Nonprofit Profile | Can a 501(c) Deliver the News?
Of the various media outlets that can credibly claim to provide national news coverage, I can think of only one, National Public Radio, that is nonprofit. It’s barely off the ground, but the online Washington Independent, launched last month by the nonprofit Center for Independent Media, has doubled that list to two. The Independent “aims to combine the best of the old and new media by combining the reporting, accuracy, and fairness of traditional journalism with the speed, voice, and community of the Web.” Today’s lead story is a nifty example, a
piece about the role Howard Dean will play should the expected play out and neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Rodham Clinton earn enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination. It’s an angle I haven’t seen up till now, and reporter Holly Yeager’s piece is well sourced and engagingly written.
From CIM’s mission statement:
The center brings talented and diverse voices and ideas to the fore of our nation’s discourse, through its training programs, conferences, research and publishing operations. Programs emphasize the importance of citizen-driven journalism as a critical founding principle of our nation, the positive role of democratically elected government in securing the common good and social welfare, and the continuing benefits of our founding culture of egalitarian government by the people, for the people.
Most of the nonprofit journalism efforts attempted up to now have been local affairs. The very close corporate ties of the larger media have resulted in a national reporting and commentary enterprise that is insular and little concerned with everyday America — the exact opposite of the aims outlined above. For these reasons, I fervently hope that CIM’s experiment proves successful, and that readers take advantage of this new voice in the national arena.
“Nonprofit Profile,” a weekly look at an organization making nonprofit news, appears Fridays at the 501(c) Files. | 501(c)
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