Mark every death.
Louisiana’s state prison officials were not being forthcoming when acquiring drugs from a hospital, so on August 6 The Lens published this investigative story as part of its series on the state's execution methods. The story alone is impressive. And in terms of web traffic, it went viral. As of Monday, The Lens editor Steve Beatty says the site has had 81,000 unique visitors with an average of almost four minutes spent per visitor on the site. All thanks, in part, to the Huffington Post which picked up the story and directed its large audience to The Lens website.
The Investigative News Network’s Legal Best Practices Guide is designed to help nonprofit news organizations reduce their legal liability by providing sample policies to be included on organization websites; sample contracts to be used for freelancers and other third parties; as well as other resources available to help alleviate legal risk.
DISCLAIMER: INN is not a law firm and cannot provide legal guidance to your organization. These pages are for informational purposes only. Always consult a practicing attorney in your state before using any sample materials archived in these pages.
It may not be a matter of choice but also a matter of necessity for many nonprofit news organizations to have one or more freelancers on staff. With this in mind, do you have the proper protocols at your organization to work with freelancers?
All nonprofit organizations are required to file an annual tax return with the IRS: Form 990, Form 990-EZ or Form 990-N. This annual filing obligation includes organizations that have not yet received a determination letter from the IRS that they are tax-exempt, and it also includes organizations that are fiscally sponsored by INN or other fiscal sponsor.
The INN guide to developing the nonprofit news audience, and connecting with individuals and communities that value nonprofit news.
Want to attend the Google Hangout to learn more about the INNovation Fund? Click here to visit the page where you can view the live broadcast on Thursday, February 13, 2PM ET/11AM PT.
Today INN hosted a Google Hangout with representatives of the Knight Foundation on the topic of nonprofit news sustainability with the authors of Knight's recent report, "Finding a Foothold: How Nonprofit News Organizations Seek Sustainability." The report gives readers a deep dive into 18 nonprofit news organizations, how they bring in money to support their work, and how that's changed over time. Key questions addressed during this conversation include:
What's the right mix when it comes to devoting resources toward core editorial functions and efforts like marketing and fundraising? What are the most common ways news nonprofits create earned revenue? What doesn't work?
So how does an old-school editor get help on data projects? "One of the great things about being a member of INN is that they have great data people, and fellow INN members have never failed to help us when we got stuck."
Recently INN member Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPIPR) debuted a new website, the first INN member to translate our open source Project Largo WordPress theme into Spanish.
I just love this post by Scott Klein of INN member ProPublica:
In 2014, you will be scooped by a reporter who knows how to program. Yes, you. Not the reporter a few cubes over. Not that guy you went to j-school with. You.
