Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » propublica

ProPublica-inspired global news site launches in Australia

Paul McNally — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:24:42 +0000

A new not-for-profit online journalism start-up launches today in Australia, backed with $15 million of funding from a philanthropist to see the site through its first five years.

The Global Mail is edited by former ABC broadcast journalist Monica Attard and aims to provide “public interest journalism – no ads, no subscription, no celebrity stories, no spin”.

Attard told the Australian: “I had long viewed, with a degree of envy, the ProPublica model in the US. The model was inspired by ProPublica.org, even though we won’t and can’t do investigations alone.”

She adds: “We would like to think we can come up with novel ways to help pay our way in the world. We haven’t thought of any yet. That’s the honest-to-god truth.

“The market is small in Australia, so we figure there’s room for a new player aimed at covering the world, with Australia in it.”

The site launched this morning at www.theglobalmail.orgSimilar Posts:

Tool of the week for journalists – ProPublica’s TimelineSetter

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:12:58 +0000

Tool of the week: ProPublica’s TimelineSetter

What is it? A tool for creating beautiful interactive timelines.

How is it of use to journalists? Having spent time developing a timeline tool, US investigative journalism news site ProPublica has made the code available for others to use, enabling journalists to build interactive timelines from a spreadsheet.

ProPublica’s timeline on how one blast affected five soldiers is a clear demonstration as to just how effective the tool can be in online storytelling.

The LA Times and Chicago Tribune are among those who have utilised the open source software since it was made public in April 2011.

TimelineSetter is not for the technology shy, however. Non-coders should not let this introduction to the tool put them off and should instead try watching the two videos embedded below and test out the technology.

Let us know at @journalismnews if you build and publish a timeline using ProPublica’s code.

If you want to create a timeline but avoid coding, try Dipity, a previous Journalism.co.uk tool of the week.

Hat tip: 10,000 Words
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#news2011: ProPublica model ‘not feasible’ as commercial venture, says editor-in-chief

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:50:40 +0000

A commercial version of ProPublica is not “feasible at present”, its editor-in-chief told the Global Editors Network news summit today.

The US investigative news site, which relies on funding from philanthropic donations, was launched in 2008.

Giving a keynote speech to the event in Hong Kong via video-link Pro-Publica’s Paul Steiger, a former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, said he did not think a commercial organisation would be able to do as ProPublica does and “concentrate on doing nothing but investigative reporting”.

“It is possible that news organisations can have investigative reporting as part of the menu of reporting”, but not to the same extent.

The industry has gone from a high profit margin business model to one with much tighter margins.

As a result news organisations are “much less able to take the risk of sending reporters out on a project that might not produce a viable story,” he said.

I don’t think it is impossible at to make it happen in places outside of the US though. It just requires energy and ingenuity.

Click here for more on ProPublica and how it is funded.Similar Posts:

#jpod: How video games can tell news stories

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:09:31 +0000

Creating a video game to tell a news story can enhance a reader’s understanding of the complexity of the issues involved. When 33 Chilean miners were trapped underground just over a year ago the world’s media told the story and in this Los 33 game, created by Root 33, the online viewer has the task of rescuing each miner and gets to understand the lengthy rescue process.

In this week’s #jpod, technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Bobby Schweizer, a doctoral student at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of Newsgames: Journalism at Play; Shannon Perkins, editor of interactive technologies at Wired.com, who created Cutthroat Capitalism, a game where the player becomes a Somali pirate; and Scott Klein, editor of news applications at ProPublica.

The podcast hears about notable newsgames, discusses when a story warrants a game, and how much money is needed to create one.

Schweizer talks about his latest project, the Cartoonist, which aims to enable journalists to create their own online newsgames.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

Similar Posts:

#wef11: ‘Many journalists are slaves to a CMS – think beyond that’

Rachel McAthy — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:51:20 +0000

There was a fascinating session at the World Editors Forum today titled ‘looking beyond the article’, which saw a number of speakers discuss the news game, and the ways news outlets are using gamification methods to offer wider context and understanding to news stories, events and scenarios.

One of the first speakers, Bill Adair, who is founder and editor of PolitiFact said he felt there was “a tremendous lack of imagination” in the industry in how to take advantage of new publishing platforms.

It’s like we’ve been given a brand new canvas with this whole palette of colours and we’re only painting in grey. We need to bring all the other colours to this new canvas.

He later said:

Many of us are slaves to our content management systems, which are slaves to the old way we were publishing. We have to think beyond that.

Scott Klein, editor of news applications at ProPublica, shared many examples of news apps which are doing just that. Klein’s presentation of these examples can be found at this link.

He told the conference that as well as adding context a news app has the ability to personalise and place the user at the centre of the story and offer them the ability to see the impact on them, “it doesn’t just tell a story, it tells your story”, he said.

You can hear him speak more about this in the audio interview below:

Scott Klein of ProPublica by journalismnews

Another member of the panel was Bobby Schweizer, co-author of Newsgames: Journalism at Play. He said video games give the opportunity to look beyond the traditional news story and called on conference delegates to try and “make something”.

And he himself is trying to help make this happen, working on the development of new software called the Cartoonist to help journalists produce their own news games, a project which won Knight News funding last year.

In the short audio clip below I ask him more about what this software will offer journalists:

Bobby Schweizer, co-author of Newsgames by journalismnews

When asked about the implications of news games being able to be created quickly and potentially running alongside more breaking forms of the story, Schweizer said news outlets and journalists need to ask themselves why they are making the game.

You have to ask what do you have to gain over a written article? If you only need to answer who, what, when and where maybe you don’t need a game. This has to be a balance that each organisation will have to find for themselves.

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ProPublica: Susan White on the secret to being a successful editor

Joel Gunter — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:04:30 +0000

ProPublica has published the full transcript of a podcast interview with outgoing senior editor Susan White. White gives some interesting insights into how things work at the US’ best-known non-profit investigative outfit and her own way of going about being an editor.

She spoke to PropPublica’s director of communications Mike Webb and managing editor Steven Engelberg.

Mike: Why don’t we walk through an investigation? How does an idea originate and what do you tell the reporter to do, once you hear that idea?

Susan: I rarely tell reporters to do anything. I don’t think that’s the role of the editor. I guide, I steer, and I encourage and I help shape, but I don’t give reporters marching orders.

Mike: Is that because you think they’re wise enough to know the first steps?

Susan: Right, well… The best ideas come from reporters, not editors. I don’t think since I’ve been at ProPublica I have assigned anyone a story. I rarely have throughout my editing career. Usually a reporter comes to me and we have this idea. We vet it at the top here, at ProPublica, because if we’re going to work on something for a long time, we want to make sure that it’s going to work out.

Read the full transcript or listen to the podcast at this link.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – data collection guides

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:00:28 +0000

ProPublica has compiled a series of guides on collecting and scraping data based on experiences from its own investigations, which could be useful for data journalists. The guides cover topics from using Google Refine, reading data from Flash sites and scraping HTML. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

ProPublica signs up to Press+ in bid to encourage donations

Joel Gunter — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:14:17 +0000

Non-profit investigative journalism outfit ProPublica is to start using Press+, a payment plaform launched last year by startup Journalism Online.

ProPublica will use the tool to manage public donations, with Press+ logos across the site to encourage users to give money. Following an arrangement with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has provided 10 non-profit news sites with the platform, ProPublica will not have to share revenue with Journalism Online for the first year. The New York-based non-profit is the second outlet to take up Press+, following its launch on the New Haven Independent site in June.

Journalism Online was launched in April 2009, and won investment from News Corp in June 2010. Its first client was LancasterOnline.com, which began using the Press+ system in July to charge for its access to its obituary pages.

ProPublica announcement at this link.Similar Posts:

ProPublica: How we got the government’s secret dialysis data

Joel Gunter — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:25:49 +0000

Today, US non-profit ProPublica begins publishing the findings of a long-term investigation into the provision of dialysis in the US, which will also be published by the Atlantic magazine. In an editors note on the site, Paul Steiger and Stephen Engelberg explain how reporter Robin Fields spent two years pressing officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to release a huge dataset detailing the performance of various dialysis facilities.

Initially, she was told by the agency that the data was not in its “possession, custody and control.” After state officials denied similar requests for the data, saying it belonged to CMS, the agency agreed to reconsider. For more than a year after that, officials neither provided the data nor indicated whether they would.

ProPublica finally got its hands on the data, after the Atlantic story had gone to print, but plans “to make it available on our website as soon as possible in a form that will allow patients to compare local dialysis centers.”

Full story at this link.Similar Posts:

ProPublica figures reveal several half a million dollar salaries

Laura Oliver — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:37:03 +0000

Paul Steiger, the editor-in-chief of non-profit investigative news site ProPublica earns a salary of $571,687 (approximately £366,701), according to figures reported by the organisation to the IRS.

In 2009, the organisation employed 47 people and five volunteers. Salaries for senior staff in 2009 included $343,463 for managing editor Stephen Engelberg and $320,978 for treasurer and secretary Richard Tofel.

Steiger is very open about his approach to staff pay, as he told the New York Observer in 2007, “I’m prepared to spend $200,000 on the exact right person, but if the exact right person isn’t there, then I’ll get three people at $60,000.”

Full figures on FishbowlNY…Similar Posts:

ProPublica photographer followed by BP employee, detained by police

Joel Gunter — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:10:27 +0000

Police in England have come in for a fair amount of criticism recently for their treatment of photographers (see here and here), but their US counterparts have received some attention too after detaining freelance photographer Lance Rosenfield, who was working for ProPublica at the time.

Rosenfield was driving away after taking photos of a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas when he was followed by a BP employee, blocked off by two police cars and detained. Rosenfield had remained in a public space outside the refinery while working. The police reviewed his pictures and recorded his date of birth, Social Security number and other personal information. According to Rosenfield these details were then shared with BP.

Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, said:

“We certainly appreciate the need to secure the nation’s refineries. But we’re deeply troubled by BP’s conduct here, especially when they knew we were working on deadline on critical stories about this very facility. And we see no reason why, if law enforcement needed to review the unpublished photographs, that should have included sharing them with a representative of a private company.”

Full story at this link…

via Fishbowl NY blogSimilar Posts:

ProPublica: Reporting bank investigations – a cautionary tale

Judith Townend — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:57:54 +0000

ProPublica managing editor Stephen Engelberg shares some advice on reporting bank investigations.

His advice:

When the journalistic scrum forms around an investigation, read very carefully and withhold final judgments.

He writes:

…Stories about investigations often leave the impression that authorities are running full tilt at malefactors. And they often fail to answer basic questions. Are these investigations fishing expeditions? Pro forma reviews? The first steps toward significant charges?

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

FT.com: ProPublica and the realities of non-profit news

Laura Oliver — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:18:21 +0000

An intelligent piece by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson that looks at the realities of running a non-profit journalism venture, in this instance ProPublica.

Despite its Pulitzer Prize win, the site still needs the leverage afforded by partnerships with traditional media, says editor-in-chief Paul Steiger: “[O]ne of ProPublica’s biggest stories: on its own website, it attracted 60,000 page views. But on its partner newspaper’s site it was read 1.1m times.”

Yet business models being tested by other for-profit media may not fit the bill for a non-profit news organisation:

In spite of others’ hopes for “tip jar” models, donations from readers have so far been small. An appeal after ProPublica’s Pulitzer win only paid for the celebratory champagne.

Mr Steiger says the online subscription experiments being launched from News International to the New York Times hold little appeal. “We want our stuff to have an impact. It seems a little counterproductive to say ‘pay us’.”

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Coders meet journalists; journalists meet coders

Judith Townend — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:02:16 +0000

Do journalists need to learn to code? Probably not, but those who can are likely to find themselves quickly snapped up by news organisations with interactive and data teams.

I have no grand hopes of learning to code properly, but I would like to feel a little more comfortable with the language and learn more about the ways programmers work and how it could help journalism.

That was one reason I went along to last night’s Ruby in the Pub informal meetup (tagged #RITP or #rubyinthepub on Twitter), initiated by journalists Joanna Geary and James Ball (even though James himself got stuck at work and missed the event).

The other reason was to meet brave souls playing in the programming-journalism no-man’s land. I think there are exciting things to come out of the programmer-journalist relationship. We’re already seeing that in projects led by mySociety and OpenlyLocal, in collaboration with bloggers and other media.

The US, of course, is streets ahead, with news organisations employing designated journalist-programmers. ProPublica, the non-profit investigative organisation, employs application developers and editors, integrated into the news team, as does the Chicago Tribune (for example). The New York Times has a dedicated interactive team – the head of which, Aron Pilhofer, came along to last night’s meet-up (he recently wrote about this new breed of ‘hacker-journalists’ at this link).

Over here, we’re seeing moves in the right direction (the Scott Trust now has a bursary for students who want to learn software development) and of course news organisations do employ developers, designers and programmers, but we’ve got some catching up to do in terms of integrating and prioritising programming skills.

[For some examples of interactives, visualisations and data-driven journalism follow this link]

So…what is Ruby? Ruby on Rails is a open source web application framework, using the Ruby language. Only a minority of programmers use it (you can see a comparison of frameworks at this Wikipedia link), but it was the consensus language agreed for the meet-up.

Developer Dave Goodchild (@buddhamagnet) was restricted by the lack of wifi, but nonetheless he did a grand job in educating us Ruby ignoramuses the very basics.

If you do decide to download RoR to have a proper play, Dave recommends building a blog – the format of which is easy to understand for a journalist – and following this online tutorial on the Ruby on Rails blog.

It was a brief introduction and the properly keen will have to do their homework to learn properly, but it’s good to hear developers explaining how they use it – and showing how quickly something can be built.

The evening was also a meeting of cultures; as journalists explained their various work brick walls and developers explained the differences between various coding languages and platforms.

Most useful for me was hearing about the projects developers are implementing in their respective organisations and the tools they are using.

Whether or not very much Ruby knowledge was gleaned by the hacks in one evening, I have great hopes for the conversation between programmers and journalists. It could result in some very innovative applications and stories that will help British journalists catch up with our US counterparts and break new ground.

If you would like to know more about interactives and data-driven journalism, check out the agenda for news:rewired – the nouveau niche (25-06-10) where these topics will be addressed. Buy your ticket (£80 + VAT) at this link. Speakers include OpenlyLocal’s Chris Taggart; the OnlineJournalismBlog’s Paul Bradshaw; and Ollie Williams from BBC Sport.Similar Posts:

Howard Kurtz: The media benefiting from non-profit investigations

Judith Townend — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:16:40 +0000

Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz provides some more background on the New York Times / ProPublica Pulitzer win, as an example of a new way of funding serious journalism.

This is a glimpse of an unexpected future: a battered newspaper business, an idealistic start-up with a deep-pocketed liberal backer, and dogged reporters who otherwise might be out of work. If the Times was piggybacking on ProPublica – which covered about half the $400,000 cost of the investigation – the paper has plenty of company.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts: