Editorial

CAMPAIGN FINANCE INFORMATION

Gain access via the National Institute on Money in Politics to unique, comprehensive and verified campaign-finance information from the Federal Election Commission, 50 state agencies and select local jurisdictions. Get personal assistance and training on how to use the tools at FollowTheMoney.org, where the institute archives its database of campaign contributions totaling more than $100 billion and more than 2 million state lobbyist-client relationships that are registered annually. In addition to federal campaign spending data, the site has campaign spending reports for 31 states, and lobbying spending in 20 states.

Services:

  • Search, sort, analyze and download datasets that punctuate excellent investigative and accountability reporting
  • Track legislation through the lawmaking process via the MyLegislature tool, which groups lawmakers by their committee assignments, shows legislation they've sponsored, shows the path of their legislation, and shows which donors have given to the sponsors, committees and the legislature as a whole
  • Use advanced "similarity" programming to see which donors have similar donating trends, and which candidates received donations from the same donors, which can highlight attempts to influence laws

About: The nonpartisan, nonprofit National Institute on Money in Politics, incorporated in 1999, promotes an accountable democracy by compiling comprehensive campaign-donor, lobbyist, and other information from government disclosure agencies nationwide and making it freely available at FollowTheMoney.org.

Rate: Free for INN members

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COMMENTING SERVICES

Use Coral’s Talk commenting platform to more easily manage the conversation in your website’s comments. Coral Talk is designed to help journalists better engage their communities and better allow community members to manage their own experience. The platform includes tools that help people mute other commenters, get updates about new comments and allows journalists to be highlighted when they join a discussion. Plus, for comment moderators, the service uses AI to make moderation less burdensome. Plus, it also integrates with Slack, so notifications come right to where your team is already working. Coral’s Talk comments can be run for free as an open source project, or as a managed and hosted solution provided by Coral at a discount to INN members.

Services:

Coral Talk can be run in three ways-

    • Without any support or assistance, Coral’s open source commenting software can be installed and run with your stories on your website at no charge.
    • Coral also provides consulting and setup assistance for an hourly rate to help you install and set up the commenting service, but you are responsible for maintaining and running the software. There is no charge by Coral after the initial setup, but you may have to pay for serving and hosting.
    • As a managed and hosted service, the commenting software runs on your website but is monitored, updated and managed by Coral. See how the comments look on The Washington Post and The Intercept.

     

About: Founded as a collaboration between The New York Times, The Washington Post and Mozilla, Coral has become a leading voice in online community engagement. Now part of Vox Media, Coral and its Talk platform helps millions of readers interact with journalists through better moderation tools, more focused strategy and best-in-class technology for website comments.

Rate: Rates and fees depend on whether news organizations sign up for a managed and hosted solution, just need consulting help to install and configure the open source software, or are prepared to install and run Coral’s open source software without any assistance. Coral offers INN members a 10% discount off their standard customization/installation rate ($200/hr), as well as 10% discount off of the standard fee for the managed installation. In addition, all news organizations that sign up for the hosted solution and pay for a full year of the service up-front receive one month of service free.

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DATA SERVICES

Access the raw data behind ProPublica's reporting as a resource for other INN members doing the challenging, expensive work of investigative reporting.

Services:

  • Datasets about health, criminal justice, education, politics, business, transportation, military, environment and more

About: ProPublica Data Store is an ever-expanding clearinghouse for the data used in ProPublica reporting.

Rate: Free. ProPublica also provides premium data products and custom data services.

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INFOGRAPHIC & DATA VISUALIZATION SERVICES

Quickly create charts, infographics and engaging data visualizations with no coding or design skills needed with Infogram. These infographics can be used internally or instantly published online and can adapt to any screen size. View the examples here. View examples of the enterprise version as used by INN members CALmatters and Better Government Association.

Services:

  • (Free Version) Ability to create infographics, charts, dashboards, reports, and other visualizations to publish on the web without having to use or pay for freelance design help
  • (Enterprise Version) Customized branding with your newsroom's own fonts, colors, icons with options to add objects such as custom maps; create team libraries; bigger library space over the free version; HTML download option; priority support in tickets and chat

About: Infogram was built with the goal of increasing data literacy, giving anyone — and especially the fast-paced media sector — the power to visualize and share data in minutes.

Infogram was founded in 2012 by Uldis Leiterts, Raimonds Kaze (both journalists) and Alise Semjonova (a designer). Currently, Infogram has more than 4 million users and companies, including INN members and brands such as Techcrunch, Politico, UNICEF, LinkedIn and Unilever.

Rate: Free. INN members can upgrade to a Team account with their own branding at a 30% discounted rate.

*Business Team account from three to 10 user licenses for INN members costs US $1,251.60/year to US $2,368.80/year
*Enterprise level starting from 10 user licenses for INN members costs US $4,057.20/year with option to add extra seats for US $159.60/license

Nonmembers can unlock an extra referral discount — 10% off for a for-profit organization and up to 25%, depending on team size, for nonprofits.

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

If you’re part of — or interested in — the public media community, Current is your source for industry news. And INN members get a special discount on access to Current.

Services:

  • Current offers digital subscriptions to its online news site, Current.org. Members of INN, AIR and NFCB get a 50% discount off of the regular retail rate.

About: Current is the nonprofit news service for and about public media in the U.S. Public broadcasting professionals, including radio and TV station and network employees, independent producers, and national policymakers, rely on Current for information, inspiration and in-depth coverage of our vibrant, evolving, mission-driven field.

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TRUST SERVICES

Led by engagement expert Joy Mayer and experienced journalist Lynn Walsh, the Trusting News project works with individual newsrooms on projects to build trust between newsrooms and their audiences. Trusting News is a project to “empower journalists to demonstrate credibility and actively earn trust” from their audiences.

Services:

  • Individuals looking for ideas on how to adapt their reporting and storytelling to include practices that build trust can access one-on-one coaching.
  • Newsrooms can get coaching on storytelling practices, community engagement strategies and access to ongoing research on trust and journalism by applying to become a newsroom partner.

About: Since 2016, the Trusting News staff has been working with newsrooms to learn how people decide what news to trust and help journalists implement trust-building strategies, like how to ask for feedback and how to explain your mission to your audience. Trusting News is a collaboration between the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri and the American Press Institute.

Rate: Thanks to the generous support of Democracy Fund, Trusting News is able to offer free coaching for journalists who want help earning trust and demonstrating credibility. They are also looking for newsrooms to partner with on large-scale efforts to build trust between newsrooms and communities.

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VIDEO AND ANIMATION SERVICES

Coda Studio, the production arm of award-winning nonprofit newsroom Coda Story, offers a service that can help your newsroom create video content based on reporting.

Services:

  • Video content creation
  • Production and creation of engaging animations and other easy-to-digest visualizations
  • Storytelling consultancy and storyboarding
  • Scripting
  • Working with newsrooms to turn the text piece into the video and then the final product

About: Coda Studio currently works with the BBC, World Policy Journal, ProPublica and other media clients.

Rate: Up to 50% off per minute of animation (normally $3,000 per minute) depending on complexity and requirements.

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