CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

Results

Organizations filtered by 11-20 Editorial Staff.

Dec 30, 2010 02:09 PM
California Watch

A watchdog for the Golden State
By Colin Fleming
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — In less than two years, California Watch has become a force in American journalism, distributing its content to over eighty different publications and operating with the biggest investigative team in the state. Launched in 2009 as a facet of the Center for Investigative Reporting, California Watch dedicates itself to "high-impact reporting" on health, education, ecology, politics, and public safety....
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Jan 5, 2011 06:54 PM
Center For Investigative Reporting

Old-school investigative nonprofit takes to the web
By Colin Fleming
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — In the world of American investigative nonprofits, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the oldest and one of the best recognized. Founded in 1977 by a small group of investigative reporters, CIR has grown considerably since, amassing numerous awards. It now employs a full-time staff of twenty and works with an annual budget of over $4 million. CIR has broken stories...
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Aug 8, 2011 11:49 AM
Deadspin

Gawker Media's sports news success story
By Erik Shilling
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — For Deadspin, the impish sports wing of the Gawker empire, the presence of a pink gorilla at a hotel meeting between Tommy Craggs, a Deadspin senior editor, and John Walsh, ESPN's executive vice president for content, must have felt like a crowning achievement. The site made its name most recently by publishing pictures of...
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Apr 10, 2013 02:51 PM
District

A student voice from the Savannah College of Art and Design
By Meredith Qualls
SAVANNAH, GA — After beginning in 1995 as a weekly student-run print publication at the Savannah College of Art and Design, District relaunched as an online-only in 2008, becoming part of the early wave of student publications to scrap their print product. "We wanted to go digital because we felt like that was where the industry was headed, and all of our students...
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Mar 28, 2011 08:32 PM
DNAinfo

Hyperlocal news for Manhattan
By Alex Fekula
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Manhattan surely has more media outlets per square foot than just about anywhere else in the world, but DNAinfo has proved that there's still plenty of room on the island for local news. Conceived by Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, the site is a compendium of hyperlocal news for Manhattan's many communities. The site's ten separate verticals provide coverage of neighborhoods...
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Jan 3, 2011 01:35 PM
Gawker

Pioneers of Internet snark branch out toward general interest news
By Sean Gandert
NEW YORK, NEW YORK— The rise of Gawker has been well-documented. Founded by Nick Denton in 2003 as "the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip," the site's urbane tone of bemusement in line with the old Spy, coupled with the Internet's ability to feature near-instant commentary on events, turned the site into a quick, widely imitated success. But the current version of...
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Jan 3, 2011 04:31 PM
GigaOM

The site offers predictive technology coverage, and has itself been a leader in earning web revenue
By Sean Gandert
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — What started out as a personal blog that combined former Forbes and Business 2.0 reporter Om Malik's mutual interests in technology and opinionated blogging has become a full-fledged business. Despite running an editorial staff of twelve and working as a "jack of all trades" for the site's business and technology sides, Malik still personally writes on GigaOm nearly every day....
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Jan 4, 2011 05:17 PM
Grist

Irreverent online environmental magazine offers in-depth reporting with "secret sauce"
By Brett Norman
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Grist is an irreverent online environmental magazine that aggressively courts young readers, ad dollars, and philanthropic backers. Launched in 1999, the publication could be considered an octogenarian in web years, but maintains the tenor of a cheerful young rebel. To celebrate the nonprofit's tenth anniversary, Grist founder and CEO Chip Giller announced a "Screw Earth Day!" campaign, saying "too many people...
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Jul 15, 2011 11:39 AM
HealthNewsReview.org

A watchdog for health care journalism
By Maura R. O'Connor
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — The job of a health care reporter is to provide accurate, objective coverage of the health care industry. Yet in Gary Schwitzer's opinion, that rarely happens in the American media. "The marketing forces in health care are so overwhelming even good journalists may not realize they're being sold a bill of goods when they are," says Schwitzer, a former news reporter for...
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Jan 3, 2011 06:21 PM
Investigative Reporting Workshop

Multimedia reporting in a university setting
By Colin Fleming
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop is one of sixteen university-based investigative journalism centers, but the only one in the nation's capital. Founded in 2008 by Charles Lewis and Wendell Cochran, both veteran journalists and professors at the university, the Workshop produces original reporting and mentors the next generation of investigative journalists. This dual mandate creates a unique newsroom; undergraduate...
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Oct 6, 2011 05:15 PM
MediaStorm

Multimedia outlet meets production house
By Lauren Kirchner
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Above the cobblestone streets of Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood, the producers, engineers, and cinematographers of MediaStorm are producing some of the most arresting and moving stories online today. While side-stepping the news cycle in favor of more timeless features, their particular brand of multimedia narrative is attracting online viewers from 170 countries around the globe. It has also helped the...
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Apr 3, 2012 02:28 PM
National Institute on Money in State Politics

Tracking political donations and their influence in all fifty states
By Maura R. O'Connor
HELENA, MONTANA — Edwin Bender believes that building a database is like writing a really good story. "What fascinated me about being a journalist was getting down and taking evidence and saying 'this is what I see,'" says Bender. "When I first started building databases it was like reporting a story. Standardizing names and sorting them, finding out who worked for a bank when they...
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Mar 24, 2011 12:53 PM
Neon Tommy

A student-run news site with a national reputation
By David Downs
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — When swine flu heated up international headlines in 2009, University of Southern California's fledgling news site Neon Tommy discovered some cold truths about the official reaction to the disease. Neon Tommy staff obtained forty-four death certificates from Los Angeles county health officials, interviewed family members and doctors, and discovered authorities weren't notifying relatives that the deceased had died from a contagious...
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May 20, 2011 01:35 PM
OpenSecrets.org

Exhaustive reporting on money in politics
By Daniel Luzer
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — In 1983, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Hugh Scott (R-Pa.) founded the Center for Responsive Politics in order to "track money in politics and its effect on elections and public policy." This government watchdog eventually gave birth to OpenSecrets.org, a searchable database of campaign contributions and a center for investigative journalism about money in politics. <!-- OPEN CLOSE top...
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Jan 3, 2011 05:34 PM
Salon

The general interest online magazine has learned to get specific
By Sean Gandert
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Just because Salon is the oldest general interest publication on the Internet doesn't mean that it's been standing still. Founded in 1995 as a web journalism alternative, producing articles as intelligent and well-written as its peers in print, the website's path has been bumpy, but it is still recognizably the same outlet that first appeared over fifteen years ago. The...
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Jan 5, 2011 08:10 PM
Talking Points Memo

The pioneer of web-based political journalism
By Lauren Kirchner
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — What began as Josh Marshall's personal blog during the Florida vote recount of November 2000 has since expanded into a profitable multimedia brand of fast-paced political news coverage. The TalkingPointsMemo.com homepage now acts as a conduit to several different frequently-updated news sites and blogs, a poll tracker, and a video channel....
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Dec 30, 2010 02:23 PM
TechCrunch

The tech startup news news startup
By Sean Gandert
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — From the very beginning, TechCrunch was part and parcel with Web 2.0. Founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, the site began as a personal technology blog but rapidly transitioned into a full-scale publication, drawing in millions of page views a month by the end of 2007. Unlike most of his peers, Arrington didn't come from a journalistic background, instead studying...
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Apr 27, 2012 01:03 PM
The American Independent News Network

A nonprofit news network refocusing in a bid for national relevance
By Erik Shilling
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — When the American Independent News Network launched nearly six years ago as the Center for Independent Media, its goals were small. The nonprofit news organization was one of several that launched around the same time, including ProPublica, MinnPost.com, and Voice of San Diego, mostly in response to the ebbing fortunes of newspapers and a...
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May 19, 2011 04:01 PM
The News Outlet

College students report local news for northeastern Ohio
By Connor Boals
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO — Faced with an increase in journalism majors and the general decay of legacy media coverage in the Mahoning Valley region of northern Ohio, Youngstown State University journalism professors Alyssa Lenhoff and Tim Francisco created The News Outlet, a collaborative effort between the university and several local media outlets. The founders hoped the site's journalism would not only fill a hole in local...
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Oct 12, 2011 11:51 PM
The Saginaw Valley Journal

A for-profit campus news source
By Alex Fekula
UNIVERSITY CENTER, MICHIGAN — Pinned to the bulletin board at the editorial offices of the Saginaw Valley State University-based Saginaw Valley Journal is an article entitled "Leggings Aren't Pants!" An opinion piece featured in a rival campus-run newspaper, the article acts as a constant reminder for the Journal's editorial staff of "what not to do." Looking to provide the SVSU community with a...
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Dec 29, 2010 02:01 PM
The St. Louis Beacon

"News that matters" for St. Louis
By Kathy Gilsinan
St. LOUIS, MISSOURI — Margaret Freivogel's thirty-four years as a reporter and editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch came to an end when she took a buyout in 2005. "Several of us took buyouts without any intention of doing anything else at that point," Freivogel says. "We were just kind of weary." But within a year, Freivogel and a few former colleagues had begun work on...
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Jan 4, 2011 05:48 PM
The Texas Tribune

Political reporting and investigations for the Lone Star State
By Justin Yang
AUSTIN, TEXAS — The Texas Tribune, which writer Jake Batsell profiled for CJR in July 2010, focuses on state politics, government, and investigative reporting, and prides itself on finding innovative ways of presenting the news to an increasingly expanding audience. The nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization has helped redefine online journalism and extended its goals of civic engagement far beyond the Internet. ...
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