INN, IRE to Hold Pre-Day Nonprofit News Event at 2012 Conference

Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and the Investigative News Network (INN) are partnering to host Best Practices for Nonprofit Newsrooms: A day of hands-on sharing and learning at the IRE Conference in Boston on June 14, 2012. This all-day program will focus on three areas that are vital to nonprofit investigative centers: collaboration, legal issues, and best practices in operations. All INN members are encouraged to attend. Additional conference details are available on IRE's website. The agenda for June 14 includes:

9:45 a.m. Welcome remarks Kevin Davis, INN CEO

10 a.m. Collaboration Workshop Evelyn Larrubia, INN Editorial Director

As collaborations between newsrooms flourish, how do you handle serious journalistic disagreements, such as how a story’s findings are described in the nutgraph?

IRS Awards 501(c)3 Status to San Francisco Public Press

After more than two and a half years, the IRS has awarded 501(c)3 nonprofit status to the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial local news organization that publishes in-depth public-interest news daily online at sfpublicpress.org and quarterly in a print newspaper.

McCormick Foundation Provides an Additional Two-Year Grant to INN

The Investigative News Network is pleased to announce that it has received a two-year $225,000 grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. This two-year grant will be used for joint reporting projects and support services for INN’s growing network of 60-members

The funds will also finance a second training seminar for INN members in partnership with the Center for Investigative Reporting. The seminar will be held April 2012 in Berkeley, Calif.,  prior to the annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting. "We are very grateful to the McCormick Foundation for their continued support of our consortium," said Kevin Davis, CEO and Executive Director of INN.  "Thanks to this generous grant, INN can increase the level and impact of the editorial collaborations across the Network, while increasing the business capabilities of our member organizations. The grant is part of the nearly $5 million in McCormick funding approved for 22 organizations dedicated to news literacy, press freedoms and excellence in journalism over the course of the next two years.

ProPublica Joins the Investigative News Network

ProPublica, one of the largest non-profit investigative newsrooms in the U.S., has joined the Investigative News Network (INN), a growing consortium of nearly 60 nonprofit news organizations in North America. “We are delighted to have ProPublica become a member of our community of nonprofit and nonpartisan newsrooms,” says Kevin Davis, CEO & Executive Director of INN.  “ProPublica is a leading organization in the nonprofit journalism sector that consistently demonstrates both the need and the ability for these newsrooms to create high quality public interest journalism.”
ProPublica was created in 2007 and has one of the largest investigative newsrooms in the U.S.  In 2010, ProPublica was the first online news organization to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 2011, ProPublica won the first Pulitzer awarded to a body of work that did not appear in print. ”ProPublica is very pleased to be joining INN,” said Richard Tofel, General Manager of ProPublica.  We’re proud to have already published stories in partnership with seven INN members (as well as more than 70 other news organizations), have worked closely with other INN members, and look forward to collaborating with even more.  We’re very enthusiastic about Kevin Davis’s leadership of INN and have already realized significant cost savings through our INN association.”

ProPublica is supported primarily by philanthropy and provides the articles it produces, free of charge, both through its own website and to leading news organizations selected with an eye toward maximizing the impact of each article. INN was founded in 2009 to help the increasing number of nonprofit newsrooms to pool resources, promote editorial collaborations and get wider distribution of their work.

Watchdog Institute Changes Name, Watchdog Mission Remains Strong

The Watchdog Institute is launching a name change and a formal partnership today with KPBS, the PBS-NPR affiliate in San Diego. The partnership underscores a new level of collaboration between the organizations, which over the past year have investigated the whooping cough epidemic and inequities in K-12 school funding in California. The Institute, which opened its doors in San Diego State University’s School of Journalism & Media Studies in 2009, is now known as Investigative Newsource. Founder and executive director Lorie Hearn said the new name “ is a natural outgrowth of the evolutionary process we’ve gone through as a young startup. Investigative Newsource better defines who we are, and plainly reflects our quest to be a source of credible, investigative, nonpartisan journalism.”

Hearn said the partnership with KPBS strengthens the commitment of both organizations to public service journalism in the region, particularly as KPBS debuts a nightly, half-hour television news show this week.  “By sharing our expertise and resources, we can provide more and deeper projects of importance to the community,” she said.