It’s worth pointing here to Pro Publica: Journalism in the public interest, which has been in the news the past few days. The site — an independent nonprofit newsroom supported by private philanthropy aimed at providing in-depth investigative news stories — debuted Sunday with a 60 Minutes report on the US-funded Alhurra Network in the Middle East. Following that, PBS’s NewsHour on Tuesday followed up with a report on Pro Publica, foundation-funded journalism, and similar efforts from independent nonprofit efforts, including the Center for Investigative Reporting, American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop the Global News, with correspondents in 53 countries, and the Center for Independent Media.
The phenomenon of nonprofit news is an important new development in the journalism world. Here’s the report on the NewsHour website. NPR’s Daniel Schorr chimes in with a commentary on Alhurra.
My own view is that the NewsHour wouldn’t have run the segment if it reflected truly dissonant voices in independent media. Pro Publica’s Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Alex Jones of the Shorenstein Center on the Press at Harvard, are hardly representative of this new wave of independent media. (I wish Pro Publica well but have doubts about its long-term viability. Spot.us seems like a model more likely to succeed. But: May a thousand flowers bloom.) Nothing against Steiger and Jones, but seeing someone under 60 years old on the NewsHour would have been refreshing.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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