Non-profit investigative reporting in American journalism, 2007–2015

By Bill Birnbauer

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Swinburne University of Technology Australia.

2017

Dedication

For my parents, Mariola and Branko.

Inspiring sources of determination and resilience.

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Student declaration

I, Bill Birnbauer, declare that this examinable outcome:

Contains no material which has been accepted for the award to the candidate of any other degree or diploma, except where due reference is made in the text of the examinable outcome;

To the best of my knowledge contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text of the examinable outcome;

And where the work is based on joint research or publications, discloses the relative contributions of the respective workers or authors.

Signed:

Date: October 22, 2016

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Abstract

This thesis explores the growth and sustainability of the non-profit model of investigative journalism in the United States. It identifies factors that stimulated a rapid expansion of the non-profit investigative sector between 2007 and 2015. More than 70 organisations were created during this period. This thesis argues that new non-profit organisations have had a transformative impact on mainstream journalistic practice. The motivations of the foundations that fund non-profit reporting centres also are explored, as are the ethical issues associated with philanthropic funding of journalism.

Investigative journalism contributes to democratic processes by unearthing information that empowers the public and holds the powerful to account. It is important, therefore, to understand the factors that promote growth and sustain a significant generator of such content. This thesis is the first extensive study of the US non-profit investigative sector. Forty interviews were conducted with non-profit investigative reporting organisation leaders and reporters, foundation program directors, legacy journalists, fundraisers and media scholars.

Three primary and six secondary factors behind the growth of the non-profit sector are identified and examined. These factors, together with the non-profit sector’s interactions with the economic and mainstream journalism fields, are considered in assessing the contribution, threats and long-term prospects of national, state, local and niche-topic non-profit journalistic organisations.

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Acknowledgements

Many people assisted me with this thesis which was part of my journey from three decades as a professional print journalist to university journalism academic. I am indebted particularly to the guidance of my supervisors, Professor Julian Thomas and Dr Margaret Simons. They showed me how to think more critically and steered me through a process I knew little about.

I am especially grateful to Associate Professor Tamara Kohn whose feedback helped me make sense of my research. I am indebted also to Dr Gillian Dite for her forensic fine- grain referencing and editing skills and humour. I also thank my colleagues at the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University who encouraged me along the journey. They include Associate Professor Philip Chubb, Professor Colleen Lewis, Professor Jenny Hocking, Associate Professor Mia Lindgren, Professor Chris Nash, and, in the early days, Dr Len Webster. Other academics including Professor Klaus Neumann, Associate Professor Andrew Dodd, Dr Diana Bossio, and Wendy Bacon provided invaluable comment and suggestions.

This research would not have been possible without the many US-based journalists, foundation officials and media scholars who gave me their time without any reward other than assisting me with my research. I am particularly grateful to serial non-profit organisation founder and American University academic, Charles Lewis, for too many reasons to list here. I am also indebted to Robert Rosenthal, Dan Noyes, and Bill Buzenberg for their time and insights.

The biggest debt I owe is to my wife, Deirdre. Working on this thesis interfered with an untold number of caravan trips and holidays and I can’t thank her enough for her understanding, support and patience. Thanks also my grown-up daughters for their love and encouragement and my grandchildren for keeping me grounded.

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Table of contents

Dedication ...... i

Student declaration ...... ii

Abstract ...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

List of figures ...... ix

List of tables ...... x

CHAPTER 1: Introduction ...... 1

Expansion of non-profit investigative journalism ...... 4

Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory ...... 5

Literature review and the contribution of this thesis ...... 7

Methods and approach ...... 13

Overview of findings...... 18

Structure ...... 21

CHAPTER 2: The financial crisis and investigative journalism ...... 23

Introduction ...... 23

The financial crisis, 2007–2009 ...... 27

The crisis argument ...... 30

The state of investigative reporting ...... 35

Entries to the Pulitzer Prize ...... 36

Other perspectives on investigative reporting ...... 42

Retention of investigative reporting ...... 50

Conclusion ...... 52

CHAPTER 3: Collaborations and journalistic networks ...... 55

Introduction ...... 55

Former legacy editors in the non-profit sector ...... 58

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Journalistic and economic capital ...... 65

Journalistic capital, values and funding ...... 68

Foundations, impact and independence ...... 72

Collaborations between legacy and non-profit media ...... 74

Collaborations and journalistic practice ...... 75

Models of collaboration ...... 79

Collaborations and outsourcing...... 83

Conclusion ...... 84

CHAPTER 4: Foundations and non-profit investigative journalism ...... 87

Introduction ...... 87

Foundations in the United States ...... 88

Foundation funding of non-profit investigative news centres...... 91

Quantifying foundation support ...... 92

Funding of 15 non-profit investigative news organisations ...... 98

Democracy and the decline of mainstream media ...... 101

Scholarly differences over journalism’s role in democracy ...... 104

Foundations and advocacy agendas ...... 108

Obtaining grants from foundations ...... 111

General and specific foundation funding ...... 113

Measuring the impact of foundation funding ...... 115

The impact that foundations want ...... 118

Alternative approaches to measuring impact ...... 120

Opinions on the sustainability of non-profit news centres ...... 122

The barbell effect and the non-renewal of grants ...... 126

The Knight Foundation’s focus on communities and innovation ...... 127

Conclusion ...... 130

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CHAPTER 5: Secondary factors behind the creation of non-profit investigative centres ...... 133

Introduction ...... 133

Growth in 2009 and 2010 ...... 135

Billionaire philanthropists ...... 140

The Internal Revenue Service ...... 148

Individual donors ...... 154

University partnerships ...... 158

Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University ...... 162

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University ...... 164

The New England Centre for Investigative Reporting at Boston University...... 166

Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University ...... 167

Institute for Nonprofit News ...... 168

Mood of the nation ...... 170

Golden era 1: Muckrakers ...... 172

Golden era 2: Watergate ...... 175

A third golden era? ...... 178

Conclusion ...... 181

CHAPTER 6: Case studies of three non-profit investigative reporting centres ...... 183

Introduction ...... 183

The Center for Investigative Reporting...... 186

Early partnerships and recognition...... 189

Confronting financial pressures and management issues...... 194

Create once, distribute often ...... 198

The Center for Public Integrity ...... 203

Management, funding and legal issues ...... 208

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ProPublica ...... 221

Conclusion ...... 226

CHAPTER 7: Ethical issues in foundation funding of journalism ...... 229

Introduction ...... 229

Is the piper playing an ethical tune? ...... 232

Foundations and editorial control...... 238

Foundation agendas ...... 242

Foundations advocate for policy reform ...... 245

Partisan funding and claims of bias ...... 250

Political targeting of non-profit funders ...... 253

Conclusion ...... 256

CHAPTER 8: Discussion and conclusion ...... 259

Introduction ...... 259

Factors behind the growth of the non-profit subfield...... 260

Financial sustainability...... 261

Future research areas identified by this thesis...... 265

Conclusion ...... 266

Bibliography ...... 269

Appendices ...... 301

Appendix 1: Ethics approval ...... 301

Appendix 2: List of interviews ...... 305

Appendix 3: Primary sources ...... 307

Document 1 ...... 307

Document 2: ...... 314

Document 3: ...... 316

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List of figures

Figure 2.1. How the economic, journalism and non-profit fields interrelate...... 24

Figure 2.2. Journalism jobs did not recover after the financial crisis...... 28

Figure 2.3. Media corporation shares plunge during the financial crisis...... 29

Figure 2.4. Long-term decline in entries to investigative Pulitzer categories...... 38

Figure 2.5. Investigative stories as a percentage of annual Pulitzer entries...... 40

Figure 2.6. Editors say coverage has improved...... 45

Figure 2.7. Editors say investigative reporting gained resources...... 46

Figure 2.8. Newspaper executives favour local, hard news stories...... 47

Figure 3.1. Interrelationships between media, non-profit organisations and funders. .... 57

Figure 6.1.California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground” published in 30 different media. . 199

Figure 6.2. Center for Public Integrity’s revenue and expenses, 2002–2010...... 215

Figure 6.3. Financial crises affected the Center for Public Integrity twice since 2004. 217

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List of tables

Table 2.1. Pulitzer entries in Investigative Reporting and Public Service categories ..... 37

Table 2.2. Comparison of Pulitzer entries with entries in 1986 ...... 39

Table 2.3. Job losses by category ...... 48

Table 3.1. Non-profit board membership and former legacy media employer ...... 62

Table 4.1. Foundation program directors interviewed ...... 88

Table 4.2. Top 10 US foundations by total assets ...... 90

Table 4.3. Foundation funding of media by primary activity, 2009–2011 ...... 94

Table 4.4. Top 10 journalism grant recipients, 2009–2011 ...... 94

Table 4.5. Top non-profit investigative reporting recipients, 2009–2011a ...... 96

Table 4.6. Contributions, grants and gifts to non-profit organisations, 2009–2014a .... 100

Table 4.7. Suggested performance metrics for the Center for Public Integrity ...... 122

Table 5.1. Institute for Nonprofit Newsa organisations and year created ...... 135

Table 5.2. Non-profit investigative organisations: year created...... 138

Table 5.3. The Sandler Foundation’s support for ProPublica ...... 142

Table 6.1. 2014 financial details of three non-profit investigative organisations ...... 184

Table 6.2. Center for Public Integrity finances, 2002–2010 ...... 215

Table 6.3.Center for Public Integrity’s financial results under Bill Buzenberg’s leadership ...... 216

Table 6.4. The Sandlers’ support of ProPublica ...... 224

Table 7.1. MacArthur Foundation grants to investigative journalism ...... 239

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CHAPTER 1: Introduction

For three days from about 9.30 pm on November 26, 2008, the Indian financial centre of Mumbai was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks that killed 166 people and wounded more than 300. Ten attackers, identified later as members of the Lashkar-e- Taiba organisation, targeted American and British tourists (Sengupta, 2008). Using automatic weapons and grenades, they also killed Israelis, law enforcement officers and local victims at multiple locations including the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and Oberoi- Trident hotels, a rail terminus and a hospital (BBC, 2009). The coordinated and on- going assault received extensive news coverage around the world including dramatic eyewitness accounts of blood-soaked victims, footage of explosions and burning buildings as well as condemnation by world political leaders. In the following months, evidence gathered by Indian, American and British intelligence services and admissions by top Pakistani security officials (Masood, 2009) shed new light on how the terrorists had planned the attacks. Some of the preparations had taken place in Pakistan. Pakistan’s then Interior Minister Rehman Malik insisted, however, that the terrorists were “non-state actors” (IBNLive, 2009). Several Pakistanis were arrested and charged, including the leader of the anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group (BBC, 2010).

Almost two years after the Mumbai attack, the Washington Post published a two-part investigative series of more than 9000 words that revealed in extraordinary detail the key figures, planning and organisation behind the terrorism (Rotella, 2010a, 2010d). The two articles were everything readers would expect of a major investigative series in a newspaper whose Watergate revelations in the 1970s inspired enthusiasm for investigative journalism in newsrooms around the world. Quoting court documents, Interpol notices, counterterrorism investigators, anonymous US officials, high-ranking US law enforcement officials, French intelligence officials and other sources, the articles exposed close links between the Mumbai terrorists and the Pakistani military and intelligence service. The articles also described the involvement of a Pakistani American in training with Lashkar-e-Taiba and scoping out targets in Mumbai before the attacks. The author, journalist Sebastian Rotella, revealed that the Pakistani American was once an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration. US

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agents had passed over at least half a dozen warnings about the man’s involvement in terrorism (Rotella, 2010d). For all intents and purposes, the articles continued the watchdog legacy of the Watergate revelations that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The Washington Post’s permanent investigative unit, established in 1982 by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, was committed to doing “the kind of work that holds government, business and other institutions accountable for their actions” (Washington Post, 2007, para. 1). The Washington Post’s investigative unit website listed the names of its 14 reporters and editors – a big commitment in an era of uncertainty generally about the future of newspapers (Washington Post Staff, 2011).

The Mumbai stories, however, were not written by the Washington Post’s investigative journalists. Sebastian Rotella is an investigative reporter employed by ProPublica, a new philanthropically funded non-profit investigative journalism organisation based in New York. ProPublica published the articles on its website at the same time as the Washington Post (Rotella, 2010b, 2010c). The by-line credit in the Washington Post articles was, “By Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica ”. The stories contained numerous favourable references to the non-profit organisation’s journalism: “For five months, ProPublica has examined” and “ProPublica has tracked the rise of Lashkar”. The stories ended with, “ProPublica is an independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism” (Rotella, 2010a, paras. 9, 107; 2010d, para. 15).1

That a newspaper as prestigious as the then 133-year-old Washington Post would publish politically sensitive stories produced by a non-profit organisation barely three and a half years old signalled a change in American journalistic culture and practice. The Washington Post’s cultural capital and influence is built on the foundation stones of its journalism: credibility, accuracy, independence and impact. Mistakes or suggestions of an agenda in high-profile stories could potentially result in political attacks, condemnation by other media, professional and public humiliation, public apologies, legal remedies and reputational damage. These risks have made legacy editors deeply sceptical about collaborating with anyone outside of their organisations, particularly in the field of investigative reporting (Rowe, 2011). ProPublica’s founding editor-in-chief,

1 ProPublica is profiled in a case study in Chapter Six of this thesis.

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Paul Steiger, recalled that during his 41 years in print journalism, “the idea of collaborating with another news organization2 was as foreign as pine trees in the Sahara. They were competitors, and you beat them or were ashamed” (Steiger, 2015, para. 53).

Marilyn Thompson was the Washington Post’s deputy national editor when Sebastian Rotella’s Mumbai story was published. I asked her if the Washington Post would have taken outside stories five or 10 years earlier. She said that 10 years ago the situation might have been very different because the Washington Post had a large staff and a great desire to showcase its original work (M. Thompson, personal communication, July 28, 2013).

How was it, then, that the Washington Post published stories from a recently formed non-profit organisation that was funded overwhelmingly by a wealthy and politically active benefactor? How could that happen at a newspaper that had won the second- highest number of Pulitzer Prizes (C. Lewis, 2013b)? How is it that other mainstream media, including public broadcasters, today routinely partner with ProPublica and other non-profit reporting organisations? How is it possible that new non-profit organisations are beating the traditional media in the race for journalism’s most prestigious awards? ProPublica has had 127 different publishing partners since 2008 (ProPublica, n.d.-a), including prestigious outlets such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and more recent online organisations such as Vice, Mashable, Slate and Amazon (ProPublica, 2014b). What has shifted in US journalism to bring this about?

These questions are important because investigative journalism is a key contributor to democratic processes and provides valuable information to the public. It is one of the few ways of holding elected officials and other powerful figures to account. It exposes information of public importance that individuals or organisations do not want reported (Aucoin, 2005, p. 91). The central question this thesis addresses is whether philanthropically funded centres such as ProPublica can be sustained to boost the production of civically useful investigative journalism. The importance of the question is increased substantially by recent concern that the legacy model can no longer fulfil its

2 This thesis retains the original spelling when directly quoting US publications.

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watchdog role due to diminished staff and resources (C. Lewis, 2007; Meyer, 2008; Walton, 2010a).

To answer the central question, this thesis examines in detail the period between 2007 and 2015 when more than 70 non-profit investigative reporting centres were created across the United States. It focuses on the US experience because it has the biggest non- profit investigative reporting sector in the world and is where the most rapid growth has occurred. This research identifies nine factors – three primary and six secondary – that stimulated a big expansion of the sector between 2007 and 2015. It aims to determine whether these factors, or some of them, can be replicated and maintained in future or whether the period was unique and the model is unsustainable in the longer term.

Expansion of non-profit investigative journalism

Non-profit investigative reporting organisations in the United States differ in size, financial strength and the stories they pursue. Some, like ProPublica, focus on national issues, others focus mainly on state politics and local issues or niche topics such as the environment and health. The biggest organisation has almost 70 reporters, editors, producers, data and information technology specialists as well as engagement and administrative staff. Smaller organisations have just two or three full-time journalists. Annual incomes vary from less than $100,000 to $13 million.3 Their journalism includes deep investigations that can take years of research to a more rapid turnover of stories. Collaborations between non-profit centres and commercial and public media have resulted in non-profit stories being accessed by millions of Americans. Non-profit organisations also pioneered the creation of consumer-friendly databases, apps, interactive graphics and new ways of engaging the public. Non-profit stories have won Pulitzer Prizes, George Polk Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting, and awards and honours from the American Society of News Editors, Online News Association, National Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

3 All dollars are in US currency.

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The expansion of the non-profit investigative sector in the United States coincided with a period when several mainstream media companies almost collapsed. The 2007–2009 financial crisis was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (Reuters, 2009). The financial crisis brought a sharp decline in newspaper and broadcast advertising revenue leading to widespread job cuts and foreboding about the future of journalism and democracy. It was estimated that daily newspapers reduced editorial spending by $1600 million between 2006 and 2009 (Edmonds, 2009). Newspaper companies were hardest hit: the closure of newspapers, moves to digital-only publication and bankruptcy processes in journalism powerhouses like the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer sent shockwaves through the industry. Panic set in when it became known that the New York Times was bailed out financially by a Mexican billionaire (Lee, 2014). The industry was in financial difficulty even before the financial crisis due to digital start-ups drawing away classified advertising, historic debt levels and long-term declines in readership (Bagdikian, 1990; Benkler, 2006; Brock, 2013; Jones, 2009; Meyer, 2009; Nichols & McChesney, 2009; Picard, 2006).

Philanthropic foundations, journalists, academics and civil society grew increasingly concerned that investigative reporting would be threatened in the budget cuts that swept the industry during the financial crisis (Frank, 2009; McChesney & Nichols, 2010; Osder, 2012; Riptide, 2013; Westphal, 2009). Investigative journalism was expensive to produce, it was plagued by costly legal actions, it upset politicians and potential advertisers and was unproductive in the number of stories it created. Its inevitable demise became conventional wisdom among journalists, funders and media observers. Spurred by talk of a crisis for journalism and democracy, philanthropic foundations and wealthy businessmen donated tens of millions of dollars to non-profit ventures partly in a belief that America’s democracy would be enhanced by non-profit investigative reporting.

Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory

In analysing the creation, funding and operation of non-profit investigative journalism, it is necessary to understand the interactions the sector has with other fields of activity – a term that receives further explanation below. Of relevance are the economic, political

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and mainstream media fields. For non-profit investigative news organisations, the biggest source of revenue by far is from grants by charitable foundations. These funders constitute an economic field. The political field consists of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the federal and state government agencies that establish the rules for foundations and non-profit organisations. For example, these rules mean that foundations are required to grant five per cent of their assets each year. The IRS has to approve non-profit status before organisations can be exempted from federal and some state taxes, receive unlimited donations and donors are able to reduce their taxable income (Digital Media Law Project, 2014; Griffith, 2013).

The relationships of fields and the influences of those relationships on the types of activities that occur within them are central to theories developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1977, 1998; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). His concepts of field, capital, habitus and doxa are used in this thesis to analyse the power structures within and between the various fields and the motivations of the fields’ players. The concept of a field is quite complex and explanations vary in emphasis (Benson, 1999, pp. 464–469; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Shusterman, 1999, pp. 177– 182; Webb, Schirato, & Danaher, 2002, pp. 22–23). For our purposes, fields are institutions and rules in a particular activity as well as the interactions between the institutions, rules and practices. The amount of power anyone has within a field depends on the person’s position within the field and how much economic or cultural capital that person or institution has accumulated (Webb et al., 2002, pp. 22–23).

Bourdieu’s theories about various forms of capital as well as habitus and doxa – intuitive disposition rather than a conscious effort and shared beliefs or conventions – of the participants in a field assisted me in understanding why an established newspaper such as the Washington Post may feel comfortable accepting a potentially controversial story from ProPublica but may reject – or write its own version of – a similar story from a citizen journalist, for example.

Bourdieu’s concepts of newsroom habitus and doxa resonate with my own 33 years of professional experience in such places. In a newsroom, there may be editor’s habitus, reporters’ habitus or an intern’s habitus as well as differentiation by genres, such as foreign correspondent habitus, investigative habitus and so on (Willig, 2012). I was well

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socialised with a print journalist’s habitus and doxa in a mainstream, Australian capital- city newspaper when a letter arrived from the United States in 1998 inviting me to join a new non-profit global investigative organisation based in Washington, DC (C. Lewis & Beelman, 1998).4

I had never heard of non-profit investigative journalism and the idea of cooperating on stories and sources with unknown foreign reporters appeared unlike anything I would do and was even bizarre. I also doubted that non-mainstream media organisations were capable of undertaking serious investigative journalism. After researching the people behind the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, I decided to learn more and agreed to join, though I remained wary. At a large meeting soon after with the editors and reporter members from 60 or more countries, I quickly realised how similar we were in our ideas of what constituted a good story, the methodologies we used and our ethical values. Later, when I left journalism to become an academic, I familiarised myself with the theories of Bourdieu. I understood that even though we came from different countries, as investigative journalists, we shared the same “universe of tacit presuppositions” (Benson & Neveu, 2005, p. 3). Several years earlier, I discovered that America’s philanthropic foundations supported journalists and their training when I was awarded a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. Until then, I knew virtually nothing about US foundations. As an academic with inside knowledge of both non-profit and commercial media, foundation funding and a detachment that comes from living outside of the United States, I believe I am able to offer a more critical analysis of the non-profit field than those active in the field.

Literature review and the contribution of this thesis

Scholars and journalists over the past 25 years have examined the challenges that US media organisations and journalism faced from economic, technological and social forces such as the impact of the internet, corporatisation, declining audiences, organisational debt and economic downturns (Bagdikian, 1990; Benkler, 2006; Brock, 2013; Jones, 2009; C. Lewis, 2007; McChesney & Nichols, 2010; Meyer, 2009; Nielsen & Levy, 2010a, 2010b; Picard, 2006). Threats to traditional journalism, and by

4 See Appendix 3.

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extension to democracy, were fertile ground for research and discussion. Some writers suggested solutions such as state intervention or support (Curran, 2010; Downie & Schudson, 2009; McChesney & Nichols, 2010; Nielsen & Levy, 2010a, 2010b). Others urged greater investment in quality journalism (Meyer, 2009, p. 20). Another potential solution was a push for what became known as public journalism, whereby journalists would embrace citizens as participants in public affairs and sponsor, rather than merely report, political and public discussion. Floated by New York University journalism academic Jay Rosen, the notion sparked debate about the role of journalism as a neutral, impassive observer on one hand or an active participant in civic life on the other (Rosen, 1999).

This section briefly reviews the literature on the business of journalism and finds that the non-profit model has attracted only passing reference, mostly in the context of the challenges facing legacy media. Two key studies examined the issues facing contemporary US journalism. The most comprehensive was researched and written for the Federal Communications Commission in 2011 by Steve Waldman and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communities (Waldman, 2011). The second study was produced by Leonard Downie, a former Washington Post editor and current journalism professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Michael Schudson, a journalism professor at Columbia University (Downie & Schudson, 2009). Both studies describe an industry in transformation due to the rapid and pervasive impact of digital technologies. A third report was written for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and called for a new conceptualisation of journalism and its platforms as a post-industrial journalism that is “no longer organized around the norms of proximity to the machinery of production” (C. Anderson, Bell, & Shirky, 2012, Restructuring is a Forced Move, para. 6).

Columbia University’s Michael Schudson identified several reasons for the decline of the mainstream news business (Schudson, 2010). They included falling newspaper readership particularly among young people; newspaper company debt; new internet start-ups providing more accessible classified advertising and news, and the global recession which “brought things from very bad to much worse” (Schudson, 2010, p. 99). Ultimately, he predicted, there was likely to be more of what is there already: “mainstream journalism on a diet, with dietary supplements provided by a small but

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growing entrepreneurial, experimental and in most cases non-profit, online media sector” (Schudson, 2010, pp. 99–100). Leftist scholars Robert McChesney and John Nichols said the internet merely had accelerated a crisis in commercial journalism that had been growing for at least two decades (McChesney & Nichols, 2010). Following similar concerns raised by US journalist and educator Ben Bagdikian, they blamed large corporate chains that had bought family-owned newspapers and then sought to maximise profits by cutting journalists and shutting news bureaus (Bagdikian, 1990; McChesney & Nichols, 2010). Media economics scholar Robert Picard blamed poor financial management for the industry’s problems. Even newspapers that were bankrupt were profitable, but not profitable enough to repay debts from acquisitions made before the 1990s (Picard, 2010a, p. 23).

Most stark in terms of the internet were divergent views about its impact on the media industry, investigative reporting and democracy. One line of argument found that the internet had blown the business model of journalism to “smithereens” (Jones, 2009, p. 16). Others identified the emergence of a potentially even more potent force of decentralised, non-market, public-interest journalism (Benkler, 2006) that included start-up news organisations, non-profit investigative reporting projects, public broadcasting stations, university-run news services, community news sites and bloggers (Downie & Schudson, 2009). The pessimistic view held that news on the web was “a lot of Britney Spears and much less of the Iraqi war” (Jones, 2009, pp. 16, 180). Journalism was facing arguably “the greatest crisis in recent history” (Nielsen & Levy, 2010b, p. 135). This camp worried that the established media’s troubles were bad news for democracy because 95 per cent of accountability journalism came from newspapers that now were struggling (Jones, 2009, pp. 4–5). The internet’s political and news-related bloggers for the most part were dismissed by these critics as parasites who just commented on news produced by newspapers and other traditional media. They could not be trusted to protect the facts and had concocted half-truths and lies on the public (Patterson, 2013). Citizen journalists were accused of pushing a point of view rather than providing a dispassionate perspective (Jones, 2009, pp. xviii, 1–27, 189–191). It was the trained and experienced journalists who were better at verification, sense making, witness and investigation: these were the “irreducible core of what can be distinguished as journalism and are the basis of the trust on which it relies” (Brock,

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2013, pp. 201–202). Ultimately, the future of journalism was depicted as grim: unless it adapted, new internet-based producers would crowd it out and journalism as a discrete concept with its own set of skills and values would be “in danger of losing its identity” (Meyer, 2009, p. 229).

The more optimistic argued that the internet’s structural changes had increased the role of non-market and non-proprietary cultural production, creating a networked information economy that included the production of investigative journalism by radically decentralised players, rather than traditional industrial-scale organisations. “We are seeing the emergence of new decentralised approaches to fulfilling the watchdog function …” (Benkler, 2006, p. 11). Yochai Benkler, professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School, in his book, The Wealth of Networks (2006), cited examples in which the internet had enabled engaged citizens to serve as society’s watchdogs. He said that networked peer production even had some advantages over media organisation stories. Others agreed that non-professionals “can do journalism at as a high a level as professional journalists, and sometimes higher” (C. Anderson et al., 2012, Section 1, para. 6). Following on from this was a prediction that in the early part of the 21st century, the news media would resemble the turn of the 20th century when more news organisations competed for an audience. In future, instead of a daily newspaper with 150 journalists, a small city might have 20 digital news operations each with a handful of journalists working in clearly defined content and audience niche (Briggs, 2012, p. 12). The disruption of news monopolies by digital technology, the internet and mobile communication had opened the gate to competition and new start- ups. “Power has shifted away from production and towards distribution” (Brock, 2013, p. 138). But scholars also questioned the democratising effect of the internet on media systems. “Large media companies have been supplanted by even larger technology companies” such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Amazon and Microsoft (Rosenstiel, 2015, p. 2).

Journalism professor Philip Meyer argued that quality journalism in an age of abundant news and information could prove to be the salvation of media organisations (Meyer, 2009, p. 7). The societal influence newspapers had on their communities, created and sustained by high-quality stories, would be very difficult for any new medium to replicate (Meyer, 2009, p. 62). This view was refuted by Briggs who found the same

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influence model was used by successful technology and political bloggers. “Quality content combined with authentic community engagement make the model work in the digital age, just as it did before bits and bytes overtook ink and paper” (Briggs, 2012, pp. 31–33).

The non-profit investigative journalism field, which this thesis treats as a subfield of the larger field of journalism, operates with the practices, ethics and values of professional journalism, but its economies have more in common with Benkler’s non-market army of citizen writers than the commercial media. Here again, I refer to Bourdieu to clarify my meaning. Bourdieu recognised that fields of production could be divided into two sets of values, practices and principles which he called the autonomous and the heteronomous poles (Webb et al., 2002, pp. 159–161). At the heteronomous pole, production was geared to commercial markets, while the autonomous pole considered economic success to be a failure because it sought other rewards, for example “art for art’s sake” in the case of artists (Webb et al., 2002, p. 160). If we locate the journalistic models in a line, the mainstream media would be at one end, non-profit investigative reporting would sit alongside partly intersecting the legacy field and the networked citizens would be further along at the autonomous end, but also intersecting the non- profit investigative field. The non-profit investigative field has the habitus and doxa of mainstream media, but its stories have little commercial prospects, though high civic returns.

In a remarkably short time, new non-profit investigative organisations such as the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, the Voice of San Diego, the Intercept and the Marshall Project have joined older non-profits such as the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting in exposing corruption, wrong-doing, systemic faults and waste. They have gained acceptance from established media and won the industry’s top awards for journalism, including Pulitzer Prizes. I believe their contribution to journalism and democracy makes it imperative to better understand why and how they were created and how they can be sustained in the future. That is the need that this thesis addresses.

To date, most of the literature in my view underplays the contribution of non-profit investigative centres. The non-profit field has not been analysed in the literature as an entity or a field – generally, it has been dismissed as the solution to the challenges

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facing a diminished commercial media (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 87). One analysis, accurately in my view, said the non-profit field acted as a “supplement, not a substitute” for mainstream news outlets, particularly in the investigative or public interest genre (Downie & Schudson, 2009, p. 63). But most articles mention the field in passing and in the context of the broader issues confronting legacy outlets.

The US Federal Communications Commission report, for example, found that the broad non-profit sector had become more varied and important than ever and noted the trend toward collaborations with mainstream media (Waldman, 2011). But this report also surveyed the non-profit field in relation to the economic and other problems faced by commercial journalism: “In all, independent nonprofit websites are providing exciting journalistic innovation on the local level – and a handful have created sustainable business models – but most either are struggling to survive or are too small to fill the gaps left by newspapers” (Waldman, 2011, p. 191). Similarly, Philip Meyer saw charitable foundations moving in to “fill the gaps left by short-sighted application of the profit motive” (Meyer, 2004, p. 224). McChesney and Nichols doubted that foundation- funded projects were a viable “replacement for the broad network of commercial support newspapers” and that the foundation solution “seems to be another dead-end street” (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 87). While finding non-profit media organisations exciting and important, they questioned whether the non-profit model was sound, both economically and journalistically (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 98). A press critic saw hope that lost capacity in local news might be “restored by funding a new cohort of local nonprofit media organizations” (Rosenstiel, 2015, p. 12). However, the gains in this sector “come nowhere near matching the losses in commercial media” (Rosenstiel, 2015, p. 12).

Briggs identified the non-profit model as one of three along with freemium (mostly free apart from premium content) and advertising supported (Briggs, 2012, p. 166). The non- profit model was considered a good bet because investigative and public affairs reporting were not easily monetised by commercial revenue models such as advertising, though trying to find funding was a non-stop, year-round process (Briggs, 2012, p. 102). The London-based journalism professor, George Brock, raised the philanthropic model as one of nine business models, though only for specialised journalism and then only in

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societies where “rich, disinterested donors are thick on the ground” (Brock, 2013, p. 225).

Downie and Schudson described non-profit organisations as examples of new sources of independent news reporting started by journalists. They noted that many of the start-ups were small and financially fragile but were multiplying steadily (Downie & Schudson, 2009, p. 34). Other writers expected that by 2020 there would be more non-profit news organisations funded by donors (C. Anderson et al., 2012). In the midst of a spate of journalist layoffs and newspaper closures, non-profit centre founder and foremost advocate of the non-profit model in the United States, Charles Lewis, lamented the state of commercial investigative journalism and highlighted the role non-profit organisations could play in generating high-quality investigative reporting (C. Lewis, 2007).

The literature on the funding of investigative journalism by foundations also is limited. What there is generally raises ethical questions about the agendas, lack of transparency and potential or real conflicts of interest of foundation funding of journalism (Anove & Pinede, 2007; Browne, 2010; Dowie, 2001; Pratte, 1997; Roelofs, 2007). Much of the concern centres on the influence that foundations might have in “creating and shaping news content” (Edmonds, 2001, para. 2). The ethics of foundation funding of journalism are discussed in Chapter Seven of this thesis.

Methods and approach

The previous section revealed what is missing in the literature on non-profit investigative reporting. This research set out to identify the factors that combined to promote the creation of new investigative reporting organisations between 2007 and 2015 and examine whether those factors, or new ones, might ensure the sustainability of this model of reporting. The methodology used in this thesis was semi-structured interviews with the representatives of institutions that undertake non-profit investigative journalism or have an association with those organisations. Interviews were conducted with editors at non-profit centres, philanthropic foundation program directors, media scholars, and both non-profit and for-profit journalists.

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The qualitative research I used tries to understand the world from the subject’s perspective, to “unfold the meaning of their experiences, to uncover their lived world” (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, p. 108). Semi-structured interviews, which are “guided, concentrated, focused, and open-ended communication events”, were an obvious mode of research for me (Crabtree & Miller, 1999, p. 19). I was a print journalist for 33 years during which time I developed significant professional skills conducting both empathetic and the more confrontational epistemic interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, p. 39). I chose interviews over surveys or content analyses precisely because I wanted to understand the lived world of each fields’ players (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). These individuals were what Bourdieu called players – those who were invested in a field’s game, believed it was worth playing, had various forms of cultural and economic capital, strategies for success and were influenced by other fields (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). I was also familiar with the conventions and journalistic gut feeling of American non-profit journalists because I had worked with them on two lengthy projects for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.5 In 1992 to 1993, I also spent nine months in the United States as the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in California.

The 43 interviews I conducted with 37 participants for this thesis occurred mainly during two visits to the United States, in November to December 2010 and January to February 2012. A number of follow-up interviews were conducted by phone or email. The interview subjects were selected purposefully in order to “create and test new interpretations” (Kuzel, 1999, p. 34). The information obtained in the interviews was used to respond to a number of questions about the non-profit subfield such as how and why it expanded during and after the financial crisis, the sustainability of non-profit organisations, the field’s impact and collaborations with mainstream media and the motivations and ethical issues associated with foundation funding. The names and interview dates and locations are listed in the List of interviewees section at the end of this thesis.

Bourdieu’s theory also led me to conceive non-profit investigative journalism as a subfield of the field of journalism, which itself was part of the field of cultural

5 I have been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists since 1998.

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production. As a relatively autonomous subfield involved in the production of content that has little commercial appeal, non-profit investigative centres were highly vulnerable to negative impacts from the more powerful economic (foundations) and political fields, as well as the commercial media. Field theory thus was invaluable in providing an understanding of the financial position of non-profit journalism organisations, the development of collaborations between non-profit and mainstream media organisations and the role of intuitive behaviours and conventions in relations between the fields’ participants.

Investigative reporting generally is distinguished from daily news reporting because it more deeply researches and contextualises issues; it originates from the endeavour of journalists rather than from politicians, courts or public relations companies, and it exposes important new information. Scholarly definitions generally include these characteristics. It has been called the journalism of outrage due to its intention to provoke outrage among citizens (Protess et al., 1991, p. 5), and it has been called an exercise in public conscience because it urges the public to decide what is right or wrong (Ettema & Glasser, 1998, p. 71). Others expanded the definition to include the exposure of information that someone or some organisation did not want revealed or where it suited someone for the truth to remain obscure, for instance, Aucoin (2005, p. 91) and de Burgh (2001, p. 19). Three main types of investigative journalism have been identified: investigations of neglected issues (giving voice to powerless victims or evidence of injustices), reconstructions of major events (includes wrongful convictions and airline crashes) and revelations of wrong doing (exposure of corruption) (Tiffen, 1999, p. 33).

What I have called the non-profit investigative subfield includes organisations whose journalism meets these scholarly definitions, and also includes organisations that practise so-called public interest journalism. I have included both investigative and public interest reporting organisations in the sector because the factors that led to the creation of non-profit investigative and public interest organisations were identical. The two descriptors often are used interchangeably (J. Lewis, 2006; M. Moore, 2007). Essentially, public interest journalism produces stories deemed by journalists to be in the public interest, as distinct from of public interest. Like investigative journalism, public interest journalism brings public accountability to power through a form of

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“answerability and enforcement” (Schlosberg, 2013, pp. 1–3). The most noticeable difference, in my view, was that investigative centres generally devoted more time and resources to projects and tended to have stronger partnerships with mainstream media. The biggest and most financially sound non-profit investigative organisations such as ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting pursued mainly national stories. Public interest journalism centres, on the other hand, tended to focus on local or state-based news in politics, health, social issues, the environment and so on. In assessing the number of investigative non-profit centres formed since 2007, I analysed the launch dates of members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, the only membership association for US-based investigative and public interest organisations. Separating the two in this thesis would not have been practical. The Institute for Nonprofit News requires members to have investigative and public interest reporting as their missions (Institute for Nonprofit News, n.d.).

A number of research limitations should be noted. This thesis presents case studies of the three biggest non-profit organisations in the United States. They are exceptions to the norm due to their financial strength, large staffs, journalism awards, digital innovations and national focus. Nevertheless, their creation, operation and the challenges they faced have elements common to smaller non-profit organisations, offer lessons to those considering establishing future non-profit news organisations and provide a baseline for further academic research. The factors that I identified as influencing the non-profit subfield are unique to the United States due to its philanthropic tradition and number of foundations, though aspects may be applicable in other countries where philanthropists are willing to fund journalism. Non-profit investigative organisations also exist outside of the United States, but it was not within the scope of this thesis to study their formation, funding and operations. There may also be non-profit news organisations in the United States that are not members of the Institute for Nonprofit News or that have been omitted from this analysis.

In terms of theoretical limitations, this thesis adopts Bourdieu’s field theory in trying to understand the interrelationships and influence of institutions in and intersecting with the subfield of non-profit investigative reporting. “The media can, at least prima facie, be seen as a single field, or a collection of fields, (each) with a distinctive pattern of prestige and status, its own values, and a distinctive and increasingly troubled

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relationship to economic pressures” (Couldry, 2003, p. 6). Bourdieu’s works, in 30 books and almost 400 articles, have been widely critiqued (Couldry, 2003; R. Jenkins, 2002, p. 89; Prior, 2000). Bourdieu’s field theory, however, provides a solid theoretical framework when discussing the activities of the non-profit investigative subfield and its internal and external relationships with other fields.

Researchers should engage in critical self-reflection on the impact of their background, assumptions, positioning, feelings and behaviour while attending to the impact of the wider organisational, discursive, ideological and political content (Finlay, 2008). My experience over more than three decades as a journalist in mainstream print media inevitably influenced my research methodology, assumptions and the interpretation of my findings. My many roles over this period included reporting in beats such as investigative reporting, health, urban affairs, politics, environment and science as well as writing feature articles. I was also the chief of staff, news editor and night editor of The Age, a daily newspaper owned by Fairfax Media. As such, I was well socialised in the conventions and practices of a traditional capital city newsroom. In 1998 I was invited to join the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a non-profit organisation that organised journalists in different countries to work collaboratively on issues that crossed national borders. The two projects I was involved in concerned links between organised crime and tobacco companies and the privatisation of water infrastructure.

My professional experience influenced the choice of interviews as my main research methodology for this thesis. I conducted thousands of interviews as a reporter and was able draw on this experience. A deep wariness exists in professional journalism toward stories produced by individuals, community groups, nonprofit-organisations and alternative media. During my professional journalism career it was also a given that journalists ought not to involved nor influenced by the business side of media organisations. My experience with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists alleviated some of these apprehensions and favourably shaped my attitude toward the practices and ethics of non-profit investigative media in the United States. Being mindful of these issues has been part of my transition from journalism to academia.

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Overview of findings

Three primary factors and six subsidiary factors contributed to a big expansion of the non-profit model of journalism during and after the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Each factor related to the others, though the degree of influence varied. The first of the three main factors was concern that the financial crisis would be a crisis also for investigative journalism and democracy due to its devastating economic impact on the businesses of mainstream media (Bergantino & Mulvihill, 2009; C. Lewis, 2007; Meyer, 2008; Walton, 2010a).

The expense of investigative journalism, according to what became the conventional wisdom, suggested it would be one of the first areas to be cut by media companies. The economic disruption saw thousands of journalists lose their jobs, the closure of newspapers, moves from print to online-only publication and Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for several esteemed newspaper companies (C. Anderson et al., 2012; Downie & Schudson, 2009; Edmonds, 2009). This, together with the associated media coverage, created a perception that the established media no longer could carry out their routine scrutiny of government and powerful interests, raising questions about the future of democracy.

Bourdieu’s field concepts can be seen in the impact that the financial crisis, debt, and the internet had on the economics of the legacy media. Journalism for the past century has been both a business and a public service, with the autonomy of journalistic practice varying depending on economic and political conditions (Krause, 2011). Journalists predicated their value to the community in terms of autonomous principles such as a code of ethics, commitments to truth, accuracy, freedom of speech, unbiased reporting, the public’s right to know and independence (Webb et al., 2002, p. 183). However, unlike other areas of cultural production such as art, journalism relied on media companies to pay for it. Journalism was “subject to the decrees of the market” (Webb et al., 2002, p. 184). The job cuts, bureau closures and other savings measures implemented by media companies as stock markets crashed during the financial crisis are a graphic illustration of the economic field’s dominance over the cultural principles of journalism. Concern about a crisis in journalism and democracy – often expressed by non-profit centre advocates, journalists and academics – convinced foundations and

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very wealthy individuals to fund non-profit investigative start-ups. As millions of dollars flowed into the non-profit sector, laid-off, disenchanted and underemployed journalists created or were employed by new non-profit centres.

The movement of experienced senior journalists to the non-profit sector relates to the second key factor in the creation of non-profit news entities. Editors who once held senior management positions in legacy media transferred their skills and experience to national and state non-profit news organisations. They brought with them decades of experience and high levels of accumulated cultural capital in the form of established journalistic reputations. Bourdieu is useful in examining the role of cultural capital in this regard. Bourdieu found that capital in a given field is what is efficacious “both as a weapon and as a stake of struggle, that which allows its possessors to wield a power, an influence, and thus to exist, in the field under consideration, instead of being considered a negligible quantity” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). The introduction of editors and reporters with high social and symbolic capital to the non-profit subfield facilitated collaborations between mainstream media and non-profit sites. These non-profit executive editors had extensive contacts with senior legacy editors with whom they shared the same ethics, values and journalistic practices. Journalists in mainstream organisations were traditionally wary about the agendas, ethics, reliability, independence and accuracy of externally produced content, much preferring to keep their craft in-house (Kaplan, 2008). The presence of one of their own in a non-profit news centre eliminated some of these suspicions, while cuts to their reporting staff made the offer of free quality content almost irresistible. The high journalistic credentials of non-profit editors and reporters also convinced foundations that they were donating to professionally run journalistic organisations.

The third primary factor that stimulated the growth of the subfield was that philanthropic foundations and wealthy business people donated to investigative reporting organisations. I calculated that 15 non-profit news organisations received $190.7 million between 2009 and 2014 (see Chapter Five). The foundation program directors I interviewed said they funded investigative non-profit organisations predominantly because of their concern for the United States’ democracy due to the diminished capacity of the legacy media to hold power to account. This thesis discovered another reason: foundations wanted to increase media coverage of the areas

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they supported in other programs, such as education reform. In other words, foundations did not support investigative journalism per se. Rather, they supported a tenet of democracy and had a self-interested goal of increasing reporting in areas they hoped to reform or on issues they wanted to highlight. Their funding, in effect, made foundations the economic field for non-profit organisations, which Bourdieu found to be more powerful than any field of cultural production (Champagne, 2005, pp. 48–63)I . ndeed, in the non-profit sector there was constant concern that foundation funding would not be renewed beyond a start-up phase and that other revenue streams had to be developed. Only a small number of non-profit centres managed to diversify their revenues away from foundations to any notable level (A. Mitchell, Jurkowitz, Holcomb, Enda, & Anderson, 2013).

I also identify six secondary factors that stimulated the growth of the non-profit sector. They include the involvement of wealthy business people; approval by the Internal Revenue Service of media organisations as charitable institutions; donations by growing numbers of citizens; universities accommodating and affiliating with investigative centres; creation of the Institute for Nonprofit News (formerly called the Investigative News Network); and the social, political and economic climate in the period under examination, 2007–2015.

I found that the expansion of the non-profit subfield had an impact also on aspects of traditional journalistic practice. Collaborations between non-profit investigative centres and commercial and public media existed previously, but since 2007 the trend has increased to the point that such partnerships now are routine. This represents a shift within traditional journalism that once was highly wary of external producers whose stories might be tainted by funders with hidden or opaque agendas. Such wariness was deeply embedded in a tribal culture of traditional journalism that emphasised values such as accuracy, balance, checks on pure profit maximisation, democratic accountability and the separation of news and editorial staffs (Entman, 2005, p. 54). A second impact on journalistic practice occurred within the non-profit subfield where the traditional ideal of a separation of journalism from the business of journalism was undone by the need for senior non-profit executives to act both as journalists and fundraisers. Despite the founders of non-profit news organisations having long careers in the established media and values fashioned by years of newsroom socialisation, the

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reality they faced was that when foundations and philanthropists considered major grants, they wanted to deal with the top newsroom executives (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). Having to raise money was a significant change for journalists, many of whom felt tainted or even corrupt at being involved in financial decisions (Briggs, 2012, p. 73). Non-profit executives insisted that despite their involvement in fundraising, they maintained a firewall that prevented funders from influencing editorial content (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, November 11, 2010; D. Kaplan, personal communication, November 10, 2010). This thesis found that a delicate stand-off often existed between the interests of funders and non-profit organisations. Foundations were able to increase reporting in areas they were interested in by funding non-profit reporting but, to date at least, appear to have respected the editorial prerogative of editors on specific stories. Nevertheless, the power to place an issue, even a broad one like education or health reform, on the political agenda should not be underestimated and such power often is denied to other institutions.

Structure

The structure of this thesis is designed to enable readers to understand the interrelationships and contributions of the nine factors that I identified as being responsible for the growth of the non-profit sector. These factors are analysed in the context of the future sustainability of the non-profit arena. Additional chapters provide case studies of three of the biggest non-profit centres, and an examination of the ethical issues that arise from foundation funding.

Chapter Two is the first of three chapters that analyse the primary factors that promoted the growth of the non-profit subfield. It describes the impact of the financial crisis on US journalism and critically analyses the conventional wisdom that a crisis existed for investigative journalism and democracy. Chapter Three explores the second main factor, the transfer of experienced and high-profile editors to the non-profit field. It demonstrates how these editors facilitated both foundation funding and collaborations with, and publication of, non-profit stories in legacy media. Chapter Four examines the last of the three key factors: the foundations that funded investigative reporting centres. It explores the contribution, motivations, impact and sustainability of such funding. Chapter Five analyses the six secondary factors that I argue have contributed to the

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development of the field and compares the non-profit era to previous cycles of investigative reporting.

Chapter Six builds on the previous chapters by presenting detailed case studies of the three most successful non-profit organisations in the United States. Chapter Seven explores the ethical issues that arise from the funding of non-profit journalism by foundations. Chapter Eight concludes with a discussion that examines the research findings, the sustainability issue and suggests further areas of research.

The findings in the coming chapters provide new perspectives and insights on the forces that shaped non-profit investigative journalism in the United States. Several examples of the journalism of non-profit sites are cited, but only as evidence of transformation, changing practice, innovation and other points. This thesis, rather, focuses on the unseen background factors that influence the creation and work of these organisations. It shows that the United States, for all its economic, racial and social issues, has at least some corrective resources when activities that support democracy are said to be at risk. The following chapters will explore why foundations and billionaires donated millions of dollars to investigative reporting ventures rather than, say, a hospital cancer ward. They demonstrate how traditional journalistic practice has been transformed by non-profit organisations.

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CHAPTER 2: The financial crisis and investigative journalism

Introduction

A concern expressed publicly by for-profit and non-profit journalists and others during the 2007–2009 financial crisis was that investigative reporting was in jeopardy and democracy was at risk. Alarm that fewer journalists were probing the “text behind the text, the story behind the story” and making the powerful tremble motivated a number of charitable foundations and individuals to support non-profit investigative reporting centres (Schudson, 2008, pp. 14–15). Philanthropic foundation program directors told me that there was a crisis for democracy and that their grants would help fill a gap in local and national accountability reporting.6 The belief that investigative journalism was threatened by the cuts media companies made to journalist jobs in the financial crisis is the first of the three primary factors identified as promoting the creation of non-profit centres in the United States.

The financial crisis had four impacts relevant to the expansion of the non-profit sector. First, it slashed the advertising revenues of newspapers and broadcasters and resulted in their stock prices falling dramatically. Second, newspaper closures and cuts created a pool of thousands of journalists who had been laid off by print and broadcast media; some of those reporters moved to the non-profit subfield. Third, the severe economic downturn led to publicly expressed concern by non-profit advocates, journalists and scholars that legacy media were less able to hold power to account, and fourth, foundations and wealthy benefactors accepted that democracy was at risk and donated to non-profit news organisations. Figure 2.1 depicts non-profit organisations as being located in a subfield of the field of journalism. Foundations and wealthy individuals,

6 Chapters Four and Seven suggest other reasons why foundations supported investigative reporting centres.

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acting as an economic field, directly supported organisations within the non-profit subfield due to alarm over a crisis for investigative reporting and democracy.

Figure 2.1. How the economic, journalism and non-profit fields interrelate.

Stories produced by non-profit centres were published on their own websites and in commercial and public media. This represented a significant change from the traditional practice of newspapers only publishing investigative stories written by their own journalists. The shift in practice enabled non-profit centres to use the mainstream media as a distribution platform for their work. Figure 2.1 also shows that journalists who lost their jobs moved to fields outside of journalism, to non-profit news organisations or to other media.

This chapter questions the conventional wisdom that there was a crisis for investigative reporting due to the financial crisis. It finds that it is possible to suggest that while sweeping newsroom jobs losses affected daily accountability reporting, editors in major legacy news organisations acted to protect their investigative teams. The reasons they did so are discussed later in this chapter.

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Players in the non-profit subfield had cause to project a crisis scenario as there were valid reasons for concern. Thousands of legacy journalists had lost their jobs as a direct result of the financial crisis and its impact on media advertising revenues. Prominent newspapers declared bankruptcy or closed or dropped their print versions in favour of online sites with fewer staff and without the cost burden of printing presses and delivery systems (C. Anderson et al., 2012; Downie & Schudson, 2009; Edmonds, 2009; McIntyre, 2009). The revenue problems followed a series of financial and technological assaults that had disrupted the century-old business model of journalism. The ubiquity and price advantage of the internet had opened the door to entrepreneurs who moved quickly to create popular alternative advertising sites such as Craigslist.org. Cost cutting by acquisitive media corporations chasing higher profit margins had cut editorial budgets. Readership of newspapers was in freefall. Weekday print circulation at America’s top 25 newspapers fell 41.6 per cent between 2005 and 2013, a drop from 15.1 million papers on an average weekday to 8.8 million (Brock, 2013, p. 140; Newsosaur, 2013). The combined impact was less revenue for legacy media, fewer journalists, fewer stories and uncertainty about the future (C. Anderson et al., 2012; Downie & Schudson, 2009; Edmonds, 2009; McIntyre, 2009). Journalists had lamented a decline in investigative journalism since the heady 1970s Watergate era, and now it seemed beyond doubt to others too.

As concern for the future of journalism and democracy peaked, US foundations and wealthy philanthropists directed additional funds to old and new non-profit investigative journalism organisations. Foundations traditionally provide funding in situations of market failure or where there is a lack of government assistance. The foundation program directors I interviewed told me they funded investigative centres because of the demise of the legacy media and the crisis for accountability journalism and democracy (see Chapter Four). My research concludes that much of the alarm for investigative reporting was driven by non-profit investigative journalists, scholars and articles in journalistic establishment publications such as American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review and Nieman Reports (Cullinan, 2009; Frank, 2009; Houston, 2010a; McChesney & Nichols, 2010; Walton, 2010a). Despite the potential ramifications of the United States’ democracy being weakened, no authoritative survey could be found on the number of investigative reporters who had lost their jobs during the financial crisis.

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Nor could I locate any detailed or rigorous content analysis to support the concern that investigative reporting had declined.

A point of comparison is provided by Dr Andrea Carson, who conducted a study in Australia where the two main newspaper organisations, Fairfax Media and News Corp, shed hundreds of journalists’ jobs during the same period but where there were no newspaper closures. Carson’s content analysis examined the amount of investigative journalism published in the nation’s four main broadsheet newspapers over five decades in the month of April for each of 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011. The newspapers selected were the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian and the National Times. Her thesis noted that, as in the United States, a perception existed among journalists and academics that there were fewer investigative stories today than previously. However, her content analysis and a review of stories that had won Australia’s national journalism awards, the Walkleys, contradicted this widely held view. Carson found that more stories meeting the definition of investigative reporting were being done than ever before. As circulations and revenues of newspapers fell, the amount of investigative reporting did not decline (Carson, 2013). The recession was deeper in the United States and the impact on the media greater in terms of job losses and closures. However, journalistic practice and the culture of investigative reporting in the United States and Australia are similar, albeit in differing legal and financial environments.

To determine if there was a crisis for investigative reporting in the United States, a closer examination of the categories of reporters who lost their jobs is required. The evidence shows that job cuts in the United States at first targeted production staff, section editors, photographers, artists and reporters who worked in areas such as the arts, and those in foreign and national bureaus that were expensive to maintain. Editors tried to preserve local accountability reporting by beat reporters in areas such as councils, police and courts, suburban developments, urban neighbourhoods and statehouses. Editors wanted to tighten budgets without hurting core news operations, and beat reporters were seen as indispensable (Waldman, 2011, p. 43). Arts reporters, on the other hand, often were the first to go because readers could find arts news and reviews on alternative sites (Waldman, 2011). Despite the editors’ efforts to limit the cuts, accountability beats suffered cutbacks of varying degrees (Waldman, 2011). I

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argue below that while the financial crisis raised questions about the resources available for media companies to conduct investigative journalism – newspapers undoubtedly were in serious jeopardy – the evidence suggests that key media organisations with investigative units protected them or even expanded the resources available.

The financial crisis, 2007–2009

By the middle of 2008 when the US economy’s “roof fell in”, gross domestic product was declining rapidly and 600,000 Americans were losing their jobs each month (Bailey & Elliott, 2009, p. 7). The reasons for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression (Reuters, 2009) were complex but started with falls in the value of structured securities built on unrealistically high real estate collateral, leading to a liquidity crisis and bankruptcies for a number of key financial institutions (Bailey & Elliott, 2009). Because the excesses and failures were at the core of the US banking system, the crisis was transmitted to all sectors and countries of the global economy. The International Monetary Fund reported that output per capita was projected to decline in three-quarters of the global economy (International Monetary Fund, 2009). In the United States, home construction plunged by 38 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 at an annualised rate and households lost $13 trillion in wealth mostly from equities and home prices (Bailey & Elliott, 2009).

The drop in economic activity led to a severe slump in media advertising, which resulted in mainstream news organisations cutting more than 25 per cent of their full- time staff. About 13,500 journalists’ jobs were lost between 2007 and April 2010 (American Society of News Editors, 2010). One estimate was that daily newspapers reduced editorial spending by $1600 million between 2006 and 2009 (Edmonds, 2009). Those jobs were not recovered; as Figure 2.2 shows, in 2014, there were 37,000 editors, reporters, writers, photographers, videographers, artists and editorial production staff compared with 56,200 in 2000, according to job statistics gathered by the American Society of News Editors (2015).

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Figure 2.2. Journalism jobs did not recover after the financial crisis. Source: American Society of News Editors (2015).

The focus of this chapter is on newspapers rather than television or radio because newspapers produced most of the complex and important investigative reporting. Newspapers were hit hardest of all the media because their fixed cost structures included the essential items they needed for publishing each day: printing presses, stocks of paper and distribution networks. Journalistic staff, constituting about 50 per cent of segment costs, were one of the few areas where cuts could easily be made (Fine, 2009). Newspapers owned by media conglomerates and publicly listed companies were in a particularly precarious financial situation. Chains such as the McClatchy and Gannett companies and the New York Times Company had borrowed heavily in the 1980s and 1990s to purchase assets in the expectation that the good times would continue. In 1986, the 15 largest US newspaper groups also owned 173 non-daily newspapers, 71 television stations, 67 radio stations, more than 295 cable systems, more than 133 magazines and 16 book companies (Lacy & Simon, 1993, p. 133). Bloated by huge growth in advertising revenues and limited competition, newspapers were extraordinarily wealthy and could add journalists, open bureaus and make great profits (Picard, 2013). As advertisers moved to the internet and stock values plunged in the financial crisis (see Figure 2.3 below), equity diminished, increasing the costs of

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borrowed capital and creating severe financial problems for the companies including bankruptcies for the Tribune and Journal Register groups (Picard, 2010c).

At the height of the takeover boom, the value of a share in the giant Time Warner Company hit an all-time high of $254. Ten years later in 2009, that share was worth just $25 (Daly, 2013). Figure 2.3 below shows the plunging share price for the New York Times Company, Gannett and the McClatchy newspaper chains during the financial crisis.

Figure 2.3. Media corporation shares plunge during the financial crisis. Source: DePillis (2013).

One media analyst noted that the media’s “obsession with itself” was evident from the massive coverage the layoffs and other negative news received despite the fact such cuts had occurred in every other industry (Fine, 2009, p. 11). Adding to a sense that a low watermark had been reached in print journalism, in March, 2009, Time magazine published a story headlined, “The 10 most endangered newspapers in America”. It said that the owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer had filed for bankruptcy, as had the Journal Register chain; the Rocky Mountain News had closed and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would “almost certainly close” (it closed its print version to go fully online) (McIntyre, 2009, para. 1). Leftist media critics Robert McChesney and John Nichols warned that newspapers were in crisis and “may soon become extinct” (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 11). The prospects for newspapers looked grim in 2009: the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer were bankrupt; the Rocky Mountain News had closed, the San Francisco Chronicle was

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losing $1 million per week and the New York Times was threatening to close the Boston Globe. The New York Times, facing an expiry on a $400 million line of credit, entered an arrangement with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who provided the New York Times with $250 million. The deal enabled the newspaper to sell assets such as the Boston Globe and to enhance its digital subscription strategy. The debt was redeemed in 2011 and Slim made a $263 million profit on the loan through interest and share options (Lee, 2014). Other newspapers faced similar fates and slashed staff, bureaus and budgets. The Washington Post reduced its newsroom from 900 reporters to fewer than 550 (C. Lewis, 2013a). The Washington Post’s newspaper division recorded operating losses three years running from 2009, including a $53.7 million loss in 2012 (O'Malley, 2013). It suffered a 44 per cent drop in operating revenue in the preceding six years (Farhi, 2013).

Newspapers struggled to recover after the recession. The 2011 Pew State of the Media report found that as a result of the bankruptcies, seven out of America’s top 25 newspapers fell under private equity control (Edmonds, Guskin, & Rosenstiel, 2011). The problem with such ownership was that institutional investors often had goals that were inimical to the journalistic mission: “public ownership of newspaper companies is not good for journalism” (Morton, 2006, para. 1). Researchers inferred that the more detached media owners were from journalistic practice, the greater would be the pressure on managers for consistent and high growing profits (Blankenburg & Ozanich, 1993). These financial rearrangements rocked a field that had become dependent on revenue from advertising and had seen little need to innovate despite long-term circulation declines and the threat to its revenue base from new digital platforms.

The crisis argument

That investigative reporting teams would be targeted in newsroom cost cutting would make sense if costs were the only criterion used by editors and publishers. The annual cost of a beat reporter in 2009 was $61,500. Running an investigative unit consisting of an editor, three reporters, a researcher and travel and legal expenses for a year would require $500,000 and would provide two to three extended series (Hamilton, 2009). As in other businesses, in journalism time is money: “the more stories an editor can get out of a reporter, the happier the editor is; similarly, the more stories an editor can get out of

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a newsroom, the happier a publisher or station owner or network CEO will be” (Serrin, 2000, pp. viii–ix). Investigative stories taking months or years to research may not produce anything more than one or two stories that fail to attract reader, political or other media attention. “There is no guarantee that there is anything significant to be uncovered, or that if there is, they will be able to authenticate it sufficiently to publish it” (Tiffen, 1999, p. 33). Further risks for editors were potentially expensive litigation by people identified in the stories and complaints to media proprietors, regulatory bodies and other media organisations. Watchdog journalism might also attract the wrath of powerful interests, which could be “anathema for media owners in the current situation” (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 24). Furthermore, publishers perceived that the public was tired of investigative exposés, with polls showing that most readers felt newspapers carried too much bad news (Aucoin, 2005, p. 113).

These negatives suggest that other powerful reasons would have to exist for investigative reporting to survive in a cost-cutting environment. A sense of crisis was maintained during the financial crisis years about the prospects for investigative journalism. The argument that mainstream media could no longer uphold a watchdog role was easily made and was made consistently on the websites of non-profit investigative centres as a raison d’être for their own existence.

ProPublica’s website said that investigative journalism was at risk because many news organisations saw it as a luxury. Investigative reporters lacked resources and beat reporters were inhibited from doing such reporting by time and budget constraints (ProPublica, n.d.-a). Investigate West, a non-profit site based on America’s Pacific northwest region, said that along with thousands of reporting jobs having vanished, so had in-depth, investigative reporting (Investigate West, n.d.). Eye on Ohio said it was well documented that investigative journalism had been under siege for many years and that competition from digital news outlets and pressure to boost profits meant reduced staff and resources for in-depth stories (Eye on Ohio, n.d.). Pennsylvania-based PublicSource noted that traditional news organisations provided staff little time to delve deeply into important subjects (PublicSource, 2013). The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting’s publication, Pine Tree Watchdog, told readers that most local newspaper and broadcast outlets had reduced their staff and that one of the first victims was in-depth journalism (Pine Tree Watchdog, n.d.). The Investigative Reporting

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Workshop, founded by veteran non-profit editor Charles Lewis, said that in a drive to cut costs and maintain profits, traditional media had “slashed the capacity to do investigative journalism” (Investigative Reporting Workshop, 2013, para. 2). In Boston, the directors of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, Joe Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill, wrote that investigative reporting had been eviscerated in New England and that the Boston Globe was “clinging to life” (Bergantino & Mulvihill, 2009, para. 1).

Charles Lewis has been a high-profile advocate for non-profit investigative journalism at conferences around the globe since the early 1990s.7 He founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989, and by 2004 he had raised $30 million in foundation funding for the centre’s work. He later created the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.8 He was the founding executive editor of an umbrella body for non-profit organisations, the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News) and was a professor of journalism at American University where he established the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He was described as the godfather of non-profit investigative journalism (Glaser, 2008). Lewis had the ear and trust of foundations that were the biggest supporters of journalism and his views were influential with funders. One foundation program director, told me: “We support Chuck, whatever he does” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Another foundation director said he had turned to Lewis for advice when considering donating to investigative journalism (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012). In a lengthy study for the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, Lewis wrote in 2007 that media managers had come to see investigative reporting as time consuming and expensive – as “vainglorious indulgences: high risk, high maintenance, high priced impracticalities” (C. Lewis, 2007, p. 3). Lewis told me he had no doubt that investigative journalism had been adversely affected by the financial crisis, with many of the most experienced reporters losing their jobs. “I think that was an economic decision: ‘Joe Shmoe has only done three stories last year, they happen to be gems, they happen to be on page one, but we need more than three stories from one human being –

7 Lewis invited me to join the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 8 I have been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists since 1998 and have been involved in two projects for the organisation.

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out’. It’s heartbreaking, centuries and centuries of experience went right out the door” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010).

As the executive editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and later the San Francisco Chronicle for a total of eight years ending in 2007, Robert Rosenthal grew increasingly disenchanted and frustrated with budget cuts and the drive for profits, which he felt conflicted with high-quality journalism. He moved to the non-profit field in 2008 (see next chapter and Chapter Six). Rosenthal believed most newsroom cutbacks were not aimed at maintaining profits but increasing them at the expense of good journalism. “Investigative reporting is something that's being shoved aside in newsrooms that really sort of have to feed the beast” (PBS Newshour, 2009, para. 8).

The proposition that investigative journalism was the first area to be cut or that it was an inevitable victim of cost cutting was maintained by former senior journalists, information technology leaders, and scholars (Frank, 2009; Nichols & McChesney, 2009; Osder, 2012; Riptide, 2013; Westphal, 2009). Philanthropic foundation directors also believed it (see Chapter Four). In a 2011 article that was a finalist in awards for media industry reporting judged by journalists and journalism educators (Mirror Awards, 2011), veteran reporter and author Mary Walton wrote: “Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them” (Walton, 2010a, para. 6).

Walton quoted the then executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a membership organisation for investigative reporters, as saying there was no question that there were fewer investigative reporters than a few years earlier. Membership of Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2009 was at a 10-year low of 3695, 30 per cent fewer than in 2003. Membership, however, grew to more than 4000 in 2010 due to a membership drive (Walton, 2010a).

As evidence of newspapers abandoning the genre, Walton noted a drop in the number of entries for investigative categories of the Pulitzer Prize: between 1985 and 2010, entries

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in the investigative category had fallen by 21 per cent, from 103 to 81; in the public service category, the decline was 43 per cent, from 122 to 70; and for the explanatory category, the decline also was 43 per cent, from 181 to 104. An online version of Walton’s article included a video interview with Charles Lewis who described the growth of non-profit centres in the wake of the commercial carnage in media organisations (Walton, 2010a). The article noted Walton had been funded to write the piece by the Open Society Institute, a donor to non-profit journalism.

Other commentators observed that investigative reporters who had survived the cutbacks worked in newsrooms with fewer resources and were often pressed to fill the gaps in daily reporting (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010). Surviving newsroom reporters operated like wire service reporters of the 1930s, “scurrying on what the Columbia Journalism Review calls ‘the hamster wheel’ to produce each day’s quota of increasingly superficial stories. They can describe the landscape, but they have less time to turn over rocks” (Waldman, 2011, p. 13). Elsewhere, journalism professor Philip Meyer said that, “the endgame for newspapers is in sight” (Meyer, 2008, para. 1). The Atlantic’s contributing editor Michael Hirschorn said that the former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal had commented that he couldn’t imagine a world without the New York Times but “perhaps we should start” (Hirschorn, 2009, para. 5). Media commentators worried about the survival of serious journalism in the United States (Frank, 2009). One found there was a “striking decline in costly (though essential) journalistic practices such as investigative reporting” despite a “constant outcry from disillusioned journalists” (Scott, 2005, p. 90). Investigative reporting was “singularly threatened” (Westphal, 2009, p. 2).

From 2007 and in the years beyond, there was sufficient alarm about the state of journalism for philanthropic foundations and wealthy concerned donors to believe that a fundamental pillar of democracy was at risk. Donating to non-profit news organisations fitted perfectly the mission of foundations, many of which had specific programs designed to enhance democracy.

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The state of investigative reporting

Despite the serious concern about investigative journalism, I could not locate academic literature or rigorous research by journalists’ associations either on the number of investigative reporters who had lost their jobs during the financial crisis or a comparison of the number of published investigative stories over time.9 Quantifying the number of investigative reporters in the United States in any given period was complicated by the lack of a consistent definition for investigative journalist. The question of whether investigative journalism was a distinct genre or whether all good journalism was investigative in character has been the subject of debate in scholarly texts (Bennett & Serrin, 2005; MacDougall & Reid, 1987; Protess et al., 1991, p. 4). Carl Bernstein, commonly lauded as a hero investigative reporter, said his Watergate stories in the Washington Post were no different to conventional police reporting (Aucoin, 2005, p. 85). But one study found significant differences in attitude to practices such as using hidden recording devices or using government and corporate documents without authorisation between journalists and investigative journalists in the United States (Lanogsa, Willnat, Weaver, & Houston, 2015).

My opinion based on decades of experience as a reporter and editor is that investigative reporting is a distinct genre. It is more complex and original, it takes longer, it upsets people, it questions official versions and assertions, it has greater impact and it is more demanding of official responses. When I refer to investigative journalists in this chapter, I mean those employed as such in US legacy media organisations. That is, the group that the non-profit websites, journalists and academics quoted above referred to when commenting on what they perceived as a crisis for investigative journalism. I recognise that beat reporters at times step away from daily reporting to work on original investigative stories. The cuts to beat and general reporting staff may have reduced the investigative reporting capability available in newsrooms. They may also have reduced the pool of experienced reporters who may in future become specialist investigative journalists. I also acknowledge that other individuals and groups – seldom mentioned by those expressing concern over the state of investigative reporting – also produce

9 An unpublished email survey of 20 US newspapers in 2008 relating to a study on the state of investigative reporting found half the newspapers had eliminated or reduced their staffs. It was not stated if this referred to total staff numbers or only to investigative reporters (Houston, 2015).

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investigative stories, increasingly so. They were part of a movement, a “mass amateurization of publishing”, that included expert bloggers, non-government agencies, citizens, non-profit centres (Shirky, 2008, p. 65) and the public interest journalism of decentralised non-market players (Benkler, 2006). Those expressing concern at conferences, on websites and in journalistic publications about the plight of investigative reporting focused their concerns on the mainstream field.

Entries to the Pulitzer Prize

As evidence in support of statements that there was a crisis in mainstream investigative journalism, commentators referred to a decrease in the number of entries in the Public Service and Investigative Reporting categories of the Pulitzer Prize (Waldman, 2011; Walton, 2010a). Data supplied to me by the Pulitzer Prize organisation confirmed that the entries for both categories during the financial crisis years were substantially fewer than in 1986 and 1996 (see Table 2.1 below). I sought annual entry figures from 2006, which was selected as a date unaffected by the financial crisis, to assess the impact of the economic downturn on entries. I also sought data for 1986 because commentators had used a mid-1980s figure as a baseline for comparison. The entries for a particular year represent the journalism published in the previous year.

In 2006 there were 99 entries in the Investigative Reporting category. In 2007, the category had 67 entries. In 2008 there were 75 entries, an increase that was surprising given that it represented stories done in the first year of the financial crisis (2007). However, by 2009 there were only 60 entries. The following year, 2010, there were 81. The numbers of entries were significantly higher for Investigative Reporting in earlier decades: there were 119 entries in 1986 and 112 in 1996. In the Public Service category, there were 72 entries in 2006; a drop to 55 entries in 2007; 58 in 2008; 60 in 2009 and 70 in the following year. This compared with 131 entries in 1986 and 104 in 1996. Table 2.1 shows the number of entries in the Public Service and Investigative Reporting categories in 1986, 1996, 2006 and then each year until 2014.

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Table 2.1. Pulitzer entries in Investigative Reporting and Public Service categories

Year Public Service Investigative Total Pulitzer entriesa 1986 131 119 1634 1996 104 112 1484 2006 72 99 1324 2007 55 67 1225 2008 (FC) 58 75 1167 2009 (FC) 60 60 1028 2010 (FC) 70 81 1103 2011 68 65 1097 2012 71 72 1113 2013 67 65 1081 2014 69 75 1132 Note: FC = impacted by financial crisis; a All categories. Source: Data obtained from Pulitzer Prizes (personal communication, October 2, 3 & 5, 2013 and November 25, 2014).

Table 2.1 shows a substantial drop in the number of entries submitted in the Public Service and Investigative Reporting categories and in the total number of entries in all 14 Pulitzer Prize categories from the mid-2000s compared with 1986 and 1996. The financial crisis occurred between 2007 and 2009 so the impact, if there were one, would be noticeable in the entries for 2008, 2009 and 2010 because entries represented work published in the previous calendar year. Figure 2.4 below shows the total number of entries for the Investigative Reporting and Public Service categories in 2008 was 133, which was 11 more than in 2007 (122 entries). In 2009, there were 120 entries in the two categories, just two fewer than in 2007. In 2010, the total for the two categories jumped to 151. In the Investigative Reporting category, there were more entries in 2008 (75) than in 2007 (67), though by 2009 there were only 60. The number of Investigative Reporting entries in 2014 was the same as in 2008. These figures do not suggest that the financial crisis had a catastrophic impact on the number of investigative stories produced. Counter-intuitively, there were more entries in 2008 representing the first year of the financial crisis than in the previous year. By 2010, entries were greater than in the preceding three years and stabilised over the next few years.

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Figure 2.4. Long-term decline in entries to investigative Pulitzer categories. Source: Data obtained from Pulitzer Prizes (personal communication, October 2, 3 & 5, 2013 and November 25, 2014).

Figure 2.4 demonstrates that the most significant trend has been a decline in the number of entries after the mid-1980s. The most discernible impact that could be linked to the financial crisis was in the entries for 2009. There were only 60 entries in each of the two categories. However, there was a jump from 120 combined category entries in 2009 to 151 in the two categories in 2010. A slight reduction followed but the numbers have been steady since 2011. Those concerned about the future of investigative reporting at the time contrasted entries with those in the mid-1980s. This approach took no account of a longer term decline in investigative category entries or a decline in the total number of entries in the Pulitzer Prize’s 14 categories over the same period. My spreadsheet analysis in Table 2.2 below shows that the total number of entries for all categories of the prize fell significantly from the mid-1980s. In 1986, a total of 1634 entries was received; in 1996 there were 1484 but by 2007 the total had dropped to 1225; then 1167 in 2008, 1028 in 2009 and a slight rise in 2014 to 1132. That represented a 31 per cent decline in all-category entries in 2014 when compared to 1986. The decline in investigative category entries was consistently greater than the drop across the total number of entries. However, this appeared to be true for most years since the mid- 2000s, not just the financial crisis years. The reasons for the greater decline were

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unclear but I speculate that other categories may have increased in relative popularity or that the mid-1980s figure was a high point for Investigative Reporting and Public Service entries.

Table 2.2. Comparison of Pulitzer entries with entries in 1986

Year Public service Investigative Total Pulitzer entries N Change N Change N Change 1986 131 119 1634 2005 89 −32% 79 −34% 1326 −19% 2006 72 −45% 99 −17% 1324 −19% 2007 55 −49% 67 −43% 1225 −25% 2008 58 −56% 75 −37% 1167 −29% 2009 60 −54% 60 −50% 1028 −37% 2013 67 −49% 65 −45% 1081 −34% 2014 69 −47% 75 −40% 1132 −31% Source: Compiled by the author from data obtained from Pulitzer Prizes (personal communication, October 2, 3 & 5, 2013 and November 25, 2014).

While the data sends mixed signals, this analysis shows that overall context should be taken into account when using Pulitzer Prize entries in arguments about the health of investigative reporting. In raw numbers, the variation in the number of entries was not great: in 2008 (first impacted year) there were 11 fewer entries in the Investigative Reporting and Public Service categories than in 2007, and in 2009 there were only two fewer than in 2007.

In another method of interrogating the figures, I calculated the Investigative Reporting and Public Service entries as a percentage of the total number of entries for each year. Figure 2.5 shows a dip in 2007, then a recovery in 2008, the first financial crisis- impacted year, then a small drop in investigative entries in 2009, followed by a strong performance in 2010, then a levelling off across 2011, 2012 and 2013. The number of entries in the Investigative Reporting category in 2014 increased by 10 over the previous year.

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Figure 2.5. Investigative stories as a percentage of annual Pulitzer entries. Source: Compiled by the author from data obtained from Pulitzer Prizes (personal communication, October 2, 3 & 5, 2013 and November 25, 2014).

The Pulitzer Prize entries do not represent evidence that supports the view that investigative reporters were a vanishing species or that newspapers had abandoned the genre as was suggested (Walton, 2010a). There could be a variety of reasons why reporters and news organisations did not enter the Pulitzer Prize s and care must be taken in reaching conclusions based on these figures, other than to say they do not constitute evidence that investigative reporters en masse had lost their jobs. Journalists and media organisations in the Public Service category appeared less likely to enter the Pulitzer Prizes in recent years than in the 1980s and 1990s. That appeared true for all categories of the awards. The reasons for that might be grounds for further research. One explanation that was offered was that entering awards was very labour intensive and that the person who normally prepared the entries had lost his or her job. Editors were too busy putting out the paper to bother with awards (Walton, 2010a).

The Investigative Reporting and Public Service categories did show bigger declines than the average of all the categories when compared to 1986, and there was an unexplained dip in both in 2007. But linking the number of entries to job losses was drawing a long bow. Another reason why the figures were questionable as evidence of a crisis for investigative journalism was that no credit was given to the vast increase in the number of bloggers, experts, non-government organisations, freelance journalists and

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others who produced online investigative content and might have been less likely than professional journalists or media companies to enter a journalism award. Examples of organisations and individuals who produce investigative stories from time to time include Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, SourceWatch, Bellingcat, Greenpeace and bloggers such as Nicky Hagar, Nate Thayar, typesetting expert Joseph Newcomer and others (Bellingcat, n.d.; Center for Media and Democracy, n.d.; Greenpeace, n.d.; Hager, n.d.; Human Rights Watch, n.d.; Thayer, n.d.; Transparency International, n.d.). Further, the entries do not represent every investigative story that was written: journalists would only enter their best story in each category.

Other evidence used in support of concern about the quantity of investigative journalism in the United States was membership of the Investigative Reporters and Editors organisation (Investigative Reporters and Editors, n.d.-a). Investigative Reporters and Editors was created in 1975 and conducts annual conferences where issues confronting watchdog reporting are discussed and reporters talk about the lessons they learned from their projects. Investigative Reporters and Editors also runs boot camps and workshops on investigative techniques and has an extensive library of investigative stories. The organisation’s executive director said membership had dropped by about 30 per cent between 2003 and 2009 and that there was less investigative reporting being done in the United States than a few years earlier (Waldman 2011, 52; Walton, 2010a).

Once again, questions arise whether such a direct correlation should be made due to not all investigative reporters being members of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the rising number of investigative stories being done by diverse, community-focused groups and individuals. A survey of 861 Investigative Reporters and Editors members found that only one-third worked full time on investigative projects (Lanogsa & Houston, 2013). Of the Investigative Reporters and Editors members who responded to the survey, 13 per cent said they were educators, 17 per cent were editors and executive producers, and only 37 per cent were employed at newspapers (Lanogsa & Houston, 2013).

More than 18,300 full-time professional daily newspaper jobs were lost between 2007 and 2014 (American Society of News Editors, 2015). This included artists, photographers, videographers, copy and layout editors, online producers, editorial

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supervisors as well as reporters. There is no doubt that cuts of that magnitude had a negative impact on the breadth and depth of news coverage in many parts of the United States, particularly at local and regional dailies. The decline in local reporting was severe enough to shift power away from citizens to government and powerful institutions despite digital technology empowering the public (Waldman, 2011, p. 6). One estimate suggested that 828,000 fewer stories were produced in each of 2007 and 2008 (Doctor, 2010). However, a fraction of the job losses would have involved investigative reporters because many news organisations employed just one or two journalists dedicated to full-time investigations or did not have an investigative unit.10 The ability of local beat and general reporters to undertake longer investigations may have been reduced. But there was evidence that several newsrooms retained or even increased their watchdog teams. Eminent journalists and scholars agreed that local accountability journalism on metropolitan daily newspapers was more endangered than investigative reporting that “might be provided by other sources” (Downie & Schudson, 2009, p. 12).

Other perspectives on investigative reporting

While some were warning of a crisis for investigative journalism, senior mainstream news executives reported being bullish about the numbers doing investigative reporting (Weinberg, 2009) and larger newspapers retained their investigative approach (Walton, 2010a). Mary Walton’s article, “Investigative Shortfall”, in American Journalism Review (Walton, 2010a) quoted editors restating their commitment to investigative reporting at the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, the Gannett company and National Public Radio (NPR). “There are others where the accountability torch still burns, notably the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Oregonian and the Seattle Times” (Walton, 2010a, para. 35). The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “through all the

10 Few scholarly efforts have been made to quantify investigative journalism (Lanogsa et al., 2015). A 1977 study of 174 newspapers found that 32 had at least one person with the title of investigative reporter (Harmening, 1977, as cited in Lanogsa et al. (2015). A survey by university students of 100 of the United States’ biggest newspapers in 2006 found 39 per cent had investigative teams and 37 per cent had no full- time investigative reporters (cited in Walton (2010a)).

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financial stress ... has maintained – even extended – its commitment to watchdog, investigative reporting” (LaFrance, 2013, para. 5).

Anticipating losses of $85 million in 2009, the Boston Globe closed foreign bureaus in London, Jerusalem, Tokyo and South America and eliminated the jobs of national correspondents and other staff. Its then owner, the New York Times Co. threatened to shut the newspaper, one of the United States’ oldest and best, unless unions agreed to pay cuts and other concessions totalling $20 million (Gavin & O'Brien, 2009). Tom Farragher was the Boston Globe’s investigative editor at the time and thought he would lose his job. He recalled his daughter in tears at the prospect of not being able to afford university fees. However, the Boston Globe’s editor Martin Baron made no cuts to the investigative team as he reduced the size of the newsroom. “Even when things were shutting down and people were fearful about their jobs … I like to say Baron protected the nuclear core and never wavered in his support for investigative journalism. We continued to do very vibrant, vigorous and ambitious investigative reporting even in the darkest financial times of the newspaper” (T. Farragher, personal communication, February 25, 2014).

Other editors said that staff cuts had resulted in less focus on some forms of news to the advantage of original investigative stories. An editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said the paper had expanded its local investigative efforts figuring that high-impact projects were part of what readers most wanted; the Boston Globe’s Martin Baron said the cuts in space and people had brought sharper focus on what the paper did well – journalism that was unique and enterprising, of higher interest and higher impact (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010). Karen Petersen of the News Tribune said the paper had stopped covering smaller communities and had refocused on local enterprise and investigative reporting (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010). Editors and publishers recognised that investigative reporting was their franchise. Baron, who moved to the Washington Post, expanded on the watchdog mission in a speech: “If we as journalists abandon that mission – because we say we can’t afford it, because we claim it’s not cost effective, or because the risks seem too great – we will betray the foundational principle of a free press. It would be the most irresponsible thing we do” (Baron, 2015, para. 110).

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When editors and journalists talk in public about why their newspaper is important and necessary, they rely on investigative journalism for “more than 50 per cent of legitimation”, even though probably 5 per cent or less of money, staff and time is devoted to such work (J. Rosen, personal communication, November 17, 2010). An academic and non-profit advocate who was previously gloomy about investigative reporting expressed surprise that “it’s coming back … There has actually been an increase in some newspapers” and “we are probably seeing more varied investigative journalism, at many more different levels” (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010). By 2015 newspapers such as the Dallas Morning News, Minneapolis Tribune, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others had maintained or increased the number of investigative reporters and were talking about such journalism as being their franchise (Houston, 2015). ProPublica’s founder and executive chairman, Paul Steiger, in a 2015 speech, said some legacy newsrooms at newspapers, magazines, television and radio, though struggling to make profits, were “nevertheless still producing some powerful investigative work” (Steiger, 2015, para. 16). He singled out the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, and smaller papers like the Los Angeles Times, Milwaukee Journal and the Seattle Times, which, he said, were making big efforts to keep doing such reporting with shrunken staffs. But in Steiger’s opinion – consistent with his editors at ProPublica – these were an exception. For the most part, legacy news organisations had “wiped out their investigative teams partly if not entirely and no longer let their beat reporters take time away from their beats to see if a tip might turn into a major exposé” (Steiger, 2015, para 16).

A study of newsroom resources in 2007–2008 concluded that while the crossword, TV listings and stock tables had disappeared, local coverage had increased and investigative reporting “remains highly valued” (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008, para. 1). The study by journalist Tyler Marshall and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, was based on responses by senior newspaper executives at 259 newspapers to a 43-question survey administered by Princeton Survey Research Associates International and conducted in January and February 2008. Marshall also interviewed senior editors at 15 daily newspapers between November 2007 and January 2008, which was during the financial crisis (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008). The majority of newspapers had cut staff and the amount of space they devoted

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to news. Two-thirds had cut back on foreign news, over half had cut national news and more than a third had reduced business coverage. The editors’ greatest concern was the loss of talent and experienced reporters – often targeted for buyouts because of their higher salaries – followed by the loss of other staff. Despite such concerns, the majority of editors (56 per cent) felt their newspapers were better than three years earlier. One editor, whose newsroom had lost 70 staff, commented: “There’s an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the coverage of several core beats” (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008, p. 3). Figure 2.6 below shows most editors believed the stories in their publications were better written, more in-depth and more comprehensive than three years earlier. Given that the editors seemed to be commenting mainly on their own competence and performance and the strong loyalty that journalists generally have to their publications, these results may not be surprising.

Figure 2.6. Editors say coverage has improved. Source: Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (2008).

A response that stands out in Figure 2.6 is that a third of the editors believed that the comprehensiveness of their newspapers’ coverage had worsened, a response that is likely related directly to job losses. A clear trend was discerned toward increasing the reporting of local news: local government and politics, education, the environment, police, sports, obituary writing and investigative reporting. Figure 2.7 shows that more editors believed that investigative reporting resources had increased than those who believed that resources were cut when compared with three years earlier.

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Figure 2.7. Editors say investigative reporting gained resources. Source: Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (2008).

The responses in this survey are relevant because they reflect the perceptions of mainstream newspaper executives at more than 250 newspapers at a time when alarm was being expressed about the future of serious reporting. Despite severe cutbacks, the editors do not appear to be despairing about the future. They had cut soft news coverage and focused on core journalistic areas that most affected their readers. Figure 2.7 shows a strong commitment to local hard news stories in beats like education, crime, local politics, investigative reporting, sport and the environment. In each area, editors said more resources were devoted than three years earlier. Thirty per cent said investigative reporting was better resourced than in the earlier period, while 24 per cent disagreed. The news values of the editors were reflected in Figure 2.8 below that shows editors strongly favoured local news, sports and investigative stories over foreign, science, technology, national and business reporting.

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Figure 2.8. Newspaper executives favour local, hard news stories. Source: Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (2008).

An understanding of the culture of the journalistic field is necessary when determining the reasons why newsrooms preserved investigative units despite their cost, relatively few stories, and legal and other complications. Rather than being the first area to be cut, the Pew survey found that most executives insisted that investigative reporting would be the last to be hit by downsizing. “Those who manage papers both small and large seem to believe this is an essential part of a paper’s role, and one that fits with whatever their future business model will be” (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008, Investigative Teams—and Their Stories—Survive, para. 1). Ninety-one per cent of all newsroom executives considered investigative or enterprise reporting either very essential or somewhat essential to the quality of their news product. Editors said financial pressures had forced them to be more selective when deciding which labour- intensive stories to pursue. They said that investigative stories were shorter than previously and cost more to produce due to the extra editing time needed for print and digital display. “But there was evidence that advances in information technology, such as the ability to mine new electronic databases, has enriched this genre and opened new doors for newspapers to explore important issues” (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008, Investigative Teams—and Their Stories—Survive, para. 4).

Forty-two per cent of the 259 top editors and news executives said they had reduced the number of copy editors over the previous three years. Of the bigger newspapers surveyed, 67 per cent had cut back on copy editors. Other big cuts were in the number

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of general editors, specialised editors and graphic artists. One-third of newspapers had reduced photographer numbers with half of the bigger newspapers cutting photographers. This finding was confirmed in later figures compiled separately by the American Society of News Editors (2015). Table 2.3 shows the biggest staff decline of 44 per cent was among photographers, videographers and artists. The second biggest cut was among supervisors; these were journalists employed as general editors, assistant metro editors, features editors and section editors. Reporter and subediting numbers reduced by one-third, slightly less than the percentage reduction in total jobs.

Table 2.3. Job losses by category

2007 2014 Change Supervisors 13,841 8991 −35% Copy/layout/online 11,159 7766 −30% Reporters/writers 24,286 16,743 −31% Photographers/artists 5759 3222 −44% Total 55,045 36,722 −33% Source: Compiled by the author from data obtained from American Society of News Editors (2015).

Despite their jobs apparently being preserved and despite being satisfied with their own media organisations, investigative reporters were glum about the general state of investigative reporting. This may be another characteristic of journalistic culture. Andrew Kaplan conducted a survey of 281 print investigative journalists as part of his PhD research at the University of Maryland. Like the Pew survey, Kaplan found that newsrooms placed a high value on investigative reporting: 81 per cent of the respondents said their newspapers were somewhat or very supportive of their work. Forty-five per cent said that the number of editors and reporters assigned to investigative projects compared with five years earlier had decreased, but a majority believed the number had either risen or remained the same, “surprising given the considerable layoff and buyouts that have occurred during the five years” (Kaplan, 2008, p. 85). Kaplan found a dichotomy between what investigative reporters thought of the news industry or the state of investigative journalism in an abstract sense, and what they felt about their own newsrooms. A majority of the 281 investigative reporters said investigative journalism was worse off than 10 years earlier, despite believing that their own newsrooms supported them. Kaplan speculated that a reason for this belief could

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be that everything written about investigative reporting in books, magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs and on television was downbeat. Another explanation could be the third-person effect proposed by sociologist W. Phillips Davison, in which people generally did not recognise media effects on themselves but acknowledged them in others. Other explanations could be found in cognitive dissonance theory, or that the reporters who perceived low newsroom support had already left and moved elsewhere. While gloomy about investigative reporting elsewhere, investigative reporters said that compared with five years earlier, they were spending more time on investigative reporting, with one-quarter responding the time had increased significantly. The journalists split evenly on the question of whether reports taking longer than three months had increased, dropped or stayed the same over the previous five years: “given the budget and staff cutbacks over the past five years, one would have expected a noticeable decrease in the amount of longer investigations” (Kaplan, 2008, p. 84).

The same phenomenon of personal satisfaction but industry gloom was evident in a 2014 email survey of 861 members of the Investigative Reporters and Editors organisation. A preliminary summary found that two-thirds of the respondents said that the staffing and commitment to investigative journalism in their own newsrooms had increased or remained the same over recent years (Lanogsa & Houston, 2013). Almost 80 per cent said they were fairly or very satisfied in their jobs. About 66 per cent said the time they spent on investigative stories had increased or remained the same over the past five years and 69 per cent of those working at news organisations said the staff allocated to investigative stories had increased over the same period. Despite these findings, almost half disagreed or strongly disagreed that the news media overall had a stronger commitment to investigative reporting than a year or two earlier. About half also said it was becoming more difficult to get the time and resources to do investigative work. Further analysis of the survey found that 40 per cent of investigative reporters were very satisfied with their jobs, compared with just 23 per cent of other journalists. Fewer than half of the investigative sample thought journalism was going in the wrong direction compared with 60 per cent of other journalists (Lanogsa et al., 2015).

The personal satisfaction, industry gloom phenomenon might explain why the conventional wisdom in journalism was that there was a crisis for investigative reporting. The surveys suggest that the opposite may have been true, or at the very least

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that the situation differed from place to place. The threat in any event was not as clear cut as some suggested. Alarm about the state of journalism predominantly was raised by the journalists themselves: “it’s not as if the … community rises up and says, ‘Damn it, we need better journalism’” (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012).

Retention of investigative reporting

The internet disrupted the business model of newspapers and the financial crisis further deteriorated the advertising revenues flowing to print media. These changed the way in which newspapers thought of their readers and they belatedly attempted to adjust by engaging audiences in new ways. But the habitus – an embodied feel for the game – of professionally employed editors and reporters did not change (Willig, 2012, p. 374). Journalists in quality media continued to believe and aspire to traditional values of independence, public service and exposure of misdeeds in the public interest. A reputation for investigative reporting brought industry recognition and credibility, both intrinsically valued assets (Schlosberg, 2013, p. 59). A managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News summarised the appeal of an investigative ethos like this: there was a sense of duty under the First Amendment; it made for interesting stories; if journalists didn’t do it, no-one else would; and, “it’s part of the heart and soul of journalism” (Abbott, 1988, p. 3). Another writer described how despite cuts of 25 per cent of her newspaper’s journalists, the editor was “determined not to allow the quality of the paper to diminish. She established a blueprint for the future with six initiatives that will set the agenda going forward: watchdog reporting is at the top of her list” (Hearn, 2008, The Newsroom Shrinks, para. 3).

The survival of investigative reporting in established media can be attributed to four factors. First, some slack existed between the interests of journalists, managers and owners. Managers did not have perfect oversight over the work of journalists, allowing them to pursue stories that had broad social returns but were not profit maximising. “This is because it is costly for owners and managers to monitor constantly whether reporters are paying sufficient attention to reader interests and production costs” (Hamilton, 2004, p. 261). As long as journalists were needed to report the news, they would have some power within media organisations. “The desire of journalists to produce news according to their own best judgement can be a significant constraint on

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commercial motives” (Schudson, 2003, p. 115). Journalists had the power to stand up to corporate executives by evoking the traditions of independence and free inquiry. Newspaper monopolies also provided for managerial discretion: “A newspaper manager could value prizes over profits and contrive to hire high-salaried investigative reporters without expecting a proportionate increase in revenues” (Blankenburg & Ozanich, 1993, p. 70).

Second, the media’s watchdog role was commonly described by scholars, politicians and journalists as integral, or indeed the same, as democracy: “journalism is usefully understood as another name for democracy” (Carey, 1997, p. 332). Others argued they were not the same thing (Schudson, 2008, p. 11). Nevertheless, journalists pursued investigations because they believed they were of broad societal benefit. Economists define positive externalities as actions by individuals or firms that benefit society more than individuals or firms. Investigative stories that might attract the attention of a minority of engaged citizens, politicians or government agencies, nevertheless created positive externalities since “other consumers may benefit from the coverage even if they were not the targets of advertisers and did not pay for the creation of the information” (Hamilton, 2004, p. 19).

The third factor was the heart and soul argument that within the field of journalism, investigative reporters had high levels of symbolic capital and that this was true also for news organisations that consistently published high quality investigative stories. Investigative stories usually received prominent display and initiated reaction and reform. They created a brand for news outlets that differentiated them from organisations that produced soft news or daily coverage of the news. A reputation for reliable and high-quality information could lead to public trust, higher circulation and societal influence that advertisers might want to be associated with, former journalism professor Philip Meyer wrote (Meyer, 2009, p. 20). Editors recognised that the internet gave people the ability to find all manner of information and news sources and that their product could differentiate if they made investigative reporting a franchise element that gave people a reason to read their publications (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008).

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Finally, editors believed that a significant minority of people demanded quality journalism and would pay for it. This audience could be classified broadly as engaged citizens rather than as general readers due to their interest in politics and public issues. Socially, politically or economically active heavy news users tended to represent 15 to 20 per cent of the population (Picard, 2010c, p. 372). Demand for quality news and information was confirmed in a survey of 160 news-based websites conducted by political scientist Thomas Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. It found that the sites of brand name newspapers – the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal – and television were growing (Patterson, 2007). Other surveys showed strong public support for investigative journalism and a desire that more be done (Willnat & Weaver, 1998).

Conclusion

In summary, those arguing that investigative reporting was at risk could attest to little or no evidence in support of their assertions other than the general contraction of the industry. It became the conventional wisdom among journalists, foundation directors and some scholars that the demise of investigative journalism in print media would result in less scrutiny of elected officials and ultimately would weaken the United States’ democracy. The next two chapters demonstrate how this concern opened streams of grant money to new non-profit ventures that were led by some of the mainstream media’s former top executive directors.

Non-profit leaders may not have set out to exploit the mainstream media’s financial problems to attract more philanthropic funding for themselves. But the financial crisis did generate new income for the non-profit investigative news sector. Its expansion demonstrates that journalistic practices indeed are contingent, variable over time, place and circumstances (Carey, 1997, p. 331). And that journalism constantly evolves to fit the parameters and constraints of audiences, media companies and distribution platforms (Picard, 2013).

It is unlikely that traditional media will recover the more than 18,000 newsroom jobs lost in the United States since 2007 (American Society of News Editors, 2015). Editors

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were forced to make tough choices about coverage and tried, due to their journalistic dispositions and culture, to retain key investigative reporting staff. In fact, most news organisations had no investigative units even before the economic crisis (Aucoin, 2005, p. 194). While strong in the more romanticised ideals of journalistic practice, investigative reporting in fact has been “weakly institutionalised in the daily routines and responsibilities of the press” (Bennett & Serrin, 2005, p. 170). Those that did have investigative units had small numbers of investigative reporters. Undoubtedly, some media did cut back investigative reporting, and investigative journalists had fewer resources (travel money, research assistance, training) and time to do their jobs (Ide & Vashisht, 2006). Overall, however, investigative journalism continued to show “enormous resilience in the face of business pressure” (Shapiro, 2003).

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CHAPTER 3: Collaborations and journalistic networks

Introduction

This chapter examines the second of the three primary factors that contributed to the creation of non-profit investigative news organisations in the United States between 2007 and 2015. It shows how the transition of journalists with high symbolic capital in the established media to the non-profit investigative subfield created the environment for philanthropic funding and editorial collaborations between legacy media and non- profit news centres. The previous chapter described how economic forces resulted in newspaper closures and deep newsroom job losses. It suggested that perceptions of a crisis for investigative journalism and democracy convinced philanthropists to fund a non-profit model of investigative journalism. The following chapter will focus on the third primary factor in the formation of non-profit centres, the philanthropic foundations that funded them.

The shift of senior legacy journalists to non-profit investigative organisations had three interrelated effects. First, it provided assurance to philanthropic foundations that they were supporting centres led by people with high journalistic credentials and reputations. Second, the reputations of these journalists in the journalistic field meant they could use their connections to pitch and share stories with the mainstream media, and third, publication in the mainstream media provided the type of impact that foundations and individual philanthropists were looking for. The move represented a transfer from the broader field of mainstream journalism to the relatively small subfield of not-for-profit investigative journalism. For many of the senior executives involved this was a move from a heteronomous pole of cultural production in the commercial media to what they believed would be a relatively more autonomous one in which mass markets and profit- making were less important (Bourdieu, 1983): a place where they could focus on the journalism, or so they believed at first.

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Journalists in the commercial media worked for a pre-established market, obeyed pre- existing demands and used pre-established forms (Webb et al., 2002). Those who moved into the non-profit field took with them traditional journalistic values but left behind commercial imperatives: they had no pre-established market, no pre-existing demands and were not constrained by pre-established forms. However, while the lack of pre- established forms allowed for innovation that would not have occurred or would have occurred more slowly in the more risk-averse mainstream media, the editors found they were not completely autonomous in the sense of producing investigative journalism for investigative journalism’s sake.11 They had to raise money to pay reporters, digital producers and photographers and take care of the rent. They had to attract foundation and other funding. In doing so, they abandoned the journalistic ideal of separate divisions for the editorial and financial sides of their organisations. Non-profit organisations had to accrue symbolic capital through the excellence of their stories and work. This could then be transformed into philanthropic funding via joint publication with the established media, as illustrated in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1 shows that the publication of non-profit stories in mainstream media (as well as on their own websites) operated to attract funding from foundations. Individual funding decisions may be more complex and variable than shown, but Figure 3.1 highlights the links and relationships between mainstream media, non-profit news organisations and funders. It is an original concept. Publication in legacy outlets meant greater political and social impact, an outcome that was desired by funders as well as non-profit and legacy organisations. Such publication was facilitated by relationships of trust between non-profit journalists and legacy journalists. They shared an occupational culture that had five distinct characteristics: they believed journalists provided a public service; were impartial, neutral, objective, fair and credible; ought to be autonomous, free and independent in their work; had a sense of immediacy, actuality and speed; and had a sense of ethics, validity and legitimacy (Hanitzsch, 2007). Collaborative partnerships between mainstream and non-profit journalism were facilitated by this shared ideology.

11 See Pierre Bourdieu’s “art for art’s sake’’ comment (Bourdieu, 1983, pp. 318, 321).

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Figure 3.1. Interrelationships between media, non-profit organisations and funders.

This chapter examines the move of legacy editors to the non-profit sector and then focuses on collaborations between established media and non-profit organisations. These partnerships represent a shift in journalistic practice because mainstream media traditionally have been hostile to the idea of publishing watchdog stories produced by external agents. There were good reasons for this: editors worried about the accuracy of those stories, the agendas of those writing them, the professionalism and ethics of the writers and the risk of legal action. The shift of esteemed legacy editors to the non-profit field acted to dispel many of those fears. One senior mainstream editor compared the collaborations to that of Hollywood film studios that once did everything but now partnered with external film makers while retaining their own production capabilities (Drew, 2010). The job cuts resulting from the financial crisis, as described in the previous chapter, meant mainstream outlets were more willing to augment their serious journalism with the work of non-profit centres. The Mumbai massacre story, in Chapter

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One written by a ProPublica reporter and published in the Washington Post, was just one of thousands of stories from non-profit centres carried by commercial and public media.

This chapter uses material from the semi-structured interviews that I conducted with executives from US non-profit centres and program directors at philanthropic foundations that have donated millions of dollars to the centres. The interviews were conducted during two visits to the United States in November 2010, and in January and February 2012. Thirty-seven people were interviewed, several numerous times.12 Extensive reviews of academic literature and contemporary online articles were undertaken. There were a small number of general news and magazine articles about legacy news executives moving to the non-profit field, but I could not locate scholarly research specifically on the shift.

Former legacy editors in the non-profit sector

The books on the shelves in Robert Rosenthal’s office provide empirical evidence of his new responsibilities since leaving senior editing positions in legacy newspapers to become the executive director of the non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco’s Bay Area. Titles such as How to write successful fundraising letters, Guide to proposal writing, The non-profit sector and Conducting a successful fundraising program outnumber the books on investigative reporting. Rosenthal, a former award-winning foreign correspondent, was the executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer between 1998 and 2001, when it had 630 staff and an annual budget of $75 million. In 2002, he became the managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a position he held for five years . The Inquirer sacked him for opposing staff reductions, and the Chronicle job “didn’t work out” (Rosenthal, 2012b, p. 19). He decided not to return to a newspaper after he left the Chronicle.

A year before starting at the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2008, Rosenthal managed the Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of more than two dozen San Francisco Bay Area reporters, editors and photographers that continued the reporting of and

12 See Appendix 2.

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investigated the shotgun murder of Chauncey Bailey, a local editor who was killed while researching the activities of a criminal organisation (Chauncey Bailey Project, 2007). Rosenthal’s appointment to lead the project demonstrated the high regard with which he was held in the journalistic field. Managing two dozen journalists from normally competing local media organisations, each with different deadlines, and having them share their scoops and sources was a formidable undertaking.

When Rosenthal started at the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2008, it had seven staff and a budget of $1 million that was mostly committed to a documentary project (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). The centre increased its budget to $11.5 million and 70 staff in 2012 after merging with a local online news site, the non-profit Bay Citizen, and launching California Watch, a news and watchdog site focused on state issues. The centre said that it had the “largest investigative team in the country” (Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d.-b, para. 31). In the same year, the three biggest non-profit investigative reporting centres in the United States – the Center for Public Integrity, ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting – were led by editors who previously held senior posts in mainstream news organisations. They brought with them to the field of non-profit investigative reporting decades of newsroom experience and values, strong reputations, contacts in politics, finance and the media, and most importantly, the sort of credibility that appealed to foundations. Like many other reporters and editors, they moved to the non-profit subfield for a variety of reasons: frustration due to budget cuts, a desire to be involved in more rewarding and deadline-free investigative reporting, nearing compulsory retirement age, and having taken buy outs or being sacked.

My research found that the relatively small subfield of US non-profit investigative journalism between 2007 and 2015 was shaped by six non-profit executives, directors and university-based professors of journalism whose impact extended beyond their organisations because of their high profiles, association with award-winning journalism, industry connections and their ability to raise tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic foundations and wealthy benefactors. With other senior editors in the non- profit subfield, they were socialised in mainstream journalistic culture and the traditional values and practices that consciously or unconsciously legitimated their role and made their work meaningful to themselves and others (Hanitzsch, 2007). They had

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in common what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called habitus (dispositions) and doxa (conventions, rules of the game) and high amounts of social and symbolic capital (Butler, 1999). A further common dimension was their inclination to an adversary attitude toward the powers that be, a fourth estate watchman role in democracy. They included Paul Steiger, Charles “Chuck” Lewis, Brant Houston, Sheila Coronel, Bill Buzenberg and Robert Rosenthal.

In 2006, Paul Steiger, then the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, was approached by billionaire couple Herbert and Marion Sandler who wanted to invest $10 million a year in an investigative reporting venture (Nocera, 2008). The approach led to the creation of ProPublica, a new notr-fo -profit investigative reporting organisation (see Chapter Six). Steiger retired from the Wall Street Journal in May 2007, and in 2008 became ProPublica’s founding editor-in-chief, CEO and president. He was also executive chairman of the organisation’s board of directors. The Sandlers’ investment and Steiger’s unusual move to the then relatively obscure field of non-profit investigative reporting, occurred in the same year as Robert Rosenthal moved to the Center for Investigative Reporting. Newspapers were shedding hundreds of journalists and several had closed their doors. These shifts to the non-profit sector signalled what was rapidly to become a growing trend: the creation of philanthropically funded organisations dedicated to quality investigative journalism led by former legacy players.

Steiger’s move to ProPublica attracted industry attention and publicity because of his status in the broader journalistic field. The Wall Street Journal won 16 Pulitzer Prizes during his 15 years as managing editor; he chaired the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press freedom advocacy group with a high-profile board; and he was a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which was the biggest philanthropic funder of journalism in the United States. Steiger appointed Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of the Oregonian who had been an investigative editor on the New York Times, as ProPublica’s managing editor and employed Richard Tofel, a former assistant publisher of the Wall Street Journal, as general manager. ProPublica established a high profile by “hiring the kind of staff who reap awards and make foundations happy” (Walton, 2010a, p. 87).

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Bill Buzenberg was vice president of news for NPR when it was announced in 2007 that he would become the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity. The centre was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis after he resigned as a senior producer to 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace. After 2007, mainstream editors and reporters were also involved in creating smaller state-focused non-profit reporting centres. Andy Hall, the executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, was a print journalist for 26 years at the Wisconsin State Journal and the Arizona Republic (Wisconsin Watch, 2013); Evan Smith, the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune was a former editor and president of the Texas Monthly (Texas Tribune, 2013a); Joel Kramer, the CEO and editor of MinnPost was a publisher and president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. When Wall Street analyst Neil Barsky appointed former high-profile New York Times editor Bill Keller to head the Marshall Project, a non- profit site reporting on criminal justice issues, media and potential funders “suddenly took notice” (Calderone, 2014, para. 5). “I think Bill (Keller) is a person of unquestionable integrity, and any organisation he is going to be in charge of is one in which I would have a great deal of confidence”, a former legacy editor said (Funt, 2015, para. 5).

These are a small number of examples but I found a similar pattern in a selective analysis of the websites of the United States’ non-profit investigative news organisations. Former mainstream journalists also established non-profit centres based at or with links to universities: Charles Lewis founded the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University; Florence Graves, an investigative reporter and founder in the 1980s of Common Cause magazine, started the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University; Sheila Coronel, a senior investigative reporter and editor in the Philippines, was appointed director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University in New York; and Joe Bergantino, executive director and managing editor of the Boston University-affiliated New England Center for Investigative Reporting, had been a multi-award-winning television reporter for 35 years (New England Center for Investigative Reporting, 2013).

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Table 3.1. Non-profit board membership and former legacy media employer

Name Nonprofit Former employer Paul Steiger Board of Directors . Wall Street Journal . ProPublica Charles Lewis Board of Directors . ABC News . Institute for Nonprofit News . 60 Minutes . Investigative Newsource . Center for Public Integrity . Open Secrets . Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting . Center for Public Integrity Advisory Board . Sunlight . New England Center for Investigative Reporting Brant Houston Board of Directors . Kansas City Star . Global Investigative Journalism . Hartford Courant Network . Investigative Reporters and . InvestigateWest Editors . Investigative Newsource . Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting . Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting . Institute for Nonprofit News Advisory Board . Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism . Broward (now Florida) Bulldog . New England Center for Investigative Reporting Sheila Coronel Board of Directors . Philippine Panorama . Toni Stabile Center for . Manila Times Investigative Journalism . Manila Chronicle Advisory Board . Philippine Center for . 100 Reporters Investigative Journalism . ProPublica . Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting Source: https://www.propublica.org/about/leadership/; https://1l9nh32zekco14afdq2plfsw-wpengine. netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/annualreport-2.pdf; http://inewsource.org/about/#board; https://www.opensecrets.org/about/board.php; http://wisconsinwatch.org/about/the-board/; https://sunlightfoundation.com/about/board/; http://www.american.edu/soc/faculty/charlesl.cfm; http://www.american.edu/uploads/docs/7.27.14CharlesLewisCV.pdf; https://www.linkedin.com/in/brant- houston-b868978; http://eyeonohio.org/people/; http://www.floridabulldog.org/about/board-of-advisors/; http://eye.necir.org/about/journalism-advisory-board/; https://journalism.columbia.edu/faculty/sheila- coronel; https://100r.org/about/advisory-board/.

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Augmenting the influence of high-profile mainstream media players in the non-profit subfield was their membership on non-profit organisation boards and advisory committees. Their former mainstream media careers and membership on non-profit investigative boards is shown in Table 3.1 above. The table is based on data I collected from the websites of non-profit investigative centres, which was then entered and analysed on an Excel spreadsheet. It should be noted that the composition of some of the boards has changed since the table was compiled. Table 3.1 shows that former journalists who had moved to university journalism programs had the highest levels of multiple non-profit board membership. The table, together with information from my interviews and reading, demonstrates how the connections and relationships between a few players rich in cultural capital can influence a field’s game.13 In Bourdieu’s terms, they represent individuals with forms of capital that allow them “to wield a power, an influence … in the field under consideration instead of being considered a negligible entity” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98).

Table 3.1 shows that journalist Brant Houston was on the board of six non-profit organisations and three non-profit centre advisory boards. Houston was a print investigative reporter for 17 years and then spent a total of 14 years as managing director and executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a membership organisation for investigative reporters. Investigative Reporters and Editors organises annual conferences attended by hundreds of investigative reporters and conducts regular skills boot camps. The key leadership position gave Houston access to the United States’ leading watchdog reporters, as well as a global network through conferences and speaking engagements. Houston was appointed the Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Knight chair holders are journalists who “inspire excellence; collaborators who reach out and innovate; catalysts around whom

13 I examined the membership of 42 boards and 20 advisory boards of non-profit organisations that described themselves as investigative and were members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. There were a total of 420 board members and 199 advisory board members.

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universities can build expanded programs; visionaries who strive to improve American journalism” (Center for Journalism Ethics, n.d., para. 5).

Charles Lewis, who founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989, was a member of five boards and two advisory boards (see Chapter Six on his role in establishing the Center for Public Integrity). Lewis moved to the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. in 2006 where he established the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Houston and Lewis both sat on the boards of the Investigative Newsource, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting, and the non-profit investigative centre membership organisation, the Institute for Nonprofit News, which they founded. They were also on the advisory board of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.

Sheila Coronel, a former newspaper reporter in the Philippines and a founder of the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism was on three advisory boards – including the Wisconsin Centre for Investigative Reporting with Houston and Lewis – and was a member of the investigative faculty board at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School where she taught professional practice in investigative journalism. Houston, Lewis and Coronel were on a steering committee formed at a meeting of non-profit centre executives to establish the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News; see Chapter Five). The Institute for Nonprofit News played a critical role in establishing an ethical conduct code for non-profit investigative reporting organisations. It provided technical, legal, structural and administrative advice to journalists seeking to establish non-profit centres. The Institute for Nonprofit News now has a membership of more than 100 US non-profit organisations. Present also on the steering committee to establish the institute was Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, and Robert Rosenthal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

These six individuals, each with a long background in mainstream print or broadcast journalism, had high levels of cultural capital, insider knowledge and connections with both legacy editors and foundation program directors. Their high regard in the fields of journalism and non-profit investigative journalism enabled them to influence the non- profit field through activities such as the creation of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

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This chapter examines the role these and other leaders in the non-profit subfield played in transforming a journalistic culture that once was extremely wary of publishing investigations by external agents. They were able to convince foundations to support them financially. In doing so, they also transformed the traditional practice of separating the business and editorial divisions of news organisations.

Journalistic and economic capital

For almost a century, an uneasy relationship has existed between the news and business divisions of media companies. Journalism may have been a “cultural enterprise lodged inside a business enterprise” (Daly, 2012, p. ix) but the values of journalists at times clashed with those of publishers and media proprietors. These episodes typically manifested in conflicts over sponsored stories, advertising sections that looked similar to news pages and pressure on editors to run particular stories. In response to these, journalists established independence committees and charters that sought to maintain a firewall between editorial decision making and management’s business operations (Chadwick, 1991).

For the leaders of the United States’ not-for-profit investigative reporting organisations, the separation of journalism and business by necessity had to give way. Some non-profit executives had partnered with wealthy benefactors and others found themselves spending increasing amounts of time meeting with and pitching to foundations rather than doing journalism. Non-profit executive directors and journalists understood that philanthropic start-up funding would not last and that new funders and revenue sources had to be found. Seventy-five per cent of non-profit organisations registered in the United States collapsed in their first year, commonly due to insufficient capital, poor diversification of funding and poor management (Osder, 2012).

An analysis in 2012 of non-profit news publishers found that while 15 new centres had been created since 2010, the operating budgets of 26 organisations had remained the same and had decreased in eight others (C. Lewis, Butts, & Musselwhite, 2012). In other words, more than half of the 60 non-profit centres examined were unable to attract additional funding. At least 10 of the organisations had annual budgets of less than $100,000 and four had just one or two employees. Another survey found that two-thirds

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of the 172 non-profit news organisations that responded said they were created with a start-up grant that had accounted for at least one-third of their funding. But fewer than 30 per cent of those original grants were renewed to any degree. There was a “near- constant need to replenish expiring grants and drum up new sources of funding”, the survey by the Pew Research Centre said (A. Mitchell et al., 2013, p. 11).

The Center for Public Integrity’s Bill Buzenberg estimated that in 2010 he pitched to almost 90 foundations for funding (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, November 11, 2010). Robert Rosenthal at the Center for Investigative Reporting felt the stress of having to find money to keep staff employed: “I have to bring in the money, and the money in our model, 95 per cent plus ... comes from foundations, and the foundations want to all deal with me” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2012). The contrast with his former role as a newspaper editor was telling: as an editor he “never had to worry about raising a dime” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 1). Non -profit leaders also had to keep a rein on spending. “We always want to go the next mile to pin down a crucial fact or get a pivotal interview. But non-profit news organisations typically operate on tight margins. So every team has to have a Dr. No, someone with the clout and the disposition to lock up the cheque book at dangerous moments” (Steiger, 2015, para. 42).

Professor Robert Picard, a leading media economist, said that journalists who established new enterprises often were content to have little say on strategy or business matters (Picard, 2010b). This attitude made it impossible to create sustainable news organisations. He urged journalists to take responsibility for ensuring that revenues were sufficient to carry out high-quality journalism. My interviews with successful non-profit investigative centre leaders left no doubt that they were acutely aware of the need to make their centres financially sustainable. Their capacity to raise funding from foundations initially hinged on their journalistic reputations, their ability to find common cause with foundations and the relationships they established with foundation program directors.

During the height of the financial crisis, Amy Dominguez-Arms, the director of the James Irvine Foundation’s California Democracy program, became increasingly concerned at what she saw as the diminishing capacity of the media to undertake serious

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journalism. The media’s demise, she believed, was at odds with her program’s goal of improving political decisions by making them more open, transparent, inclusive and accountable. Dominguez-Arms met several senior media executives who shared her concerns but were unable to offer solutions (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, January 1, 2012). A colleague suggested she meet Robert Rosenthal, then recently appointed as executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Rosenthal’s social and symbolic capital in journalism immediately caught her attention. Dominguez-Arms said that Rosenthal’s journalistic reputation was huge. She recalled meeting him: “He was very clear on what a strategy might be, and we had the sense that he had both the relationships in the fields, the credibility in the field, and the leadership skills to carry it out” (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, January 1, 2012). The timing proved fortuitous because Rosenthal was keen to expand coverage of local issues. The James Irvine Foundation donated a larger than average grant of almost $2 million to Rosenthal’s Center for Investigative Reporting over several years to fund the launch and operation of California Watch, a local news and investigative website.

Philanthropic foundation program directors operate in a manner that is not dissimilar to that of journalists: they develop contacts, research the field and are drawn to those with high industry profiles. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was founded in 1940, three years after the James Irvine Foundation. Its mission was to advance “social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world” (Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 2007b). Benjamin Shute directed the foundation’s Democratic Practice program. When he was exploring how accountability reporting might be strengthened, he turned to leaders in the non-profit subfield such as Charles Lewis and Bill Buzenberg for advice rather than commissioning an outside report (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2013). Shute attended a symposium with Lewis and continued to build connections in an effort to gain a better understanding of how best to support investigative reporting ventures. In 2009, his foundation made available its Pocantico conference venue, north of Manhattan, to a meeting of 27 non-profit investigative groups that met and created the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News). Soon after, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund provided general support to Lewis’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting. “Some people say you find the stars and you back

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them. Well, that is some of what we do, but you also want to make sure that the stars are operating with some substance behind them” (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2013). When program director at the Chicago-based Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Sunny Fischer, sought to expand her foundation’s customary funding of the arts, built environment and open space causes to journalism, she began by talking to other funders and reporters. One of the first donations she made was to the Center for Investigative Reporting. Asked about the criteria she had used in deciding to support the centre, she said she had examined the organisation’s management, its people, as well as the strength and timeliness of its content (S. Fischer, personal communication, February 16, 2012).

Close relations between foundation program directors and non-profit executive directors could result in a greater likelihood of on- going funding. The MacArthur Foundation in 2012 donated $9.5 million to media organisations. Its vice president, Media, Culture, and Special Initiatives, Elspeth Revere, said: “We support Chuck [Charles Lewis], whatever he does” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Revere said the foundation admired the journalism, leadership and distribution networks of the big non -profit centres and had a close relationship with the people running them. “... we know them, they know each other and ... if there is somebody new on the block, like INN [Institute for Nonprofit News], somebody I know introduces them to me and so on” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Similarly, the Open Society Foundations, founded by multi-billionaire hedge fund magnate George Soros, supported California Watch because it believed Rosenthal to be the most creative thinker about the future of quality journalism (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).

Journalistic capital, values and funding

The funding capabilities of the three most successful investigative reporting non-profit organisations in the United States, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity – each profiled in Chapter Six – were vastly superior to the majority of other US non-profit news organisations. Managed by former managing editors of respected mainstream media and with budgets big enough to employ professional fundraisers, these organisations established close connections with

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the biggest philanthropic funders of journalism. In contrast, Mc Nelly Torres, the co- founder of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, had to focus on cultivating relationships with small local community foundations that typically supported schools, environmental initiatives, disaster relief and so on. “The chances of us getting a grant from the national foundations are one to a million. You know, they usually go ProPublica, CPI [Center for Public Integrity], California Watch, or whatever ...” (M. Torres, personal communication, February 6, 2012). The centre she co-founded employed two or three staff, with reporters contributing on a casual basis. Torres likened non-profit media to the mainstream world in which there were large organisations and small ones. “The big guys are always on top ... so the little guys always struggle. I don’t think I have the skills that the Roseys [Rosenthal] and the Brant Houstons of the world have which are great skills, they really know how to raise money. And I’m not there yet. I’ve got to take it day by day, that’s all I can do” (M. Torres, personal communication, February 6, 2012).

Like all fields of activity, the non-profit subfield is competitive with the players – the non-profit centres and their staff – possessing varying amounts of economic and cultural power in relation to each other, their relations with funders, and their contacts and networks in the mainstream media. “... within a field, there is competition for legitimate appropriation of what is at stake” (Neveu & Benson, 2005, p. 44). In hierarchical terms, the large, nationally focused investigative centres had considerable power to determine what happened in the field and to attract more resources. They dominated the field because of the close relationships and significant funding they attracted from large donors. In the eyes of foundations, these organisations had credibility, impact and a record of producing high quality journalism. While small non-profit organisations could take a proposal to a foundation and ask for money, bigger centres simply pointed to their previous stories: ‘we are doing this, and if you give us money, we can continue to do this’, which was “a much stronger argument”, said the Institute for Nonprofit News’s Kevin Davis14 (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

Meanwhile journalists like Torres who were newspaper beat reporters rather than senior managing editors and who started their own state-based non-profit centres without the

14 Kevin Davis left the organisation in April 2015.

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backing of wealthy individuals – Torres called them “sugar daddies” – operated predominantly on “sweat equity, heart and hope” (C. Lewis et al., 2012, para. 6). Torres and other non-profit leaders accepted that fundraising was a core responsibility but some journalists found that it clashed with their core beliefs about independent journalism, formed by years of socialisation in newsroom culture.

Business theorists describe formational myopia as a condition that occurs when previous knowledge, experience, and practice influences new activities in ways that limit innovation and change (Naldi & Picard, 2012). When television developed, for example, those previously in radio treated it as live radio with pictures. Radio news initially was based on the reading of newspaper or wire service headlines. “... formational myopia will be expected to influence the initial thinking and choices of those establishing online news start-ups and create additional challenges to their success” (Naldi & Picard, 2012, p. 77). Many of the journalists who had moved to the non-profit field were frustrated by their lack of business training (Nee, 2013). Several found the task of fundraising to be distasteful. Former Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter on the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rick Tulsky, was the managing editor of the Center for Investigative Reporting in the early 1990s. He felt uneasy ethically about asking for money: “I couldn’t get it out of my head that it felt like, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, going to a car dealer and saying, ‘What stories would you support?’ Which, we’d never do” (Enda, 2012, para. 54). Even Charles Lewis, who raised almost $40 million from foundations, acknowledged that it was not a pleasant thing to do (Enda, 2012). James O’Shea, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and editor of the Los Angeles Times became sceptical of the non-profit model and closed the Chicago News Cooperative two years after he founded it. Despite attracting foundation support, forging a collaborative agreement with the New York Times and attempting to diversify the organisation’s revenue streams, O’Shea found it difficult to sell the idea of non-profit journalism to funders (Enda, 2012).

The challenge faced by former legacy journalists in having to raise funds was recognised by the biggest foundation supporting journalism, the Knight Foundation. Its director of media innovation John Bracken said: “For better or for worse ... they are journalists and that's what they do, they are not start-up guys” (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Robert Rosenthal was frustrated that he still had to

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convince foundations to fund the Center for Investigative Reporting despite its many successes: “The hardest thing for me is pulling on my boots in the morning and saying ‘geez I have to go out and raise money’ ... don’t these people know we can do it, just give us the money. Honestly, I don’t have the time I’d like to be more involved in editorial” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010).

Apart from fundraising, non-profit editors had to diversify and create new revenue streams, pitch stories to other media, locate and pay for office accommodation, find pro bono lawyers, manage salaries and staff entitlements, deal with banking and taxation issues and face a myriad of other administrative tasks. As they began to look more like publishers than reporters, founding executive directors, CEOs and editors-in-chief who could afford it hired editors to run journalistic projects and professional fundraisers to assist them in finding new money. Most had started trying to do both the business and editorial jobs before realising they could not manage the two roles adequately. Smaller non-profit organisations could not afford to split the roles and journalists like Mc Nelly Torres in Florida had to both raise money and do the journalism, even though she was less comfortable on the business side (M. Torres, personal communication, February 6, 2012).

At both big and smaller centres, journalist founders took on managerial responsibilities, despite their frustration at not being able to spend more time on editorial tasks. No longer could they do the journalism in the knowledge that a publisher would take the angry calls or worry about keeping the doors open. The more they took on those roles, the more they began to understand and experience the pressures and problems of their former newspaper employers. Two of the big non-profit organisations profiled in Chapter Six at various times had to cut substantial numbers of staff. To survive financially, non-profit executives bypassed the traditional “church and state” separation that once existed in newsrooms and openly dealt both with stories and funders. The separation of editorial and advertising in any event had blurred in the broader journalistic field due to economic pressures and the advance of native advertising and sponsored content online (Benton, 2014; G. Mitchell, 1999; Pompilio, 2009).15

15 See Chapter Seven on editorial firewalls.

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Foundations, impact and independence

Philanthropic foundations funded serious journalism for two reasons that frequently overlapped: first, they supported projects that related to an area of their specific interest or mission, such as climate change or a health-related issue; and second, they funded organisations they believed contributed to a more robust democracy. My research and interviews with funders suggest that foundations did not support investigative journalism per se. No foundation program director said that they supported watchdog journalism for its own sake; mostly they said they supported investigative non-profit organisations because of their concern for US democracy. Chapter Four of this thesis will explore in more detail what foundations expected in return for their donations, and Chapter Seven will examine some of the ethical issues raised by foundation funding. One outcome that both foundations and non-profit organisations wanted was for the funded stories to have a significant impact. Neither foundations nor the national non- profit organisations viewed non-profit centre websites as the sole destination for important investigative projects. Foundations knew that if they supported the investigative journalism of ProPublica, the stories they funded would have a good chance of being published in the Washington Post – like Sebastian Rotella’s Mumbai story – or the New York Times, NPR, Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) Frontline and other esteemed media (see Chapter Four for measurements of story impact).

Behind this understanding is a complex set of interrelationships between the economic, journalistic and non-profit fields that depends to a large extent on the reputations and standings of those leading the non-profit news houses. Funders were aware that the backgrounds and the relationships that leaders like Rosenthal, Steiger, Lewis and Buzenberg had with senior executives and editors in the mainstream media would increase the likelihood not only of a widespread distribution of the stories they funded but also a political response to those stories. Politicians, high-profile businessmen and prominent figures would be under much greater pressure to respond to stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times than those published only on an investigative website because of the histories and embedded cultural capital of those organisations. Publication in prestigious legacy media also created greater opportunities for follow-up stories and agenda setting.

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Foundations closely examined the impact of the journalism they funded. They may have wanted a specific outcome – though sometimes simply making an issue public was enough – but whatever the result, they wanted to know and they used the information when considering further grants. “We actually look and see, okay, were laws changed, were hearings held, was there an outcry, was there action taken”, Clark Bell, the journalism program director of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, said (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). The Knight Foundation’s director of media innovation John Bracken agreed: “Impact is really where we come at” (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 1, 2012). Non-profit centres, in turn, understood what their funders wanted: “... our funders want audience, they want impact”, Rosenthal said (Rosenthal, 2012b). Foundation program directors were drawn to the fact that California Watch had hundreds of publishing agreements with local and national partners, and that the Center for Public Integrity’s work could be published by some of the organisation’s 50 legacy media partners. One charitable foundation director said: “What I do admire about ProPublica is their ability to collaborate with the New York Times, (and) with the major television networks, to get the stories out there” (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012). Dominguez-Arms expected California Watch would provide substantive coverage of significant local issues and disseminate its stories widely (Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, January 1, 2012).

Winning over philanthropic funders was only part of the challenge faced by senior non- profit executives. They also had to retain or gain the respect of legacy editors for their stories to be published in mainstream outlets. What that meant was that non-profit organisations could not be seen to be influenced or held captive by their funders.

Independence is a long-standing principle in journalism (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007). US journalists supported a market-oriented media but were fiercely independent and most newsrooms “tolerate, and the better ones encourage, the kind of watchdog journalism that invariably conflicts with, even challenges, the property interests of owners, advertisers and others” (Glasser & Gunther, 2005, p. 394). Mainstream journalists were naturally suspicious and sceptical about stories that were funded by foundations, whose agendas often are opaque. Suspicion that a foundation had directed, influenced or interfered with the editorial processes of investigative stories could

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prevent publication in serious media, which were alert to outside influence despite the widespread use of public relations-initiated stories in their news pages. “The wariness of journalists has valid historical basis. Paper and ink are powerful tools”, Philip Meyer observed (Meyer, 2004, p. 224).

Legacy editors were comfortable dealing with non-profit leaders who were just like them when it came to newsroom habitus and convention. Foundation directors understood the dynamics of that relationship. One non-profit editor said: “They (foundations) understand that for us to be successful, for us to work with major media like the BBC and the Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald, we have to be independent” (D. Kaplan, personal communication, November 10, 2010).

Collaborations between legacy and non-profit media

Newspapers adapted to a challenging environment shaped by the financial crisis and the internet in a variety of ways: they cut staff and closed bureaus, established paywalls and other revenue systems, and hired younger, digitally proficient journalists. They focused on local news coverage and remained committed to publishing accountability stories. Another development was that newspapers and some broadcasters formed partnerships with other newsrooms. I could not find any analysis that quantified the number of collaborative arrangements, but the trend was noted in my interviews by Robert Rosenthal, Charles Lewis, Bill Buzenberg, Brant Houston and Kevin Davis.

Media business analyst Rick Edmonds and journalism researcher Amy Mitchell found that legacy media were “looking more than ever for ways to augment what they can produce with a depleted staff, and news start-ups are eager to place their work before a wider audience and figure out roads to sustainability” (Edmonds & Mitchell, 2014, para. 1). Leonard Downie and Michael Schudson found a “growing number of newspapers” were supplementing their reduced resources by collaborating with other newspapers, new kinds of news organisations, and their own readers (Downie & Schudson, 2009, para. 46). Media commentators found “journalism partnerships emerging around the country” with a variety of collaborations involving commercial news organisations, non-profit organisations, public media, universities, public interest groups and communities or audiences (Stearns, 2012, para. 1). “Collaborations spread quickly,

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giving stories a broader reach” (Houston, 2010a). Newspapers across the US were “cutting information sharing deals on an unprecedented level” (Ricchiardi, 2009, para. 6). Partnerships between for-profit and non-profit media were becoming commonplace, a report for the Knight Foundation found (University of California, 2012). Previously, newspapers competed to survive. Survival now, due to economic and technological forces, depended on cooperation and a sense of common public obligation (Schudson, 2003, p. 214). Recent academic research suggested that cooperative arrangements between non-profit centres and newsrooms were becoming institutionalised and that the trend had emerged from an effort to “repair the field of journalism” (Graves & Konieczna, 2015, p. 1967). The authors defined field repair as consisting of “self- conscious efforts to respond to the ongoing crisis in journalism – directly, by providing the kinds of public affairs coverage seen to be lacking, and indirectly, through institution-building meant to promote such coverage in the news industry as a whole” (Graves & Konieczna, 2015, p. 1968).

The collaborations were noticed by the public relations industry. Howard Opinsky, executive vice president of the US East Region and head of the US corporate practice at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, said he received calls every week from clients concerned about having been contacted by a non-profit news outlet. Clients had to realise that just because it was not the New York Times or 60 Minutes, it did not mean the stories would not receive widespread coverage. “They will either push out the article themselves via social media, enter into an agreement with a mainstream news organisation to co-own the investigation, pitch coverage to mainstream media like in the old days, or do all three of those things” he said (Daniels, 2015, para. 10).

Collaborations and journalistic practice

For newspapers and journalists, collaborations represented a significant cultural departure from long-held conventions of competing with other media, gaining prestige through scoops and not publishing externally produced stories unless commissioned, bought under licence or specifically negotiated. Those conventions made journalists sceptical about collaborating with other professionals – let alone non-professionals – in investigative stories because the old “heroic model of the lone reporter still dominates newsrooms” (Rowe, 2011, p. 5). One in five reporters responding to a survey said they

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were somewhat or very uncomfortable about partnering with a non-profit and several expressed concerns about the quality and the funding of non-profit stories (Kaplan, 2008). When he was the executive editor of the New York Times before moving to the non-profit subfield, Bill Keller said he would be open to using work from an outside source if he were confident of its quality but added that “we’ll always have a preference for work we can vouch for ourselves” (Perez-Pena, 2007, para. 15).

Legacy editors understood the damage that could result from the intrusion of compromising interests in stories and steered away from trusting work produced outside of their newsrooms. “Control and protection are baked into investigative journalism. And in competitive regional markets, there’s no history of collaboration to fall back on” (Rowe, 2011, p. 25). The stakes for mainstream publishers were high. By publishing non-profit stories, they were placing their mastheads – symbolic of their reputation and credibility – on external content, thereby endorsing the journalism (E. Larrubia, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Mistakes could be costly for both legacy and non-profit organisations. Errors were found in two of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s first three stories. Andy Hall, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s founder, realised that his organisation’s credibility was at stake and implemented a strict system of checking every fact in every story (Gibson, 2010). Hall was aware that his organisation was dependent on distribution partnerships for its reputation and survival (Rowe, 2011).

Wariness by mainstream journalists was understandable when one looks at the process of checking and editing an investigative story. Agreement between commercial and non- profit organisations had to be reached on how the story would be fact checked, how it would be reported, whether mainstream editors would be able to talk to, question and push non-profit reporters or even approach their sources. “There was a time when they [mainstream editors] would have been very reluctant to run the work of others. And there are still journalistic issues with that … it’s tricky, and it’s all built on relationships,” Evelyn Larrubia from the Institute for Nonprofit News said (E. Larrubia, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Former investigative editor with the Boston Globe Tom Farragher said editors needed to see the sausage as it was being made to ensure that corners were not cut (T. Farragher, personal communication, February 25, 2015). Trusting relationships were crucial. Farragher said that on one

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occasion he had felt more comfortable dealing with a non-profit news organisation when he discovered that a former Globe reporter had moved there. “We don’t have to stare at the ceiling at night wondering if they’re going to screw things up” (T. Farragher, personal communication, February 25, 2014).

Collaborations between mainstream media and non-profit investigative journalism organisations occurred because editors in both fields shared habitus and doxa based on what Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel called the “elements of journalism” (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007, pp. 12–13). These included the discipline of verification, independence, obligations to truth, monitoring power and so on. After he moved from the New York Times to the non-profit Marshall Project, Bill Keller said: “We’re not offering loaded stories or polemical screeds about the state of the criminal justice system. We’re offering reported pieces with the kind of discipline and scepticism that a place like the New York Times would expect. There are lots of pitfalls and dangers in this crazy landscape we live in now, but I don’t think partnering with more specialized news organizations is inherently problematic” (Funt, 2015, para. 9).

ProPublica’s reporter Sebastian Rotella spent 23 years at the Los Angeles Times and had been a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter before moving to ProPublica in 2010. He said good relations between editors and mutual respect for each other’s publications had made the process of publishing the Mumbai terrorist attack revelations in the Washington Post very smooth. ProPublica is a “very credible product, not like a blog or firing some screed across the bow” (S. Rotella, personal communication, March 16, 2013). “The traditional platform is important both for the readership and for the sort of seal of approval that you have for being run in something like the Washington Post. The Washington Post benefits … because of this contact they would not have otherwise had because people like ProPublica can go out and do these kind of investigations in a way that might be harder for others. So yes, it’s a mutual benefit” (S. Rotella, personal communication, March 16, 2013).

As executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer between 1998 and 2002, Robert Rosenthal had opposed collaborations with other news groups because “it was just too difficult to do” (Francisco, Lenhoff, & Schudson, 2012, p. 2679). His opinion changed when he led the Chauncey Bailey project (Chauncey Bailey Project, 2007) and

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witnessed journalists working together under a common editor and with a common purpose (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). Later, as executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting and having created California Watch in 2009, he and his senior editors started calling their contacts in mainstream media to see whether they would run the non-profit’s stories. “Personal relationships mattered. We each could get editors to respond to us nearly all of the time … As we all came from traditional news organisations we were sensitive to the needs and issues of these newsrooms whose editors we were contacting”, Rosenthal later wrote (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 11). Today, with 25 major media groups and hundreds of smaller outlets as partners, he said the Center for Investigative Reporting was “promiscuous when it comes to collaborations” (Francisco et al., 2012, p. 2679). He was surprised how the need for exclusivity had given way, with editors willing to share a good story rather than cede it to their competitors (Rosenthal, 2011).

Former 60 Minutes producer Charles Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989 and has since established other investigative non-profit organisations. When he opened the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a university-based reporting centre in Washington in 2009, he found the established media were enthusiastic about running the workshop’s stories: “... we have to tell them to go away ... we have more than we can deal with. It’s slightly amusing on one level and slightly depressing on another. They are desperately seeking content because they have eviscerated their newsrooms” (Birnbauer, 2011, p. 30). The non-profit model rejected “cutthroat competition in favor of collaboration”, he said (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 12).

Investigative centres were effusive about their collaborations on their websites, and listed the organisations they had collaborated with or that had published their stories. For them, collaborations with legacy publishers meant greater distribution of their stories and an informal tick to the credibility and worth of their stories. ProPublica said it had 104 publishing partners; the Center for Investigative Reporting said it had more than 300 news outlets (Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d.-a; ProPublica, n.d.-a). Its Reveal website publicised its collaborations in media releases: “The Center for Investigative Reporting and CNN find widespread fraud in America’s largest Medicaid program’, ‘CIR, FRONTLINE and Univision uncover sexual assault of migrant

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farmworkers in the U.S.” and “Tampa Bay Times, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and CNN uncover America’s worst charities” (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014b).

Models of collaboration

In late 2008, the Nation magazine and ProPublica published two stories by investigative reporter A.C. Thompson: one described how police had incinerated a car in which a wounded African American who had been shot by police had died. The second story recounted the shooting of an African American in a white enclave where residents had formed an armed version of Neighbourhood Watch soon after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Birnbauer, 2013). Thompson had started his investigation with funding from the Nation Institute and was able to continue the project after joining ProPublica. He was aware of more shootings following the hurricane – 11 in total – and wanted to investigate them all. A producer from PBS’s Frontline program joined him with the idea of making web videos to accompany the stories, and possibly a television documentary later. The local New Orleans newspaper, the Times Picayune, approached them soon after (A.C. Thompson, personal communication, November 11, 2010). Key editors met and agreement was reached quickly for the Times Picayune to provide two or three reporters to a joint project that would examine the shootings in detail.

Thompson recalled that the atmosphere among the reporters at first was “a little weird and uncomfortable”, but that did not last long. All were experienced at their jobs and shared a similar culture. “We really clicked because we were coming from the same place, we had the same bad jokes, we had the same bad attitude sometimes, and so I think that was what really made it happen” (A.C. Thompson, personal communication, November 11, 2010). A challenge they encountered was that Thompson and the Frontline producer, Tom Jennings, worked full time on the project while the newspaper reporters had less time and other obligations. However, publication was coordinated across the Times Picayune, ProPublica and Frontline. The reporting partnership continued as police were charged, processed through the courts, appealed, civil prosecutions launched and federal and state law probes conducted. The Law and Disorder series on ProPublica’s website in late 2015 carried more than 60 stories (ProPublica, n.d.-b).

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Thompson told me the collaboration had worked informally in that there was no contract or document setting out what everyone would contribute. In hindsight, a more formal arrangement might have been better with everyone’s responsibilities laid out and a designated editor appointed to run it. “When you start doing a project with five different reporters … I think sometimes it's good to hash things out formally and have a project manager who is like, ‘hey, I’m overseeing this, we have print stories going on here, we have multimedia charts, we have video, I’m going to be the person that makes sure this all gets done’” (A.C. Thompson, personal communication, November 11, 2010).

The Law and Disorder partnership lasted longer than most but there was no set model of collaboration. Reporters from different media organisations could collaborate from the genesis of a project or, as with the Mumbai stories, there might be only basic editing of a non-profit story by commercial editors. In Oklahoma, local rival newspapers, the Oklahoman and Tulsa World, together with the Oklahoma Press Association, a commercial television station, a public radio station and the journalism department at the University of Oklahoma created a partnership in 2010 to launch Oklahoma Watch. The investigative organisation was funded by a local community foundation, the Knight Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. The editor, a 35- year print veteran, said, “I haven’t seen anything like this since I’ve been in journalism” (Rowe, 2011, p. 13). In Ohio, eight newspapers agreed to share state, business, sports, arts, and entertainment news reporting, various features, editorials, photographs, and graphics, while working independently and competitively on enterprise and investigative stories (Downie & Schudson, 2009).

The Institute for Nonprofit News estimated in 2012 that there were almost 1000 collaborative agreements between its 100 members and news media (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). The New York Times used non-profit organisations (Texas Tribune, Bay Citizen and Chicago News Cooperative) to produce pages of local content for its state editions. Non-profit centres also collaborated with other non-profit organisations: ProPublica and the New Orleans-based non-profit, the Lens, in 2014 produced an online multimedia project about Louisiana’s disappearing coastline (Marshall, Jacobs, & Shaw, 2014). The Marshall Project and ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize for their joint reporting project about a failed police investigation into a rape (The

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Marshall Project, 2016). As well, distribution deals were signed by Thomson Reuters and Associated Press to distribute non-profit centre stories to their subscribers (Thomson Reuters, 2011; Tofel, 2009).

Collaborations often involved stories that the legacy media, due to resource constraints or lack of investigative specialist reporters could not produce or could deliver only every few years. An example was a story that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and was researched and written by journalist Sheri Fink. It was published in both the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica’s website (Fink, 2009). Fink spent two and a half years researching “Deadly Choices at Memorial”, a harrowing narrative of mercy killings at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Birnbauer, 2011).

Fink interviewed 140 people. It is difficult to envisage a legacy media organisation devoting such resources to a project, even in what some regard as the financially golden period between 1970 and 1990 (Picard, 2010c, p. 374). A rough estimate of the cost of researching, writing, editing and securing the legal status of the article was up to $400,000 (Jeffery, 2009). Another example was the “On shaky ground” series, produced over 19 months by California Watch and published in 30 Californian media outlets (California Watch, 2011) (see Chapter Six). Some of the biggest collaborations have been global. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists coordinates journalists around the world who work cooperatively on joint investigations. Its “Swiss Leaks” project about the activities of the HSBC financial institution involved 170 reporters from 65 media organisations and the stories were published almost simultaneously in 56 countries (Buzenberg, 2015).16

Organisational partnerships also formed between public broadcasters and non-profit investigative centres. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting merged with public television and radio broadcaster, WGBH News, in 2013 and moved its newsroom to the broadcaster’s studios (DeLench, 2013). The St Louis Beacon in 2014 merged with St Louis Public Radio in what was described as a logical move given their shared journalistic missions. San Diego’s inewsource’s primary partner became KPBS public

16 In 2016, the Consortium’s Panama Papers project involved more than 100 media partners (The Panama Papers, 2016).

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media and the Rocky Mountain PBS merged with the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network (Schreibstein, 2014). The Center for Investigative Reporting produced documentaries for PBS from its earliest days and the Investigative Reporting Workshop had a Frontline producer located in its office at American University. The Center for Investigative Reporting through its radio program, Reveal , and in partnership with PRX, a non-profit public radio program distributor, produced public radio’s first program dedicated to investigative reporting (The Center for Investigative Reporting, 2013).

Another example involved a collaboration between the economic, journalistic and higher education fields: the Washington Post and American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop jointly hired an investigative reporter using a $500,000 donation from the Ford Foundation. Under the agreement, the reporter would write for the Post, work as a senior editor for the workshop and become a faculty member of American University (C. Lewis, 2013a, 2013b).

A new paradigm involving cooperation and joint publication by legacy and non-profit media catered to the interests of both publishers and funders. The mainstream media published an additional number of important news stories, usually at no cost; non-profit organisations gained credibility by association with a legacy publisher and a significantly wider distribution of their stories, and in a few cases were paid for them, and foundations saw that their donations were having an impact and serving democratic processes. A former legacy editor regarded collaborations and partnerships as the “overlooked key for investigative journalism to thrive at the local and state levels” (Rowe, 2011, p. 4).

US journalism scholars developed a model that describes various degrees of collaboration between media (Dailey, Demo, & Spillman, 2005). The model, which they called the convergence continuum, provides a conceptual framework for collaboration, ranging from cross-promotion, cloning, coopetition, content sharing to convergence. Briefly, cross-promotion carries the least cooperation and involves referring to a partner’s story on a media platform. Cloning is the republication of a partner’s story with little editing; coopetition involves the organisations both competing and cooperating. For example, they may share information on stories they are working on but years of competition, cultural differences and mutual distrust limit the degree of

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cooperation. Content sharing has the partners meeting and exchanging ideas, sharing costs and independently publishing at the same time. Full convergence might involve a common assignment desk with a shared editor and cooperation in gathering and disseminating the news. Examples of convergence might include the recent mergers of non-profit organisations with public broadcasters and with various media working cooperatively on global projects notably under the auspices of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and in ventures such as the Arizona Project (Investigative Reporters and Editors, n.d.-b) and the Chauncey Bailey Project (Chauncey Bailey Project, 2007). My research suggests collaborations between non- profit and for-profit media involved primarily the cloning and content sharing categories. ProPublica’s Sebastian Rotella and his Mumbai terrorism series jointly published in the Washington Post and ProPublica might be described as cloning and a content sharing example of close partnering and shared reporting, could be the “Law & Disorder” series produced by ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, PBS’s Frontline and the New Orleans-based Times Picayune newspaper (ProPublica, n.d.-b).

Collaborations and outsourcing

No-one in the non-profit subfield that I interviewed agreed with the proposition that collaborations represented an outsourcing of investigative journalism by mainstream media, but in part it could be seen this way and was described as such in a number of reports (Birnbauer, 2012a, 2012b). A Federal Communications Commission report said that commercial media had outsourced civically valuable journalism to the non-profit sector, “creating a new bundle of sorts” (Waldman, 2011, p. 272). A Washington Post article noted that investigative reporting was “increasingly being outsourced” (Kurtz, 2010a, para. 4). In 2012, the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s investigative reporting program produced a report for the Knight Foundation entitled From outsourcing to innovation. The report explored ways of strengthening the partnerships between non-profit and commercial media (University of California, 2012).

The investigations editor of the Washington Post, Jeff Leen, compared the collaborative paradigm to that of Hollywood film studios. Like legacy newspapers, film studios once controlled everything, employing writers, actors, producers and designers. Now, the studios still made movies but there was a thriving pool of independent producers as well

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who worked with the studios. In line with the importance of personal, trusting relationships described earlier in this chapter, Leen noted the personal connection he had with journalists employed at non-profit investigative centres, many of whom were his friends and deeply admired journalists who had lost their mainstream jobs (Drew, 2010).

ProPublica’s general manager Richard Tofel told me the Washington Post had published about 10 ProPublica stories in 2010 but had done “a heck of a lot more” of its own investigations over that period. “I just don't think any of the editors or publishers that I know of are thinking about this in terms of outsourcing” (R. Tofel, personal communication, November 17, 2010). Journalist and non-profit centre founder Charles Lewis found the notion of outsourcing repugnant if it were taken to mean that organisations had stopped doing investigative stories themselves because they could get them more cheaply elsewhere (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010).

Conclusion

In this chapter we see application of the concepts associated with Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory: capital, habitus, doxa, the logic of the field, the game and so on (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The former legacy journalists who moved to the non-profit subfield possessed high levels of cultural capital, embedded understandings of journalistic convention and practice and understood the game – the requirements and interrelationships of the fields of journalism, economics and investigative non-profit sites. While high in social and symbolic capital, they would have to depend on others for economic capital. They moved from a field that had been severely disrupted by the technology and economic fields to one that was even more vulnerable to financial forces. To survive, they had to attract philanthropic funding. They needed to convince funders that their product – quality investigative journalism – was unavailable or in short supply in the mainstream field and that their stories would have wide circulation, impact and would enhance democracy. To achieve that, national and smaller state-based organisations needed collaborative partners in the mainstream field. Those that succeeded in establishing partnerships, did so because of their previous experience in the legacy media and their shared belief in professional journalistic practice and values. Their reputations in turn provided individual funders and foundations a high degree of

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confidence that their money would not be wasted on frivolous projects. Their ability to have non-profit stories published in mainstream media satisfied the funders’ desire for impact.

A small but influential group with high social capital in the journalistic field and the non-profit subfield, led by Charles Lewis, Brant Houston, Robert Rosenthal, Bill Buzenberg and Sheila Coronel played an important role in ensuring the credibility and therefore, the feasibility and sustainability, of the non-profit sector. They worked together to establish an association for non-profit organisations that gave its member organisations a stamp of journalistic credibility. Together with Paul Steiger, Bill Keller and others, they had achieved the highest or near-highest appointments in their respective legacy media before moving to the non-profit field and became its strongest advocates. Their journalistic capital dissolved some of the suspicion of non-profit journalism within the legacy media and helped to transform a long-standing journalistic convention. As a result, mainstream media increasingly supplemented its journalism with that of non-profit investigative reporting centres.

I identified the arrival of reputable legacy journalists as one of the three primary factors that expanded the non-profit subfield. The phenomenon acted like a bridge between the other key factors – the impacts of the financial crisis and the funding of non-profit organisations by philanthropic donations. The role played by the foundations is discussed in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 4: Foundations and non-profit investigative journalism

Introduction

The increase in the number of non-profit investigative reporting organisations in the United States between 2007 and 2015 could not have occurred without the funding provided by philanthropic foundations. The focus of this chapter is on the foundations that provided support to new and established non-profit investigative reporting centres. It examines the reasons that foundations supported non-profit organisations and the sustainability of such funding. It explores the amount of funding that foundations provided to the non-profit subfield and quantifies the funding of 15 leading non-profit investigative journalism organisations. First, the chapter explores the culture of giving in the United States, which differs from some other Western democracies.

The funding of foundations arguably was the most important of the three primary factors identified in the introduction of this thesis as driving the growth of non-profit investigative reporting. The other two were the impact of the financial crisis and the move of mainstream news executives to the non-profit field, both examined in previous chapters. Each of the three factors impacted on the other two. Foundations with programs to enhance democracy and accountability believed that the attributes of civil society and robust democracy were at risk due to the adverse impact of the financial crisis on legacy media organisations. I showed in the previous chapter that the move of executive editors with symbolic capital to the non-profit field created an environment in which foundation program directors could be confident that their donations would be handled by people of high journalistic reputation and substance. These editors had close links with the mainstream media that made it possible for a wider distribution and greater impact of non-profit stories.

The sustainability of foundation funding remains a major concern for non-profit organisations because foundations traditionally have not provided on-going, operational funding. Foundations generally donated to causes with upfront capacity-building grants

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or funded particular projects and often did not renew their support. My research found that several non-profit journalism sites closed after foundations withdrew their support. Media economist Robert Picard aptly warned that non-profit news organisations were “just as beholden to economic imperatives as commercial news organisations” (Picard, 2014, p. 502). Of interest to me was that several of the foundation program directors I interviewed said that they had been supporting non-profit news organisations such as NPR and investigative centres for many years and envisaged they would continue doing so.

I conducted semi-structured interviews with senior officials from eight US foundations that have donated to investigative reporting centres (see Table 4.1). The interviews were transcribed and a general inductive content analysis approach was used to identify categories of data and themes (Thomas, 2003, p. 24). I also drew on interviews with non-profit reporting centre staff, media scholars and interviews from two visits to the United States as well as texts and contemporary writings.

Table 4.1. Foundation program directors interviewed

Program director Foundation Amy Dominguez-Arms James Irvine Foundation Benjamin Shute Rockefeller Brothers Fund Clark Bell Robert R. McCormick Foundation Jack Fischera William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Sunny Fischer Richard H. Driehaus Foundation John Bracken Knight Foundation Lori McGlinchey Open Society Foundations Elspeth Revere John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Note: a Jack Fischer was a communications officer.

Foundations in the United States

Massive trusts with billions of dollars in holdings are a distinctively US institution. “No other civilisation has been designed by the imagination of its organized philanthropists to quite the same degree as the United States” (Dowie, 2001, p. xxii). Philanthropy was a major aspect of and key to US social and cultural development (Curti, 1957, as cited

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in Acs & Phillips, 2002). US foundations helped to shape medical research, health, university and other education, the arts and culture, religion, science, public affairs, the environment and many other areas that impacted on the lives of ordinary Americans. Foundations operated as private institutions that played an increasingly public role in US society (Dowie, 2001, p. 20) because many of the traditional roles of government in other democracies, such as welfare, health and education, had been privatised in the United States.

Some of today’s biggest philanthropic foundations were created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by industrialists looking to minimise tax and put their wealth to use in new ways. In recent years, big philanthropy in the United States expanded enormously, due in part to the massive wealth generated by high-tech industries and a growing global market. In 2013, there were 66 foundations with assets of more than $1 billion in the United States (Barkan, 2013). But it was not just big foundations like the Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Pew and, more recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that made American philanthropy distinct from that in other Western democracies. US giving patterns reflected the United States’ history, attitude to government and the characteristics of its people (Wright, 2002). US foundations, required by law to donate five per cent of their investment assets each year to charitable causes, gave $55 billion in gifts in 2013. These grants were made by 87,142 foundations with assets of more than $798 billion (Foundation Center, 2013). For context, about 80 per cent of total donations in the United States are made by individuals (Acs & Phillips, 2002).

A feature of US capitalism was its historic focus on the creation of wealth and the reconstitution of wealth: philanthropy was part of an implicit social contract that stipulated that wealth beyond a certain level ought to revert to society (Chernow, 1999, as cited in Acs & Phillips, 2002). Philanthropy was not considered to be charity associated with the redistribution of wealth, but rather about investing to create opportunity and more widespread economic prosperity (Acs & Phillips, 2002). The biggest US foundations by assets held are shown in Table 4.2. It shows the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, founded officially in 2000 and built on the success of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to have three and a half times the assets of the next biggest foundation.

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Table 4.2. Top 10 US foundations by total assets

Foundation Amount Bill & Melinda Gates $41.3 billion Ford $12.2 billion J. Paul Getty $11.1 billion Robert Wood Johnson $10.1 billion W.K. Kellogg $8.6 billion William & Flora Hewlett $8.6 billion Lilly Endowment $7.6 billion David & Lucile Packard $6.9 billion Gordon & Betty Moore $6.4 billion John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur $6.3 billion Source: Foundation Center (2013).

Despite creating great universities such as Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie-Mellon, Duke, Chicago, and funding global medical research into vaccines and cures for malaria, yellow fever and hook worm, the biggest foundations encountered hostility in the United States from the start, not surprisingly, most of which came from scholars and politically motivated individuals. Much of the criticism focused on the foundations’ power and influence and lack of accountability: they were seen as constructors of hegemony by discouraging dissent against capitalistic democracy; they could shape public policy but had no accountability to the public or those affected by their programs (Barkan, 2013; Roelofs, 2007, p. 480).

Scholars also questioned why foundations would support journalism: “… what sort of ‘alternative’ journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation’s corporate rogues’ gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie, Soros and Schumann?” (Feldman, 2007, p. 433). Others questioned the extent to which the perceived interests of foundations and media matched up: one had an interest in maintaining existing structures of elite control and the other questioning and critiquing those structures in a way that was central to the self-image of the journalistic fourth estate (Browne, 2009, p. 7). “By and large, it is the funders who are calling the tune” (Roelofs, 2007, p. 502). My research suggests that was not the case necessarily and that the relationship between foundations and non-profit investigative centres was more

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complex and nuanced. The ethical issues that might arise from foundation funding of journalism are discussed in Chapter Seven.

Foundation funding of non-profit investigative news centres

The financial dependence of non-profit investigative centres on foundations, both for their formation and on-going activities, created a potentially powerful and influential voice in the production of quality journalism in the United States. Foundations became key funders of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism and thousands of investigative projects. Despite this, there has been little scholarly research on the relationship between foundations and non-profit investigative reporting. The dependence on foundation support was a consistent concern expressed by non-profit investigative editors, primarily because they were aware that foundations generally funded new ventures rather than providing on-going operational monies. The risk of a foundation not renewing a grant was ever present, leading to a near constant need to replenish expiring grants and find new funding sources (A. Mitchell et al., 2013). A survey of 172 news non-profit organisations found only 28 per cent had their grants renewed to any degree by their original funders (A. Mitchell et al., 2013). Non-profit organisations attempted to diversify their revenues through a combination of earned revenue that included event hosting, syndication of stories, training, partnering with organisations, advertising17 and finding multiple individual donors. Other than a small number of notable successes at revenue diversification, my research suggests that many non-profit centres continue to depend heavily on foundation support.

A selective analysis of the publicly available IRS returns of non-profit organisations indicates the extent of the reliance on contributions and grants compared with earned revenue. Despite general agreement in the subfield on the need to find alternative revenue sources, the analysis shows that non-profit centres were yet to diversify their funding away from foundations. It indicates also that award-winning journalism does not translate into earned revenue. For example, the 2014 Form 990 return to the IRS for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting shows it received $609,407 in contributions and gifts. Its only other revenue was $20,000 from program services,

17 Non-profit organisations may face income taxes on revenues from ‘unrelated business activities’ such as advertising; see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p598.pdf

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$9017 from subscriptions to the Wisconsin Watchdog, $4755 from journalism reports and $895 from miscellaneous revenue (Wisconsin990, 2014). In its return, the non- profit organisation said that since being launched in 2009, it had produced more than 250 major reports and 200 money and politics columns that were published or cited by nearly 350 news organisations. Its coverage had reached an estimated audience of 46 million people (Wisconsin990, 2014). The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting’s earlier IRS return noted a remarkable year of journalistic achievement through high-impact stories and winning eight Milwaukee Press Club awards (Wisconsin990, 2013). Despite these successes, less than 5.5 per cent of its total revenue in 2014 came from earned revenue.

The Voice of Orange County received $543,345 in contributions and grants and made no income other than $9 from an investment, its 2012 return shows (Voice of OC, 2012). The Austin Bulldog in 2011 recorded $45,045 in donation funding and no other revenue (Austin, 2011). The Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation was granted $163,628 in 2013 and recorded no other income in its IRS return (Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, 2013). The Voice of San Diego did better. It generated $47,935 in syndication income and $2842 in advertising in 2013, but the bulk of its support, almost $1.3 million, was from gifts, grants and contributions from foundations and other donors (Voice of San Diego, 2013).

Quantifying foundation support

This thesis uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to construct a better understanding of the dynamics and interrelationships between non-profit organisations, legacy media and foundations. Bourdieu sought to analyse power relations that might seem natural but in fact were the outcome of different power struggles within and between different fields (Willig, 2012, p. 383). He showed that the journalistic field had lost its autonomy to the economic field (Willig, 2012, p. 373). Foundations, for the purposes of this thesis, represent economic capital because they are by far the major funders of non-profit investigative journalism. A number of surveys have tried to quantify the amount donated by foundations to journalism and non-profit journalism in recent years. The survey results differ markedly due to different definitions of investigative journalism and a lack of consistency in research methods. The four studies cited below offer some indication

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of the size of foundation giving to journalism but are not comprehensive and often incorporate categories other than investigative reporting. My analysis of the funding of 15 investigative non-profit organisations follows a brief examination of the other studies.

A study by the Foundation Center, a US advocacy, research and educational organisation that promotes philanthropy, found that over 1000 foundations had dispensed $1.86 billion in media-related grants between 2009 and 2011 (Henry-Sanchez & Koob, 2013). While significant, the study said this was less than 4.0 per cent of total US grant dollars for domestic purposes. Nevertheless, foundation grants to media- related activities grew by 21 per cent over the three years studied, compared with growth of 5.8 per cent for total domestic grants. In 2011, the $687 million in media- related grants ranked seventh in domestic grant-making, ahead of science and technology, and religion. The media-related category in the study was broad and included journalism, policies, applications and tools, platforms and infrastructure. The study used a 29-code taxonomy to capture grant making activities of $10,000 or more. The journalism subcategory, shown in Table 4.3, attracted a total of $527.3 million between 2009 and 2011. Of that, $27.8 million was directed to organisations whose primary media activity was investigative journalism. That meant that investigative journalism attracted 5.2 per cent of the total for the journalism, news and information subcategory and just 1.5 per cent of all foundation funding for media-related activities.

Table 4.3 places in sharp perspective the reality of funding for investigative reporting. In the scheme of foundation support, the $27.8 million was small when compared with the funding for general news and journalism education. Other media-related subcategories fared much better: web-based media received $305 million; media platforms, $227 million; and film or video, $178 million (Henry-Sanchez & Koob, 2013). Funding for investigative journalism increased from $6.6 million in 2009 to $11.4 million in 2010 and $9.8 million in 2011, according to the study. The top 10 individual recipients in the journalism, news and information category are listed Table 4.4.

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Table 4.3. Foundation funding of media by primary activity, 2009–2011

% of total Median Primary media activity Total amount media amount funding Journalism news and $333,748,058 17.9 $50,000 information, general Journalism education and $146,377,106 7.9 $50,000 training Investigative journalism $27,898,180 1.5 $52,000 Advocacy journalism $7,345,199 0.4 $62,500 Constituency journalism $7,270,353 0.4 $50,000 Citizen journalism $4,673,547 0.3 $100,000 Total journalism, news and $527,312,344 28.3 $50,000 information Source: Henry-Sanchez and Koob (2013).

Table 4.4. Top 10 journalism grant recipients, 2009–2011

Recipient Grant Newseuma $122.7 million University of Southern California $61.7 million THIRTEEN $21.6 million University of Missouri $20.1 million University of Nevada Reno Foundation $12.3 million National Public Radio $9.9 million Center for Public Integrity $8 million Center for Investigative Reporting $7.4 million Northwestern University $7 million International Center for Journalists $6.5 million Note: a The Newseum, situated on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, is a state-of-the-art museum that champions the freedoms of the First Amendment, founded by the Freedom Forum, the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation and major media organisations and foundations. Source: Henry-Sanchez and Koob (2013).

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Within the journalism, news and information category shown in Table 4.3, investigative was the third largest beneficiary and gained significantly more support than advocacy, constituency and citizen journalism. The bulk of the funding went to the Newseum, a state-of-the-art museum in Washington, D.C., that champions the freedoms of the First Amendment. Table 4.4 shows the successful fundraising of the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting, two of the three most productive and successful of the US non-profit centres (see Chapter Six). The two centres attracted a total of $15.4 million in foundation grants over the three years studied.18,19 Commenting on the findings of the Foundation Center report, a senior adviser to the Federal Communications Commission said that 10 years earlier the notion that philanthropy would fund the media would have been downright offensive. At that time, the Murdoch and Time Warner organisations seemed to be doing just fine (Waldman, 2013). The adviser, Steve Waldman, the lead author of a major study of the US media (Waldman, 2011), welcomed that foundations understood that certain types of journalism needed to be subsidised but added that between 2009–2011, journalism education attracted five times more funding than investigative reporting, which received a similar amount to interactive games (Waldman, 2013). The study also showed that foundations supported legacy print, television and radio media, though the amount given to new web-based and mobile media grew four times that of traditional media between 2009 and 2011.

Later data released by the Foundation Center showed that investigative or accountability journalism attracted $68.2 million in 490 grants between 2011 and 2014. The grants were received by 91 non-profit organisations from 151 foundations. The funding fell into two primary foundation goals: investigative or accountability journalism ($49.1 million) and democracy, multiple ($19 million). The value of the data for this analysis was limited because it included gifts to investigative non-profit organisations but also to partisan opinion and analysis websites such as Media Matters for America, the Media

18 The absence of ProPublica could be explained by a footnote in the report that organisations that had received significant proportions of their funding from individuals were omitted. 19 My research suggests that these totals are significantly less than those shown in the IRS returns lodged by the non-profits. See Table 4.6 below.

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Research Center, and public radio and television broadcasters (Foundation Center, 2014).

The second study by a network of media and technology supporters called Media Impact Funders found that 65 non-profit investigative journalism organisations received $29.5 million between 2009 and 2011 (Media Impact Funders, 2013). The money came in the form of 202 grants from 115 foundations. The top non-profit recipients are listed in Table 4.5. The table shows that the three national reporting organisations – ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity – were by far the most generously funded.20 The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, with $3.1 million from 13 grants, was the fourth biggest recipient.21 The most generous donors were the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation ($8 million), the Ford Foundation ($6.2 million), the MacArthur Foundation ($6 million), the Park Foundation ($4.6 million) and the Foundation to Promote Open Society ($4.1 million).

Table 4.5. Top non-profit investigative reporting recipients, 2009–2011a

Recipient Grants Total ProPublica 44 $13,958,000 Center for Public Integrity 53 $10,260,724 Center for Investigative Reporting 45 $8,677,629 Franklin Center 13 $3,149,000 Temple University 1 $2,400,000 Foundation for National Progress 46 $2,325,936 Nation Institute 34 $2,278,501 Independent Production Fund 4 $2,000,000 W.G.B.H. Educational Foundation 3 $1,800,000 Minnesota Public Radio 1 $1,250,000 Note: a The Foundation for National Progress supports Mother Jones; the Nation Institute supports numerous independent and investigative projects (see http://www.nationinstitute.org/); the Independent Production Fund creates documentaries and information programs on public affairs, business, medicine and health and culture issues; WGBH Educational Foundation oversees public TV and radio outlets with educational content. Source: Media Impact Funders (2013).

20 See Chapter Six for profiles of the national centres. 21 See Chapter Seven for a discussion of the Franklin Center and partisan reporting.

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A third study was of limited value because it tabulated grants to news and information projects but provided no analysis of donations to specific non-profit investigative centres. American University’s J-Lab and the Knight Community News Network found that more than $248.5 million was donated between 2005 and 2012 to 308 news and information projects (J-Lab, n.d.). A fourth study and database developed by Charles Lewis and others at the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s research arm, ILab, found the operating budgets of 75 non-profit news publishers in 2012 was $135 million (C. Lewis et al., 2012). The study said the “momentum of the new non-profit journalism phenomenon is continuing” (C. Lewis et al., 2012, para. 1). It added 15 non-profit organisations to an earlier study conducted in 2010. The data referred to news publishers rather than specifically to investigative or public interest non-profit sites. It included the $43.1 million budget of Consumer Reports, a large organisation of 600 full-time staff that rates products such as cars, appliances, electronics and other consumer goods. It also included the Christian Science Monitor, a non-profit news organisation owned by the Church of Christ, Scientist, founded in 1908, with a budget of about $10 million. The Monitor publishes mainly general news stories. The study also included the well-established investigative, political and social justice news magazine and website Mother Jones, with a budget of $9.3 million. Mother Jones is supported by the National Progress Foundation. Consumer Reports, Mother Jones and the Christian Science Monitor accounted for $62.3 million or 46 per cent of the total foundation revenue recorded for non-profit news publishers. The study estimated that the 75 organisations employed 1300 full-time staff, with Consumer Reports employing almost half of the total.

The findings of the four studies do not provide sufficient consistency of data for conclusions to be reached about the amount of funding that foundations provided investigative journalism. It should be noted that foundations also were big funders of public television and radio such as PBS television and NPR, which produced significant investigative journalism. Foundations donated $203.8 million to public broadcasters in 2009 (Waldman, 2011). This funding was well in excess of that given to non-profit

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reporting centres but was excluded from some of the studies. A tentative conclusion from these studies could be that the funding of investigative journalism was increasing but small in comparison to other areas of media.

Funding of 15 non-profit investigative news organisations

Table 4.6 shows the donations received by 15 non-profit investigative reporting organisations. I collated the data directly from the organisations’ annual Form 990 or equivalent returns to the IRS. The vast majority of the funding in this category is from foundations. The 15 non-profit organisations selected were members of the Institute for Nonprofit News and were chosen because of their clear focus on investigative reporting. They included the biggest and most prominent organisations in the non-profit subfield. The 15 organisations attracted more than $190.7 million in donations between 2009 and 2014, which was a substantial amount devoted to accountability journalism.22 Table 4.6 also highlights the disparity that exists in funding between the three big non-profit organisations, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity, and smaller state-based non-profit sites. The three organisations raised $146.4 million, or 76.7 per cent of the total amount donated to the 15 organisations. This demonstrates the dominance that the three organisations have in the non-profit subfield. The previous chapter described how all three organisations were led by editorial executives who had achieved high symbolic capital in the broader journalistic field. The table clearly demonstrates the credibility that foundations afforded these individuals.

Foundations maintained their support for non-profit investigative journalism well after the financial crisis years. Table 4.6 shows that funding for the 15 organisations increased by $12.6 million between 2011 and 2012. Total annual funding for the organisations rose from $21.6 million in 2009 to $39.7 million in 2014, an increase of 84 per cent. It is not possible from this research to know how much was donated by foundations to the 85 other smaller investigative and public interest non-profit members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. In addition, the left-leaning Foundation for National Progress, which funds Mother Jones, and the conservative Franklin Center for

22 IRS returns for 2015 were not available for most of these organisations at the time of writing.

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Government and Public Integrity, which funds the Watchdog.org sites, provided more than $84 million over the same period to their investigative publications (Economic Research Institute, n.d.; Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, 2014a). A conservative estimate is that foundations provided in the vicinity of $350 million between 2009 and 2014 to non-profit investigative news organisations.

This data confirms that foundations played a critical role in the growth and development of the non-profit investigative subfield. Foundations were selective in their support. Like advertisers in the commercial field, funders predominantly targeted centres that published national stories, had deep connections with the mainstream media, won key awards and whose stories had the sort of impact that would attract further media attention and official responses. Foundations also contributed generously to successful state-based investigative non-profit organisations such as the Texas Tribune and provided solid funding for the Voice of San Diego and MinnPost. But based on the figures in Table 4.6, the longer term futures of organisations such as the Broward Bulldog, the Investigative Post, Aspen Journalism, the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting look uncertain. Their survival might depend on finding new funders, additional earned revenue or merging with other organisations. For the bigger centres, the next few years will require as much or more fundraising because “when you build it, you’ve got to keep it going” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). Founder of the Marshall Project Neil Barksy agreed: “… we ’ll still be fundraising for the rest of our professional lives” (Wang, 2015, para. 21).

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Table 4.6. Contributions, grants and gifts to non-profit organisations, 2009–2014a

Non-profit 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total ProPublica $6,354,979 $10,209,401 $10,115,367 $10,920,019 $13,678,241 $10,169,976 $61,447,983 Center for Investigative Reporting $4,158,035 $2,289,855 $5,403,245 $11,146,211 $7,232,248 $9,849,975 $40,079,569 Center for Public Integrity $5,610,122 $8,580,963 $5,128,583 $8,858,926 $7,464,706 $9,313,650 $44,956,950 Texas Tribune $3,725,440 $2,127,574 $2,163,577 $3,502,370 $5,601,892 $3,736,666 $20,857,519 Voice of San Diego $969,286 $1,103,921 $974,109 $1,372,714 $1,293,947 $1,668,772 $7,382,749 Florida Center for Investigative Reporting N/A N/A $172,371 $109,454 $84,115 $118,019 $483,959 Investigative Newsource $35,000 $214,800 $381,800 $479,531 $245,880 $1,015,273 $2,372,284 Broward Bulldog $5,325 $12,414 $16,765 $38,278 $43,085 $57,123 $172,990 Investigative Post N/A N/A N/A $113,510 $154,529 $150,704 $418,743 MinnPost $605,469 $812,074 $998,180 $1,033,394 $1,016,870 $1,799,591 $6,265,578 Aspen Journalism N/A N/A $165,000 $50,800 $117,615 $120,554 $453,969 Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation N/A N/A N/A $63,429 $163,628 $153,287 $380,344 The Lens N/A $711,661 $214,380 $442,500 $577,027 $599,447 $2,545,015 VTDigger N/A $22,050 $234,945 $194,775 $292,534 $361,122 $1,105,426 Wisconsin Center for Investigative $172,700 $144,470 $189,767 $459,885 $264,645 $609,407 $1,840,874 Journalism Total $21,636,356 $26,229,183 $26,158,089 $38,785,796 $38,230,962 $39,723,566 $190,763,952 Note: N/A = organisation not created or did not post a return. a Contributions, grants and gifts are any payment for which the donor does not receive a fair market share from the recipient. Payment can be received from individuals, trusts, corporations, estates, affiliates, foundations, public charities, and other exempt organizations, or raised by an outside professional fundraiser: see http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i990ez/ch02.html#d0e1644. Sources: Form 990 returns are used by tax-exempt organisations to provide information to the IRS on annual activity including revenue, expenses, governance, net assets, compensation and other statements. Information in this table came from publicly available Form 990s or their equivalent IRS forms (Aspen Journalism, 2014; Broward Bulldog, 2014; Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014d; Center for Public Integrity, n.d.; Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014; Investigative Newsource, 2014; Investigative Post, 2014; MinnPost, 2014b; ProPublica, 2014c; Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, 2014; Texas Tribune, 2014; The Lens, 2014; Voice of San Diego, 2014; VT Digger, 2014; Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, 2014).

Democracy and the decline of mainstream media

Foundation program directors regarded investigative journalism as a means to an end, which they identified as the enhancement of US democracy. None of the foundation directors I interviewed said their motivation for giving was to support investigative reporting as such. Rather, they supported an independent, robust media that was essential to democracy. They believed that the mainstream media’s financial problems had diminished their capacity to provide the public with adequate information to participate effectively and have an enlightened understanding of matters important to society (Dahl, 1989). Foundations were helping to fill a vital information gap by funding quality investigative reporting. “In essence we did decide to focus on investigative journalism and how we could support that, how we could make sure, given that democracy depends on it, how we can make sure that that's going to survive” one foundation director said (S. Fischer, personal communication, February 16, 2012).

Foundations knew quite early in the financial crisis that they could not provide anywhere near the amount of funding that was cut from editorial budgets by the mainstream media. One calculation estimated that newspapers alone had reduced their spending on journalism by $1.6 billion when comparing 2009 with the mid-2000s (Edmonds, 2009). Foundations, with their own assets hit by deflating stock values, could provide only a fraction of that capacity which meant they had to be selective about the areas they funded. “…our support can only go so far, so we make hard decisions”, program director Clark Bell said (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012).

The foundation staff I spoke to also supported a wide range of causes in arts and culture, education, human rights, environment and other areas. Media funding was a small part of their overall giving. Support for media constituted seven to 10 per cent of a foundation program such as democracy, according to estimates by two directors (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012; B. Shute, February 13, 2012). The funders did not support commercial daily news media, though grants to non- profit centres or reporters indirectly subsidised some commercial newspaper operations

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(L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).23 I conducted semi- structured, in-depth interviews with seven program directors, a program officer and a communications consultant for eight foundations that funded investigative journalism centres. Other than seeking reasons why they made such grants, I asked the interviewees to describe the process of grant making and how they made their decisions.

The mission statements and program descriptions of the foundations were interpreted broadly enough to include support for non-profit investigative news centres. Most stated their support for US democracy. The James Irvine’s Democracy Program’s mission was to “advance effective public policy decision making” (James Irvine Foundation, n.d., para. 1); the MacArthur Foundation’s program explored “ways to strengthen democracy in the US, given our perception that the political system has failed to adequately address major issues confronting the nation” (MacArthur Foundation, n.d.-b, para. 1) and the McCormick Foundation’s democracy program supports “watchdog and solutions-based reporting on government finance, ethics, responsiveness and efficiency and other issues of importance to an effective and vigorous democracy’’ (McCormick Foundation, n.d. , para. 4). The Democratic Practice program of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund sought to strengthen the “vitality of democracy”; its core ideas were that for democracy to flourish, citizens had to be engaged, empowered and assertive and institutions must be “inclusive, transparent, accountable, and responsive” (Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 2007a, para. 1). The agenda was to give citizens the information they needed to participate in democracy: “I think investigative journalism is an important piece of that,” said Rockefeller Brothers Foundation program director, Ben Shute (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012).

The foundation program directors expressed concern about the impact of the cutbacks in legacy media. Amy Dominguez-Arms from the James Irvine Foundation felt important policy and governance issues were going unreported because there were fewer reporters to cover state policies. “We were looking for something to supplement what newspapers were doing” (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). In New York, Benjamin Shute at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund said that mainstream journalism was languishing in its ability to provide the type of information that people

23 Lori McGlinchey moved from Open Society Foundations to the Ford Foundation in 2014.

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needed in a democracy. During the 2004 Presidential election, he became concerned at the rise of ideological cable television channels and questioned whether the public was getting the information they needed to participate honestly in democracy. Investigative journalism appealed because of its traditional association with democracy (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012).

In Chicago, both the MacArthur Foundation’s Elspeth Revere and Sunny Fischer from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation supported investigative journalism because citizens in a democracy had a right to be informed; democracy depended on such journalism (S. Fischer, personal communication, February 16, 2012; E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). The concerns expressed by program directors extended to broader questions about the future of journalism, society and democracy. Open Society Foundations’ Lori McGlinchey asked who would provide the quality journalism that was at the core of democracy and open society if the commercial sector no longer did so. She said the public sector was distrusted by Americans and the political climate was to privatise everything. NPR and its public radio affiliates did good journalism but their reach was limited. “Who is going to support high-quality public interest journalism in Mississippi if there’s no big donor who feels like having a project in New York or in San Francisco or Texas? What happens to Mississippi? What happens to Alabama?” (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).

Professional fundraisers working for non-profit investigative centres appealed directly to these sentiments when pitching for funding. It was the risk to democracy rather than the possibly less palatable watchdog role of exposing scoundrels, embarrassing government officials and highlighting corporate malfeasance that they raised when seeking funding. Robin Heller from the Center for Public Integrity began discussions with potential funders by describing the nature of non-partisan investigative reporting. She would note its role as a pillar of democracy and state that such journalism had been devastated by economic downturns (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). She would then show how foundations that were interested in democracy, transparency, accountability and good governance had supported the work of non-profit investigative organisations to try to restore democracy. “It resonates with foundations who never thought, ‘gosh, I guess we could fund journalism, of all things’” (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). Cherilyn Parsons, the director of

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development and strategic initiatives at the Center for Investigative Reporting, used a similar approach, outlining the demise of traditional media and its inability to inform people on matters of public importance. She asked foundation directors how people would know who to vote for if they did not have good information. How would they contact their local representatives? How would they be informed? And, the stuff on the internet was unreliable (C. Parsons, personal communication, November 2, 2010).

Scholarly differences over journalism’s role in democracy

Foundation directors spoke of journalism and democracy as if they were one and the same or as if the connection between them were innate or self-evident. They embraced a view about democracy and journalism that was espoused by philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, George Hegel, and later John Dewey and journalist Walter Lippmann (Zelizer, 2012). Their comments reflected those of communications theorist James Carey who said journalism was “another name for democracy” (Carey, 1997, p. 332) and communications scholar Robert McChesney who wrote that democracy required journalism, and vice versa (McChesney, 2008, p. 54).

Other scholars have argued that the impact of digital technologies, new online ventures, social developments and declines in the mainstream media’s finances, influence and esteem have disrupted conventional views about the journalism–democracy paradigm. Prominent media theorist Mark Deuze described how developments in multiculturalism and multimedia transformed the ideology of journalism (Deuze, 2005). According to Deuze, “any definition of journalism as a profession working truthfully, operating as a watchdog for the good of society as a whole and enabling citizens to be self-governing is not only naïve, but also one-dimensional and sometimes nostalgic for perhaps the wrong reasons’’ (Deuze, 2005, 458).

Former journalist and professor of communications at the Annenberg School of Communication, Barbie Zelizer, called on academics to retire the largely unquestioned nexus between journalism and democracy as a means of understanding journalism (Zelizer, 2012). The two were seen as necessary props for each other in academic writings since the Enlightenment; however, “circumstances show that democracy has not been necessary for journalism, and the idea that democracy is the lifeline of

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journalism has not been supported on the ground” (Zelizer, 2012, p. 7). Academic precepts of journalistic practice often were more imaginary than real, Zelizer said. The recent decentralisation and wide access to both production and consumption on the internet and accommodation of endless vantage points flew in the face of long-standing assertions about journalism’s capacity to support the “so-called democratic objectives of civil society, reasoned discourse, progress and universal values” (Zelizer, 2012, p. 9). Misunderstanding of both key terms – journalism and democracy – had undermined the “capacity of journalism scholars to speak reliably about the world of journalism practice” (Zelizer, 2012, p. 11). Nevertheless, democracy had a long shelf life in scholarship because much of academic work depended directly or indirectly on the presumption of democracy and its accoutrements (Zelizer, 2012).

Media economist Professor Robert Picard noted that professional journalism was not itself a necessary and sufficient condition for democracy. The press once interjected itself between the people and the government because it was not possible for individual voices to be heard or have significant influence, but new technologies such as talk radio, websites, blogs and discussion groups now allowed individuals to communicate as empowered individuals (Picard, 2006). Control over content had shifted from communicators to audiences. “Given the poor value produced for society today by many news organizations and the rising possibilities presented by these new technological capabilities, we may need to seriously consider whether the conditions that led the press to become the fourth estate still exist or whether the diminished role that many news organizations play today will make them irrelevant in the future” (Picard, 2006, p. 151).

US sociologist Michael Schudson said that democracy did not necessarily produce journalism, nor did journalism necessarily produce democracy (Schudson, 2008, pp. 11– 13). Journalism existed in Chile in the 1980s without democracy; it existed in Franco’s Spain and in China today. Schudson nominated six primary functions that journalism, to varying degrees and emphases, assumed in democratic societies, often all at once. They were information, investigation, analysis, social empathy, public forum and mobilisation. Where democracy already existed, or forces were prepared to bring it about, journalism could “provide a number of different services to help establish or sustain representative government” (Schudson, 2008, p. 12).

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Other academic writers have summarised the basic tasks of journalism in democracy as observing and informing as a service to the public; participating in public life as an independent actor by way of critical comment, advice, advocacy and expression of opinion and providing a channel, forum or platform for voices or sources to reach a self- chosen public (Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White, 2009, p. 116). The authors described the following four roles of the media: monitorial, facilitative, radical and collaborative (Christians et al., 2009, p. 125). The monitorial role included a “watchdog role ostensibly on behalf of the public’’ that opened the way for a “potentially critical or even adversarial stance” (Christians et al., 2009, pp. 125, 142).

Investigative journalism, in my view, can initiate changes that improve democratic processes. While there is vast literature on the notion of democracy and journalism’s relationship to it, my interpretation broadly is that journalism gives people information and understandings on which they can base their choices and opinions, and it scrutinises political and economic power. The practice and ideology of journalism are not immune to external influences. Deuze’s argument that sociocultural and socioeconomic issues have transformed the practice and ideology of journalism lends support to Pierre Bourdieu’s view that external factors such as “changing circumstances” are brought to bear on a field’s practice and institutions (Deuze, 2005; R. Jenkins, 2002, p 86).

While the public ultimately benefits from investigative journalism, revelations of wrong-doing, corruption, misuse of public funds and so on often find their true target among politicians, decision makers and regulatory bodies. Investigative reporting can mobilise public pressure for change and it can shape public perceptions but more often responsive official action is needed to solve the problems identified. An unseen benefit to democracies from robust investigative reporting is that politicians, major companies and other powerful figures fear public exposure of wrong doing, to the extent I would argue, that such trepidation stops some from acting against the public interest, the law or common decency.

Liberal democracies have regulators and official inquiries at national and local levels that provide accountability of government agencies and corporate behaviour. But these often are ineffective, under-resourced, slow, bound by legislation that limits their

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investigations or are under political control. Investigative journalists often work behind the scenes with regulatory authorities and are not bound by the same restrictions. Journalists are freer to pursue their targets but not entirely free: constraints include a lack of resources and time, pressure from editors, proprietors and possibly advertisers and funders, various laws including defamation and national security, and a failure to locate sufficient evidence to justify publication.

These academic observations and arguments about the media and democracy were not salient considerations for the foundation program directors I interviewed. Foundations appeared to support traditional methods of professional practice in investigative journalism rather than the work of newer expert bloggers, non-government organisations and citizen journalists. In doing so, most foundations – with the Knight Foundation the exception (see below) – favoured a system described by Picard as one in which news was thrust upon audiences based on values and social needs perceived by journalistic professionals but were not based on the audience’s perceptions of need (Picard, 2006). This reflected a view that what was good for democracy was journalism produced with the traditional newsroom values of verification and independence rather than emerging from the collective opinions of citizens on the internet, which observers such as Jay Rosen, view as a key democratising influence (Rosen, 1999). It reflected a conservative, establishment approach to the practice of journalism. This chapter noted the divergent views of foundations and academics about the relationship between journalism and democracy. But the nexus between democracy and philanthropy itself also has attracted scholarly debate. Scholars have contended that foundations have a negative impact on democracy, acting as prime constructors of hegemony by promoting consent and discouraging dissent against capitalist democracy, and representing relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth (Anove, 1980; Roelofs, 2007). Philanthropists were seen to operate as mini governments, setting and implementing policies through their funding choices, without input from citizens or elected officials (Eikenberry, 2006). Philanthrocapitalists, mega- wealthy foundations that used business-like methods in their philanthropic organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had amplified the power and voices of unelected groups rather than enabling independent and representative parties to be involved in problem solving (G. W. Jenkins, 2011). Scholars and media critics also

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highlighted a range of ethical issues that non-profit organisations risked by accepting foundation funding. These will be discussed in Chapter Seven.

Foundations and advocacy agendas

Another motivation for foundation giving to non-profit investigative organisations was to promote the reporting of issues in other areas the foundations supported. Chapter Seven of this thesis examines the potential ethical issues that can arise when foundations advocate and campaign on issues while funding journalism in the same area. Foundations provide both general funding that can be used for any purpose as well as project funding, which may be for reporting in a particular area or used for a specific venture. Chapter Seven includes a case study on the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s funding of California Watch and the non-profit’s education reporting. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided $1.2 million to help establish California Watch under the foundation’s education program. A focus of the foundation’s broader grant-making was to create the conditions for education policy reform in California (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.-b). It did not have a separate category for media funding. Rather, its program directors in areas like education had a “concern about having the issues they care about … covered” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). The funding of journalistic enterprises was “more an outgrowth of policy than us funding journalism for journalism’s sake”, Jack Fischer, the foundation’s communications director, told me (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). He said foundations either funded a journalism project for content in an area they cared about or they cared about the state of journalism. “We’re almost exclusively the former” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012).

Jon Funabiki, a former newspaper journalist who specialised in reporting on political and economic issues in the Asian region, was responsible for the Ford Foundation’s journalism program for 11 years until 2006. He then joined the journalism department at San Francisco State University where he developed the Renaissance Journalism Center, an organisation that creates innovative news projects. Funabiki is a member of the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting. He said Jack Fischer’s comments on the funding of stories on issues that foundations supported reflected the case for the

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majority of foundation support. Foundations might agree with the public good argument but “that’s not why they are spending the money” (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). The more likely reason was that foundations were interested in an area or issue and wanted it covered more fully. “The first question would always be, in our case, when we’ve had a proposal for something, ‘Is this in our issue area?’ It’s not necessarily a larger interest in investigative journalism as a function of society … but it could be, ‘I’m interested in climate change or coalmining or interested in water quality or cancer, health et cetera’. They [foundations] see either the journalism or the investigative journalism as one way of moving that agenda” (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012).

Instances of foundations directly funding reporting on specific areas can be seen on the Texas Tribune’s website. For example, in 2014 the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation donated $175,000 for improved coverage of the Texas Congressional delegation; the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation provided $95,000 for stories on energy and water issues; Kaiser Health granted $60,000 for coverage and data on health care issues; the Burdine Foundation gave $50,000 for coverage of women’s issues in health, education and the environment; the Kleinheinz Endowment granted $50,000 for arts and education reporting; Hugh A. Fitzsimmons III gave just over $11,000 for the Disappearing Rio Grande Expedition Project, and so on (Tribune Donors, 2014). Kevin Davis, the former executive director of the then Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News) was aware of foundations directing funding to a particular area such as juvenile justice or healthcare (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). But he had not heard of cases where foundations wanted to be hands-on with stories. The foundations’ targeting of specific issues through tied project grants was broad and took into account the journalistic culture of independence, he said.

The MacArthur Foundation in Chicago has long supported local non-profit news and bigger national organisations like ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and the Institute for Nonprofit News. Program director Elspeth Revere said the fund did not direct funding to journalism projects with the intention of promoting other areas it supported such as human rights, the environment and juvenile justice among others (E. Revere,

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personal communication, February 17, 2012). “Our media funding is actually separate from that; it’s not designed to bring more visibility to the fields we otherwise support. It’s designed to strengthen the quality of information that citizens in a democracy get to experience” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). The foundation mainly provided general funding rather than backing specific projects. There were occasions when its funded media organisations ran stories with a “different angle” to the foundation’s support for certain issues. The foundation could live with that, Revere said. Nevertheless, the foundation did look for an “overlap in interest” and it was “useful” if media coverage was in an area the foundation supported. It wanted to know about the topics that would be reported on before renewing a grant. “We just try to make sure that it’s not one-dimensional or very narrow in an area that we’re just not interested in supporting” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

Scholars have been critical and sceptical about the influence of foundations on the work of journalistic non-profit centres. One wrote that the issues included journalists serving the possibly hidden agendas of foundations and hewing to establishment-defined ideological limits (Browne, 2010). Journalists might be encouraged to anticipate and chase the “perhaps-idiosyncratic whims of funders” (Browne, 2010, p. 891), and conflicts of interest involving the funders and the state bodies that reporters should be investigating could arise. “Within the world of philanthropy it is not controversial that the activities of foundations are intended as an exercise of power for particular ends, though of course those ends are typically depicted as benign” (Browne, 2010, p. 893). A former Ford Foundation president, Susan Berresford, wrote that a grantee had complained that funders had become more focused on building portfolios of projects, managing risks and producing outcomes. Foundations treated non-profit organisations as contractors hired to deliver their vision rather than as innovators (Berresford, 2010). Media critic Rick Edmonds, who writes on journalism issues for the Poynter Institute, said the effect of foundation money was subtle but real: foundations may not ask to influence specific stories but when they funded investigative projects they did not “receive the same due-diligence scrutiny for hidden subtext that journalists routinely apply to a corporate press release or a politician’s statement” (Edmonds, 2002, para. 3). Foundation directors and editors had a cultural affinity that sometimes made it difficult

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for journalists to distinguish between accepting a grant and accepting a point of view, Edmonds said.

Obtaining grants from foundations

Foundations and non-profit organisations often connected at the initiative of non-profit centres. Once non-profit centre editors decided to pursue a particular story, they would approach their in-house fundraiser or development officer who in turn would try to find foundations to fund the project. Foundations were selected in the first instance because of their general interest or previous funding in the area. According to two non-profit fundraisers interviewed, discussions with foundations were complicated by the fact that they could provide only broad general information about the stories they wanted funded (C. Parsons, personal communication, November 2, 2010; R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). The fundraisers, together with senior editorial executives, felt unable to provide foundations with the specifics of the stories for a number of reasons. First, the journalistic culture of independence from advertisers had transferred, along with legacy editors, to the field of non-profit reporting and sought to treat funders in a similar way to advertisers. Even though senior non-profit executive editors were involved in pitching to foundations, they set a veil over specific story content due to their newsroom socialisation. Editors were aware also that mainstream news outlets would be concerned if funders had any influence over content. In addition, investigative stories frequently changed as reporters dug deeper into issues or discovered new angles so that the original concept may be abandoned by the time a project was finished.

The Center of Public Integrity’s chief development officer Robin Heller said that when pitching to funders she talked mainly about the kind of stories the centre did, the general area involved and that their support might finance three stories over a year with the expectation they would also appear in the mainstream media. She did not “shop around stories” (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). Center for Investigative Reporting fundraiser Cherilyn Parsons said that foundations had agendas and the “tricky part” about journalism was that the non-profit centre was unable to accept funding for a specified or desired journalistic outcome. The centre would accept funding for a specific subject area but “we can’t promise obviously what the journalism will turn up” (C.

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Parsons, personal communication, November 2, 2010). Before approaching a foundation for support, fundraisers researched the potential funders’ interests on the foundations’ websites, the composition of their boards, their funding histories and organisational links. Once they became targets “you’re basically soliciting the money from them” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010). Fundraisers targeted foundations whose funding histories showed them to be concerned about “basic civic engagement, transparency, and accountability” or that had a specific interest such as climate change (C. Parsons, personal communication, November 2, 2010).

Some foundations, however, took the initiative in finding non-profit journalists to support, rather than waiting for funding requests. Open Society Foundations would investigate a field, determine its issues and then invite proposals for funding (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012). When former newspaper reporter Jack Fischer24 took a communications role at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2006 he discovered that program directors had “pretty fleshed-out agendas” on how they wanted to spend their budgets. “The place is filled with academics, a lot of Stanford [University] refugees, and they have very specific ideas about strategies for how to improve education or what the most effective way to slow global warming is” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012).

There were periods when the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s program directors did not accept unsolicited inquiries. The foundation might also repurpose a non-profit organisation with a project grant to do something it was not doing, but that the foundation wanted it to do. Fischer discovered that foundations were “really nervous” about funding journalism projects due to concern that the reporters might investigate the foundation’s directors or an area they had funded or cared about. “It’s like playing with fire to them … which was so surprising to me”. Foundations believed a better approach was to talk about strengthening communities and civic good rather than speaking directly about journalism: “it's almost as though they didn’t make the connection” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). His comment reflected a kind of look away attitude by some foundations to the reality that investigative stories often led to the exposure of corruption and scandals involving

24 Mr Jack Fischer passed away in February 2013.

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government officials, bureaucrats and corporate high-flyers. Like the program director who derided gotcha stories and like the non-profit centre fundraisers who focused on the risks to democracy when pitching for grants, Fischer, a former reporter, recognised that foundations favoured the more refined notion of supporting the strengthening of communities, civic life and democracy (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012; J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012).

General and specific foundation funding

Foundation funding of non-profit organisations fell into two broad areas: the first was for specific journalism projects such as an investigative series or the launch of an organisation, and second, for on-going capacity building such as hiring reporters, producers, engagement directors, the provision of administrative services and so on. General funding provided non-profit centres greater freedom in deciding how the money would be spent and some foundations were more comfortable with that style of funding. The Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund decided against funding specific journalistic projects in favour of capacity building. For instance, it funded workshops on running a non-profit organisation because it believed journalists did not know how to operate a business (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012). It provided grants to support training on data analysis and campaign finance reporting. This type of funding was seen as less problematic ethically than money for specific stories or topics which had a greater potential for perceived interference by foundation funders. “I'm tempted sometimes to fund content, but then the other side of that is a sense that if we fund content, and even though we are totally hands-off, but if we say, ‘okay, we're going to fund climate change’, then, in a sense, that's a distortion, a distortion of the marketplace of ideas” (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012).

The McCormick Foundation also preferred to fund non-editorial services such as tax advice or accounting assistance. Its aim was to help journalists “concentrate on journalism” and provide assistance in areas in which they had no expertise (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). Open Society Foundations funded both general support and stories, depending on the size of the nonprofit. A majority of its funding went to smaller, state-based non-profit news sites to support the coverage of local politics, though it also funded a specific person to work at ProPublica for a short

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time to focus on developing strategies to engage reporters at other media as well as citizens in reporting projects. Many of its smaller grants were intended to test the waters and see what worked and what didn’t (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012). The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation supported the big three nationally focused nonprofit organisations – ProPublica, in New York, the Center for Investigative Reporting in California and the Center for Public Integrity in Washington as well as the Institute for Nonprofit News in Los Angeles. It also funded NPR and public television programs like NewsHour and Frontline. Its support came in the form of general operational and infrastructure funding, but it was interested in the issues that would be reported on. Before renewing a grant, the foundation would quiz organisations about the topics that would be covered in the next 12 months (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

While a small number of bigger nationally focused not-for-profit investigative organisations dominated the non-profit reporting subfield in terms of funding, high- profile stories, awards and innovations, the vast majority of non-profit news outlets operated at state and city levels or focused on particular topics such as health or education. Open Society Foundations, established by billionaire George Soros, concluded that the biggest impact of the cutbacks due to the financial crisis occurred at state rather than national media. State political reporting had diminished as reporters lost their jobs, yet the decisions made at state level had the biggest impact on people’s lives (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012). Open Society decided to back a number of former state political reporters who had lost their jobs, enabling them to keep reporting for local publications. It provided small grants to state- based investigative centres such as the Wisconsin Centre for Investigative Journalism, the Lens, Texas Tribune, the Voice of San Diego, California Watch among others. The James Irvine Foundation donated more than $1.8 million over several years to California Watch, a state-focused investigative reporting site that was a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Its aim was to fund an organisation that would provide coverage of important systemic and policy issues in the state (A. Dominguez- Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). Like the James Irvine Foundation and Open Society Foundations, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in Chicago focused its grants on local outlets such as Chicago Reporter rather than national media

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enterprises. “If there’s a good news organisation in Miami or San Francisco, Los Angeles, Voice of San Diego, MinnPost, you can go on and on, there are so many of them that are worthy of support, but our support can only go so far, so we make hard decisions”, program director Clark Bell said. If an organisation was local, the chances of it receiving longer term funding improved (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012).

The concern about a decline in state political reporting was well placed. Pew Research’s Journalism Project found that between 2003 and 2014, the number of statehouse reporters (based at legislative centres) employed by newspapers declined by 35 per cent or 164 full-time reporters (Enda, Matsa, & Boyles, 2014). The project quoted data supplied by the Alliance for Audited Media that showed that only 30 per cent of the 801 daily newspapers it monitored sent a staffer to a local statehouse for any period. The biggest statehouse bureau in the United States with 15 full-time reporters was run by the Texas Tribune. However, non-profit news groups provided just six per cent of all statehouse reporters – 43 full time and 92 in total. In addition, ideological outlets such as the conservative Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (see Chapter Seven) assigned 53 reporters, 17 of whom were full time, to cover state politics. Legacy outlets also used students to cover statehouses, comprising 14 per cent of all statehouse reporting (Enda et al., 2014).

Measuring the impact of foundation funding

The journalistic culture of loyalty to readers and independence from political and funder influence raised questions for foundations about how to assess the success or otherwise of their grants. Their ability to assess whether prospective stories would align to their interests or missions was limited because investigative centre editors and fundraisers resisted providing specifics about the stories they would be covering. This limited the ability of foundations to make standard assessments about the success or otherwise of their grants. In the commercial world, profits were an obvious measure of success but were not relevant in the not-for-profit field. Non-profit organisations initially used the number of unique visitors to their websites and page views to promote their organisations. They soon realised these metrics were an interesting but inadequate yardstick that measured quantity rather than quality. MinnPost’s chief executive officer

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and editor, Joel Kramer, told a panel discussion on the future of non-profit journalism that measures of unique visitors were “worth zero. They have no relationship to the success of our business … They will visit for 10 seconds and then after they’re gone, they won’t remember if you asked them where they were … they are absolutely irrelevant to your business unless you’re selling national advertising at $0.80 cost per thousand which I recommend you not do” (Pew Research Center, 2013, pp. 22-23). In any event, the goals of philanthropy often reached beyond concrete targets to “intangible ideals as community empowerment, justice, creativity, compassion, expression, preservation of legacies, or the like” (G. W. Jenkins, 2011, p. 788). These were more difficult to assess. Veteran journalists, who had an “inherent, almost visceral dislike” of audience measurement and engagement strategies and other metrics data, had more arcane measures of success (C. Lewis & Niles, 2013, para. 6). A former legacy reporter working at the non-profit Lens typically described impact as a city council member waving a story at a city official at the next meeting and demanding to know what would be done about it (Pew Research Center, 2013).

Measuring the impact of journalism proved to be a “maddeningly difficult task” given that there was no single definition of journalism together with the complexities of tracking a story once it was published. Even harder to know for certain was that any particular change had resulted directly from a story (Stray, 2012, para. 3). Audience numbers did not necessarily equate to impact – it might just mean that the story was salacious, amusing or popular (Zuckerman, 2010). Journalists believed that the most significant stories often were the least read, and sometimes their importance was discovered years after publication. Veteran non-profit news advocate Charles Lewis said that for the time being both meaningful engagement and impact measures were a long way off and urged foundations to base their judgements of non-profit organisations on original news content, character and the void they were filling (C. Lewis & Niles, 2013). Other commentators such as academics and former Ford Foundation program vice president, Alison Bernstein, warned that an obsessive technological approach to measuring impact could be highly problematic in assessing progressive social change as opposed to a specific outcome (Bernstein, 2011). Metrics were a proxy or incomplete indicator of what was actually happening. “Real, lasting change cannot be reduced to a single metric. Changing a culture or an institution is typically too sloppy, random,

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never-ending, and elusive to be captured by a mathematical formula or metric” (Bernstein, 2011, para. 22). Yet faced with a proliferation in the number of requests from organisations seeking grants, foundations wanted a system of measuring impact (C. Lewis & Niles, 2013). The Ford Foundation’s Calvin Sims asked non-profit editors at a forum: “Does your content advance the discussion? Are you reaching an influential audience?” (University of California, 2012, p. 1).

Foundations in recent years also had embraced many of the management techniques of large corporations. Foundation executives increasingly had business backgrounds and saw results in “numbers rather than words” (Tofel, 2013, p. 2). A “new managerialism” swept over many foundations, changing traditional approaches to funding (Bernstein, 2011, para 18). It meant that no-one saw a conflict of interest in having foundation staff on the board of grantee organisations. “Strategic philanthropy thus shifts the focus from the grantee’s goals to the foundation’s agenda. This inevitably requires the grantee to be accountable for meeting certain benchmarks and outcomes predetermined by the donor” (Bernstein, 2011, para. 27). But while “metrics mania and false bottom lines” had their place, and could “tell you how many students enrolled in higher education or earned a degree”, they could not show how a person’s life had changed or if it had changed for the better, former Ford Foundation executive Alison Bernstein said (2011, para. 29).

Critics of assessment in the non-profit field such as associate professor of law at Ohio State University, Garry Jenkins, raised concerns about the advance of what he called ‘philanthrocapitalism’ and “the myth that the measurement of non-profit performance and goals is merely a matter of discipline, will, and intellectual power” (G. W. Jenkins, 2011, p. 788). As a result of bottom-line, free market techniques, foundations had become “more paternalistic”, disempowering grantees and endangering democratic values. This form of “muscular philanthropy” relied on a top-down approach by an “unelected class of corporate chieftains (even well-intentioned ones)” rather than recognising local institutional capacity and leadership, and relegated grantees to the role of subcontractors (G. W. Jenkins, 2011, pp. 759, 768, 817). A new breed of donors described themselves as venture philanthropists, social entrepreneurs or players in capital non-profit markets. “They speak of social return on investment (SROI) and manage grants as if they were a portfolio of company start-ups” (Dowie, 2001, p. 229).

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A report by ProPublica’s president, Richard Tofel, said that funders often were even less precise than grantees about the impact they sought, or even what they meant by impact (Tofel, 2013). However, Tofel’s paper, “Non-profit journalism: Issues around impact”, found that assessing the impact of investigative reporting was more difficult than other forms of journalism where reach and engagement yardsticks could be used. Impact from investigative reporting “always involves changes beyond those in the minds of readers, to changes in what journalists often term the ‘real world, ’ actual changes in behaviours, policies, practices, legislation or some such” (Tofel, 2013, p. 6). Outcomes, in the case of investigative reporting, were harder to measure than outputs, leading to widespread confusion of means and ends. Tofel’s paper made a number of valid points based on ProPublica’s experience about the complexities involved in trying to measure the value of investigative reporting. In its list of tentative lessons, it found that true impact was relatively rare and that not all impact was quantifiable. For example, “what is the economic value ... of placing the New Orleans Police Department under federal supervision and curbing its history of official violence?” (Tofel, 2013, p. 20). Impact was easier to identify than prove conclusively and, at times, involved a substantial measure of happenstance. Sometimes it was a long time coming – it took eight months of reporting by the Washington Post for Watergate to change from a crisis to a scandal. There was no single reliable measure of journalism’s impact (Tofel, 2013).

The impact that foundations want

The impact that the foundations I interviewed said they wanted differed significantly from the journalistic watchdog aspiration of exposing corrupt public officials, scammers, and systemic failings. James Irvine Foundation program director Amy Dominguez-Arms primarily wanted journalism that provided solutions to social issues, rather than gotcha journalism or “here’s a problem” (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). Her foundation’s substantial donation to California Watch came with an expectation that it would provide in-depth, substantive coverage of significant state and policy issues that were “illuminating for California voters and for others”.

Dominguez-Arms said she had made it clear to California Watch’s executive director, Robert Rosenthal, that her foundation’s preference was for solutions-based reporting.

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Discussions between them had included a tension between the desire for investigations into malfeasance within government and stories that provided solutions to state issues. “We go back and forth. I think we recognise there are at times differing opinions or different imperatives”, she said (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). Rosenthal, whose primary interest was pursuing hard-hitting investigative journalism, recognised that the James Irvine Foundation’s core mission was to improve the role of government and have the community more engaged in political issues. He said he was not unsympathetic to the desire for solutions journalism and acknowledged the argument that exposing governments as incompetent or corrupt had the potential to disengage people from politics. However, revealing corruption or incompetence, in his view, could lead to solutions: “it’s a different approach and philosophy” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010; February 2, 2012). California Watch was obliged to highlight problems but would be comfortable with sometimes providing solutions without becoming an advocate. “What is the definition of impact? Is it informing the public, is it leading to change, is it catching the bad guys? It’s all those things” (Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010; February 2, 2012).

The James Irvine Foundation paid an outside consultant to evaluate the impact of its grants. The evaluations examined story reach, surveyed both the organisation’s media partners and people quoted in stories, and reported on the type of stories being produced, including their fairness and impact. Dominguez-Arms was keen also to survey influential politicians and others to ascertain their sense of the value and contribution that California Watch was making. She had suggested the idea to Rosenthal who said he would pass it on to staff responsible for evaluation (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). The James Irvine–California Watch case illustrates some of the tension that exists between the missions of foundations and non- profit investigative journalism centres. Rosenthal and Dominguez-Arms were both experienced players in their respective fields. She was motivated by her perception of decline in the mainstream media and was concerned about the impact that had on democratic processes. Creating a non-profit state-focused journalism organisation was one way of dealing with that issue. Her definition of the quality journalism she desired was for reporters to explore potential solutions to the problems they exposed. Rosenthal

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had an investigative editor’s frame of exposing corruption, waste and systemic failure. Nevertheless, such differences were accommodated in the broader interests of each party.

Alternative approaches to measuring impact

The foundations I interviewed used a variety of approaches to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of their grants, and not all of them embraced metric assessments. The Richard Driehaus Foundation, a small funder based in Chicago, relied on casual conversations rather than formal evaluations. Its executive director, Sunny Fischer, was sceptical about the use of metrics, preferring “a matter of belief” (S. Fischer, personal communication, February 16, 2012). The McCormick Foundation, on the other hand, had developed a logic model25 that included the number of stories published, the size of the audience a story reached and website views. It was developing methods of analysing longer term impacts such as policy changes. “We actually look and see, okay, were laws changed, were hearings held, was there an outcry, was there action taken” (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). But such outcomes were only part of the process: other assessments were more intuitive, done from the gut and the heart, particularly with new organisations. “You’ve got to sometimes be a little more patient, but other times you say, you know, this group just isn’t going anywhere, has no future” (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). The MacArthur Foundation had not developed an evaluation system but generally took into account audience reach, distribution, quality, awards and impact. The foundation employed an evaluation expert, but “sort of old-school” director Elspeth Revere added that she was not too numbers oriented and tried to find a balance between subjective and objective information (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

One of the most comprehensive publicly available impact studies was conducted in 2010 by the Knight Foundation (Coffman, Miller, & Acquah, 2010). Two years earlier

25 Most evaluations employ the use of logic models—visual representations of the projects or strategies being evaluated that show how their activities are expected to lead to their desired impacts. Logic models are useful for evaluation efforts because they offer a results-oriented framework that helps focus their inquiry. From: http://www.knightfoundation.org/media/uploads/publication_pdfs/digitalTransitions.pdf

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the foundation had given the Center for Public Integrity $1.7 million to enhance its digital display and the interactivity of its online projects. The online project was part of a new strategy by the Center for Public Integrity to be a subscription-based primary daily news site – a strategy that ultimately proved financially damaging and misguided, as described in Chapter Six of this thesis. The Knight Foundation hired a leading evaluator, an award-winning investigative editor and a social media analyst to report on the centre’s efforts. The study interviewed 32 staff, funders, board members and outside editors and observers. It analysed the centre’s website using web and social media analytic tools. In summary, the evaluation proved to be a mixed result for the centre. While praising its digital transformation, the evaluators concluded that the centre should pursue projects that citizens and policymakers cared about and could act on; ensure that its content got to those able to best affect change and purposefully engage in two-way communications rather than passively informing its audience. The study found the centre sometimes tackled important issues that were not compelling or timely enough for wider distribution. Its use of data needed to be accompanied by more compelling stories. Critics told the researchers the centre should produce more ground-breaking stories that set the agenda. On the positive side, the centre had increased its presence in other media outlets and had developed 19 media partnerships in the previous 12 months. It had updated its web content and improved its interactivity with its audience. The report recommended the centre develop meaningful performance metrics such as those in Table 4.7 (Coffman et al., 2010).

What was notable about the recommended metrics in Table 4.7 was that impact was expanded from the basic quantifying of views, visitors and downloads from the centre’s website toward direct outcomes such as total funds raised, funding from different sources, awards, media mentions and even inquiries launched as a direct result of the centre’s journalism. Sparking hearings or being mentioned by decision and policy makers sets the bar high in terms of journalistic impact. But it was what some foundations looked for as an outcome of their support. While the report did not suggest specific story ideas, it did recommend the types of stories the centre should be pursuing.

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Table 4.7. Suggested performance metrics for the Center for Public Integrity

Direct outcomes Indirect outcomes Impact Total $ raised annually # non-government # stories resulting in organisations cite or use hearings, inquiries content $ from individuals vs. # policy makers use or cite Citations of content by foundations; content decision makers in press # of individual donors conferences or policy debates Industry awards # policies or practices changed due to centre stories # of stories used by distribution partners # of media citations # of staff on TV, radio Numerous digital metrics Source: Coffman et al. (2010).

Opinions on the sustainability of non-profit news centres

The question of the financial sustainability of the non-profit subfield and my conclusions about it will be addressed in the final chapter of this thesis. This section explores the concerns and views of players in the various fields about foundation funding, and the devastating impact that non-renewal of funding can have on non-profit organisations. The sustainability of non-profit investigative organisations has been the subject of much discussion at journalism conferences and in academic and industry articles (Knight Foundation, 2015; Nee, 2013; Picard, 2014; Usher & Hindman, 2015). This is not surprising because non-profit organisations remain dependent on foundation funding. In 2013, foundation grants represented 58 per cent of the total funding of 20 non-profit organisations studied by the Knight Foundation (Knight Foundation, 2015). The study found that two in five organisations relied on foundations for 75 per cent or more of their revenue. Income from alternative sources such as advertising, events, sponsorships, training and subscriptions contributed just 23 per cent of revenue for the average site. A third of the sites generated less than 10 per cent of their revenue through earned income. Five of the 20 sites experienced no growth or declines in revenue since 2011. The study concluded that while some non-profit news organisations were inching

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closer to more sustainable models, for the majority of organisations in the study “sustainability is just a premise on the distant horizon” (Knight Foundation, 2015, p. 23).

Producing high-impact stories provided no certainty that funding would continue in the longer term because foundations were not the lifeblood of any field. They operated more like venture capitalists (Dowie, 2001, p. 70), seeding start-up organisations and then stepping away. Foundation boards and directors liked to spawn groups, “not bankroll them in perpetuity” (McChesney & Nichols, 2010, p. 87). Dan Noyes, one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting, said foundation program directors did not like supporting the same area for long: they preferred to move on because the “same thing is boring after a while” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2012). Philanthropy was fad driven and impatient (A. Mitchell et al., 2013).

Doubts about continued foundation funding were a constant source of anxiety to the non-profit editors interviewed for this thesis. The same concern was apparent in a survey in late 2011 by former foundation program director and academic Jon Funabiki and journalist Nancy Yoshihara (Funabiki & Yoshihara, 2011). The survey sought to identify the challenges that non-profit news organisations faced in maintaining and growing their online sites. The authors received responses from 32 organisations. The key challenge identified was that non-profit organisations were finding it more difficult to obtain grants. Two-thirds of respondents said they were at or approaching a crossroad where it was difficult to secure a second or third round of financing. Three-quarters said they needed help in identifying and connecting with new sources of investment to remain viable and grow. As sites survived and evolved beyond journalism experiments, foundations became “less interested in funding their operations” (Funabiki & Yoshihara, 2011, p. 3). Charles Lewis, who is one of the most experienced and successful fundraisers for US non-profit investigative reporting, said that foundations were “notoriously fickle” but added that more funding was available now than when he started looking for money 25 years ago. American tax laws meant that foundations had to donate five per cent of their assets each year. “The idea that they are going to stop supporting journalism is simply not going to happen; it’s going to keep happening” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010).

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Lewis’s prediction may prove correct. Several of the foundations I interviewed had supported the same non-profit organisations for lengthy periods. But there was no guarantee of future funding. The McCormick Foundation’s Clark Bell said, “You can lean on the foundations but they don’t have to support you ... there is no mandate here” (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). The former head of the Institute for Nonprofit News, Kevin Davis, said the time was approaching when foundations would be telling their grantees that they had to move forward and establish viable alternative revenues. “I think that’s going to be a tougher process …” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

Foundation program directors generally were pessimistic about the prospects for long- term funding of investigative centres, though several expressed a preparedness to continue funding into the future. The Knight Foundation said funding was precarious because foundations found new interests and moved on: “It’s still not a long-term sustainable thing to expect the MacArthur Foundation to write you a cheque every year for perpetuity” (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Open Society Foundations said foundations had competing demands and directed grants elsewhere after a period. Its program director, Lori McGlinchey, questioned the capacity of non- profit organisations to find other sources of funding. “Where is this magic source of money going to come from? And is it possible that there is no source of money and that either we as a culture decide that we’re okay without journalism or we create a more comprehensive national solution, or foundations take responsibility and decide we’re going to fund this forever the way we fund poverty and social services and soup kitchens” (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation said it was never its intention to stay with California Watch or other journalism ventures for the long term (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). The McCormick Foundation hoped that foundations would be a little more patient and would give organisations the benefit of the doubt but there had to be some traction in terms of alternative funding sources (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). Program directors at three foundations, MacArthur, Rockefeller Brothers and James Irvine, indicated a commitment to longer term funding for non-profit and public media (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012; B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012; A.

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Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012). The MacArthur Foundation’s Elspeth Revere envisaged continuing support for media organisations. The foundation had supported the Center for Public Integrity since it was founded in 1989 (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Ben Shute from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund said a number of foundations were too impatient and pushed too hard for financial sustainability. His fund would stay in a field, though not necessarily with the same grantees, for 15 to 20 years. “We don’t wake up next week and say we’re not going to do climate change anymore, we’re going to do something else. So we stick with a field for a fairly long period of time. We don’t have a hard and fast rule that we will only fund a certain group for so many years … it is iterative back and forth with us and the group; ‘what are you doing, how’s it going, what do you need?’ But we won’t be there forever” (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2012). The James Irvine Foundation had supported KQED, a San Francisco-based public broadcaster, for 15 years. “We understand that public media and non-profit media probably needs foundation support ongoing”. The reporting and focus of non-profit organisations, however, had to align with the board’s priorities (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, February 1, 2012).

The continued funding of the Chicago Reporter provides a compelling alternative to the conventional view that foundations seeded start-up ventures for several years then moved on to other causes. The Chicago Reporter was founded in 1972 to provide in- depth investigative coverage of the burning issues of race and poverty (Chicago, 2014). The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation has supported Chicago Reporter for more than 20 years. “We felt that’s a voice that hasn’t been heard before so well; it’s hard to get those stories out,” program director Sunny Fischer said (S. Fischer, personal communication, February 16, 2012). The McCormick Foundation also supported Chicago Reporter, recognising that it would “never be able to make it on its own because its model simply was not sustainable’’ (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). This demonstrates big and small foundations can be loyal funders to specialist news organisations that do important journalism on topics that are underreported in the mainstream media. Neither foundation in this case expected the organisation to become self-sufficient through advertising or selling its stories.

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The barbell effect and the non-renewal of grants

Based in Encino, half an hour’s drive north-west of Los Angeles, California, Kevin Davis, then executive director of the Investigative News Network (now the Institute for Nonprofit News), daily witnessed the challenges faced by the 100-plus members of the network. The issues at times seemed insurmountable. Foundations wanted non-profit organisations to wean from their grants toward earned revenue streams such as advertising. Davis wondered if it was realistic for news organisations with few resources to earn revenue from the very area in which commercial media had failed (K. Davis, 2013). Investigative reporting, in his view, could never be a commercial product. It was a loss leader with a civic return on investment, rather than a commercial one. Davis said non-profit organisations were in the midst of what venture capitalists called the barbell effect and some were struggling to survive. The barbell, at one end represented money given to start-ups, and at the other, well-established organisations. Those in the middle, however, were most vulnerable. The barbell effect occurred four to five years after an organisation was launched. He predicted there would be consolidation in coming years of the number of non-profit investigative reporting centres. “We’re trying to create a viable, independent outlet for accountability journalism, and it’s hard. It’s hard to fund, it’s hard to staff and pay these people a living wage, and it’s hard to get the content found” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). The Knight Foundation’s president and chief executive officer, Alberto Ibargüen, said the foundation supported 14 or 15 online news organisations, most of which were not sustainable even in the medium term. He asked: “How do you monetise this activity? How do you make a community vote with its pocket book for something we consider that essential?” (Rubio -Cortés, 2011).

Six or seven years after the financial crisis ended, most non-profit organisations still relied on foundation support (Knight Foundation, 2015). Though the degree of reliance had reduced for some organisations, the non-renewal of grants by foundations had the potential to shut down entire operations or restrict their reporting (Browne, 2009, pp. 11–12; C. Lewis et al., 2012). The Santa Barbara-based site, Mission & State shut down in July, 2014, when its key local funder, the Santa Barbara Foundation, stopped funding it (Gallo, 2014). In the same year, the New Orleans-based Lens laid off three employees, axed a daily email newsletter and no longer had a dedicated reporter covering state

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politics after a local donor who was unhappy about some of its stories withdrew a pledge of major funding and a national foundation decided to stop funding it (Lichterman, 2014). Also in 2014, the Virginia-based Environmental Health Sciences cut staff and moved to an aggregation model after losing funding from several foundations (Gomez, 2014). In Wyoming, a board member of Wyofile, a local non-profit news service, had provided $60,000 in 2010 and again in 2011 but left the state and did not contribute in 2012. The non-profit managed to raise only $12,000 in donations in 2012 and saw its total revenues fall by 40 per cent (Knight, 2012). Homicide Watch D.C., which created a database of reports on homicides in the District of Columbia, closed in 2014 due to lack of funding (Hasan, 2014). The Medill Watchdog, based at the Northwestern University’s journalism school, announced in 2014 it would cease operations due to financial issues (Exstrum, 2014). In October 2015, Health News Colorado closed after its key funder, the Colorado Health Foundation, did not renew its funding. The foundation said it could not make promises of funding in perpetuity (Lieberman, 2016). Several years earlier, Capitol News Connection ceased operating after it was unsuccessful in replacing lost foundation funding (C. Lewis et al., 2012). The Chicago News Cooperative was founded in 2009 and employed several former senior Chicago Tribune reporters and editors. Despite having a publishing partnership with the New York Times, it closed in 2012 after the MacArthur Foundation delayed a grant expected by the non-profit (Miner, 2012).

The Knight Foundation’s focus on communities and innovation

The $2.4 billion John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has initiated and funded much of the research into the issues confronting journalism in the United States. It has been a generous funder of non-profit news organisations, journalism education, and projects that look for answers to issues of future funding, digital innovation and practice.26 The foundation contributed more than $400 million to journalism “during its long and often close relationship with the profession” (S. C. Lewis, 2012, p. 6) and each year gifted between $20 million and $30 million to the field (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 17, 2012). The foundation has four main program areas: arts, engaged communities, journalism and media innovation, It provided $107.8 million in grants in

26 The author was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1992–1993.

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2013 (Ranghelli & Haldis, 2015). The foundation was founded by brothers John and James Knight in 1940 as the Knight Memorial Education Fund and became the Knight Foundation in 1950. While independent, it was funded by the Knight brothers’ newspaper chain of about two dozen newspapers and by family contributions. The Knight newspaper group merged with Ridder Publications in the mid-1970s and in mid- 2000 sold its 32 newspapers to the McClatchy group for $4.5 billion (Lieberman 2006).

While not abandoning its commitment to journalism education and funding non-profit organisations, the Knight Foundation in mid-2000 dramatically shifted its emphasis from news to innovation and information. It steered its funding to the needs of communities rather than the producers of news. The change occurred with the appointment of former newspaper publisher Alberto Ibargüen to head the foundation in 2005. “Under Mr Ibargüen’s leadership, Knight is encouraging other foundations to support local journalism, incorporating new technology, and making more risky grants, including a few that even some of its own board members have resisted” (Wilhelm, 2009, para. 3). The Knight Foundation matched grants from local community foundations around the country that aimed to meet the information needs of those communities. “Not every project is ProPublica. Not every newspaper is the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post”, Ibargüen said (Rubio-Cortés, 2011, p. 59). A primary vehicle of its transformation was the Knight News Challenge, a multi-million program that transformed the focus of its funding to creating the outcomes of news in the form of “informed and engaged communities” (S. C. Lewis, 2012, p. 315). The News Challenge invited the public to submit projects that had the potential of transforming news and information. Winners received a share of $5 million and support to develop their ideas (Knight Foundation, 2014b). The foundation has reviewed more than 10,000 entries since 2007 and provided over $37 million in support of 111 projects. Among its winners, it funded the development of DocumentCloud, a free open-source tool used to publish annotated documents that hosts more than a million documents (Knight Foundation, 2014a).

The News Challenge program and the matching funding of community foundation grants occurred because Ibargüen felt the internet had raised serious questions for journalism and journalism education. Rather than funding solutions it initiated, the foundation reached out to the public for ideas. “It is incredibly liberating to admit you

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don't know the answer. Then you don't have to go out and pretend and say, ‘I am the foundation, I have an idea, and I have the money’. Instead you can afford to say, ‘I have some money, here’s the problem we’re worried about, do you guys have any ideas?’” (Wilhelm, 2009, para. 29). Ibargüen’s thinking was in line with Jay Rosen’s concept of public journalism and that of philosopher John Dewey of public engagement about issues in the news (Rosen, 1999).

Assistant Professor Seth Lewis from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, identified three major components of the Knight Foundation’s shift: first, Knight had accepted that the problem for journalism in an era of digital disruption was the need to find new models to “meet the information needs of communities” (S. C. Lewis, 2012, pp. 318–319). The solution was not saving newspapers. Second, Knight turned away from its longstanding reliance on professional expertise – both the news industry’s and its own – to acknowledge that solutions may emerge from the aggregate expertise of a participatory crowd of contributors. The shift represented a growing trust in actors outside the profession’s core: to bloggers and activists engaged at the margins of journalism, to the “people formerly known as the audience”, and to fields beyond journalism: computer programmers, venture capitalists, community foundations, and others. Third, these connected assumptions – that neither Knight nor the news industry had the solutions to the informed communities problem, but that answers could come through participation from distributed crowds that were connected online – led Knight to conclude that it should give up control over some facets of its philanthropy, as it did with the challenge contests (S. C. Lewis, 2012, pp. 318–319). Knight’s vice president of media innovation John Bracken said journalists who had lost their mainstream jobs expected foundations to support their non-profit start-ups. But when he visited the organisations they founded he could see that the energy and atmosphere did not match that of Kickstarter or a start- up in California’ s Palo Alto. “For better or for worse because they are journalists and that ’s what they do, they are not start-up guys” (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

The Knight Foundation’s approach was not welcomed by some non-profit news organisations, particularly the investigative centres that were looking to foundation funding for long-term projects. Robert Rosenthal asked: “Knight is looking for bright

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and shiny objects right now ... and the big issue is you can find a bright and shiny object but how do you get the stories?” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, February 2, 2012). At least nine Knight grantees without any prompting used the phrase “shiny bright objects” or a variant when asked about the foundation’s innovation focus in a major study (Ranghelli & Haldis, 2015). One foundation spokesman who did not wish to be identified told me: “I assume they must have felt so stung by the demise of the (Knight Ridder) chain that they have completely run away from content, they’re just interested in gizmos”. A former editor and news consultant said that while it was cool to fund projects, “you aren’t going to deal with the essential problem, which is the great disappearing of reporting in cities and towns across the country” (Wilhelm, 2009, p. 39). A report based on interviews with grantees and stakeholders concluded that the foundation represented a breath of fresh air in philanthropy, but that a lack of well- articulated goals and strategies had left many Knight constituents confused about its long-term goals (Ranghelli & Haldis, 2015).

Conclusion

In providing the vast majority of the funding for non-profit investigative journalism in the United States, foundations were the most powerful of the partners involved, the others being the legacy media, the non-profit organisations themselves and the university sector, whose involvement will be examined in the next chapter. Foundations were the non-profit equivalent of advertisers in the commercial field. Under Pierre Bourdieu’s general field theory, they would constitute an economic field and therefore be more powerful than a field of cultural production. This was proven to be the case when several non-profit organisations closed after foundations did not renew their grants. It was also the reason why non-profit executives such as Robert Rosenthal, Bill Buzenberg and Charles Lewis – somewhat to their annoyance – had to devote so much time pitching to funders. The ability of foundations to choose their grantees, fund new ventures, determine the projects to be pursued and not renew funding made them a force to be reckoned with. It meant also that they were indirectly responsible for many important stories published in the commercial and public media, a relatively new situation that represented a shift in traditional journalistic practice. It was this kind of behind-the-scenes power that made some mainstream journalists wary of non-profit stories and the influence of foundation agendas. The previous chapter showed how the

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shift of reputable journalists to the non-profit subfield from legacy media appeased some of those concerns.

My research found that foundation support for investigative reporting ventures was conservative, favouring well-established and highly reputable players in the field. Table 4.6 showed that almost 80 per cent of the funding of 15 leading investigative non-profit organisations between 2009 and 2014 was directed to ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting. These organisations were led by journalists with excellent professional reputations and strong connections in the legacy media. While these organisations at times pioneered innovative methods of displaying information and engaging audiences, their journalistic practice, ethics and values reflected those of traditional media.

The 15 organisations received more than $190 million in contributions and grants between 2007 and 2014. Over the same period, the Foundation for National Progress provided more than $40 million to Mother Jones, and the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity provided a similar amount to its journalism and education programs (Economic Research Institute, n.d.; Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, 2014a). In addition, there were 85 small investigative and public interest organisations that were members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Totalling the grants to the 15 organisations, with the Mother Jones and Franklin-aligned organisations amounts to $270 million in funding between 2009 and 2014. When including the 85 other centres, I estimate that foundations donated in the vicinity of $350 million to investigative and public interest news organisations between 2009 and 2014.

While tax returns for 2015 were not available for most centres, two that were indicated that foundation support for the nationally focused centres had increased significantly (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2015; ProPublica, 2015). Table 4.6 and tax returns to the IRS demonstrate that foundation support for non-profit investigative organisations not only continued but has increased since the financial crisis. This is an important finding and provides a degree of optimism for the medium-term future of non-profit investigative journalism. Overall, however, uncertainty about the longer term funding of non-profit investigative organisations continues to concern those in the subfield. As the

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shock of the financial crisis and the associated panic caused by layoffs and newspaper closures fades, a key motivation for foundation funding may have dissipated. There is less talk today of a crisis despite the fact that journalistic employment in legacy newsrooms has continued to decline (American Society of News Editors, 2015). Other factors may be encouraging continued funding. One of those is that foundations want coverage of an issue in their broader areas of funding.

Another factor that may affect foundation support is the departure of the program directors who had decided to fund investigative journalism. In early 2014, I sought to contact the program directors interviewed two years earlier. Three had retired, one had changed foundations and one had passed away. New program directors may have different funding priorities. Those who made the original decisions also might change their priorities.

The funding by foundations of investigative journalism at a time of financial cutbacks in US newspapers spawned organisations, collaborations and stories that in all likelihood would not have occurred otherwise. Foundations, especially the Knight Foundation, have been catalysts for innovation and experimentation, particularly with the development and introduction of media-related technologies. Non-profit centres, through both their own projects and collaborations with established media, have produced serious public interest stories with significant civic rates of return. The majority of foundation directors I interviewed cared about the future of quality journalism and were exploring ideas about how to support it. In the foreseeable future, non-profit news organisations will continue to rely on foundation funding. One non- profit editor summed up the situation like this: “I think bringing donors into this ecosystem is more important today, not less important, even though we’re pedalling like hell trying not to be dependent upon them” (Pew Research Center, 2013, p. 31).

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CHAPTER 5: Secondary factors behind the creation of non-profit investigative centres

Introduction

The three previous chapters examined the primary factors that drove the expansion of the non-profit investigative subfield in the United States. They were the perception that democracy was at risk due to the mainstream media’s financial problems during the financial crisis, the move of reputable senior legacy journalists to the non-profit subfield, and the millions of dollars donated by philanthropic foundations to new and existing non-profit publishers. I identified these three factors as the primary forces behind the rapid creation of new investigative news organisations.

This chapter identifies and examines six secondary factors that combined with the three primary factors to stimulate the creation of new reporting organisations. The first was the entry of financially successful and civically engaged entrepreneurs in the non-profit subfield. These billionaires donated millions of dollars to non-profit investigative ventures. They brought with them an entrepreneurial spirit and an understanding of how to grow enterprises, key skills that were lacking in most journalists. This chapter demonstrates that non-profit organisations founded by wealthy businesspersons together with journalists were more successful than ventures created by journalists alone. Early financial stability enabled the centres to hire experienced reporters and editors, leading to journalistic success and recognition through awards and collaborations with quality legacy publishers. These, in turn, attracted foundation and other funding.

The second of the six secondary factors identified in this chapter was that the IRS granted non-profit status to investigative news organisations, enabling them to avoid some taxes and for donors to reduce their taxable income. Such approval was not assured because the IRS did not have a media category for tax exemption. Investigative and public interest non-profit organisations had to convince the IRS that their work fitted an education category. There were delays and uncertainty about the IRS’s determinations, but approval opened the door to funding.

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The third factor also was financial and in the longer term could play an important role in the sustainability of non-profit organisations. Donations from members of the public were a growing source of support in the subfield. A study of 20 non-profit organisations found that two-thirds of them had increased revenue from public donations in 2013 and that such donations were the fastest growing source of revenue for several organisations (Knight Foundation, 2015). The fourth factor was that a number of universities agreed to accommodate and coordinate their educational programs with investigative non-profit centres. This resulted in collaborations between the fields of non-profit journalism, tertiary education, legacy media and the foundation fields. Universities provided accommodation, interns, and at times, credit points for student involvement with non- profit centre s. Non-profit centres used students as interns who worked with professional journalists. Senior non-profit journalists often also held academic teaching appointments. Foundations provided funding for the centres to employ journalists and undertake in-depth projects. The mainstream media published the stories and collaborated with the centres.

The fifth factor was the creation of an umbrella organisation, the Investigative News Network, which operated as a membership association for non-profit centres. The network, which changed its name to the Institute for Nonprofit News in 2015, was created by non-profit journalists, many of whom previously had been senior executives in the legacy media. This legitimised members of the network in the eyes of mainstream media and foundation funders. The organisation provided members practical administrative assistance and developed membership criteria that included transparency of funding, a nonpartisan approach, and high journalistic and ethical standards. The final factor, somewhat more speculative, was American society’s disenchantment with corporate and government authority in the midst of the devastating financial crisis and a desire for accurate, useful and independent information. Social, political and economic factors were identified by scholars in the so-called golden eras of investigative reporting – 1902 to 1912 and the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter will examine those eras briefly to establish whether similar social, political and economic factors contributed to the growth of non-profit journalism after 2007.

Each of the primary and secondary factors interacted, to varying degrees, with other factors in promoting growth in the investigative subfield. This chapter demonstrates that

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the factors and players that shaped the non-profit subfield were in a dynamic relationship: they were “structured and structuring structures” that included material, social, organisational and personal forces (Bourdieu, 1982, as cited in Grenfell, 2004, p. 28). Each of the factors carried a form of capital in the field: economic (billionaires, foundations, government), social (networks of editors, funders, donors and others) or cultural (universities and centres) values.

The research for this chapter was drawn from interviews with non-profit centre executives, academics and foundation directors and a large number of contemporary, scholarly and journalistic sources.

Growth in 2009 and 2010

My research found that the most prolific growth in the number of investigative non- profit organisations in the United States occurred at the end of the financial crisis and the following year. In 2009, 18 organisations were created and a further 15 in 2010. Data for this information was drawn from the websites of members of the Institute for Nonprofit News and from returns to the IRS. Institute members are required to have non-profit status and practise investigative and public service journalism (Institute for Nonprofit News, n.d.).27 The institute had 104 members in 2015. Two-thirds of the member organisations (68) were founded between 2007 and 2015. These figures under- represent the number of non-profit investigative organisations formed in the United States at this time. They do not include the Marshall Project, the Intercept or the state- based centres created by the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity. These, and possibly other non-profit organisations, were not members of the Institute for Nonprofit News at the time of writing. While presenting a conservative picture, the figures clearly reflect the steep increase in the number of investigative non-profit organisations created between 2007 and 2015, as shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1. Institute for Nonprofit Newsa organisations and year created

27 Figures represent the membership in 2015.

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% of total since Year Number created % of total 2007 2007 4 4% 6% 2008 5 5% 8% 2009 18 17% 26% 2010 15 14% 22% 2011 7 7% 10% 2012 7 7% 10% 2013 4 4% 6% 2014 4 4% 6% 2015 4 4% 6% Earlier 36 35% – Note: a Membership as of December 2015. Excludes the War Horse organisation, which was yet to launch. Source: Compiled by the author from Institute for Nonprofit News, (n.d.), the websites of individual non- profit centres and annual returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

Table 5.1 shows that almost half of the non-profit organisations created between 2007 and 2015 were launched in 2009 or 2010. Thirty-three non-profit organisations were created in that two-year period. The period coincided with high levels of concern about the future of legacy journalism and democracy, as described in earlier chapters. Table 5.1 also shows that a dramatic slowdown in the creation of non-profit centres occurred after 2010. In 2011 and 2012, only seven organisations were founded in each year. The rate of creation further slowed from 2013 when only four organisations were created in each of the following years. The data and my research indicates that the start-up phase of investigative non-profit journalism is almost over and that players now are striving for sustainability.

The Watchdog.org project of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity presented a dilemma when it came to calculating the number of known investigative non-profit organisations in the United States. The Watchdog.org website says it has investigative reporters in more than 40 states (Watchdog.org, n.d.). It lists bureaus in 16 states and a dozen where bureaus previously existed. The website says its reporters are guided by the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics and write about “government waste, fraud and abuse of power” (Watchdog.org, n.d.). I decided to count the organisation as a single investigative entity. Its structure differed from that of

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independently established non-profit centres in that its state-based bureaus, while reporting on local issues, were like the franchise of a single organisation. I did not have an opportunity to interview journalists from the bureaus or the Franklin Center, which was unresponsive to my approaches. I noted the concerns of the subfield’s senior players such as Brant Houston and Charles Lewis about the Franklin Center’s pro- Republican or libertarian bias and lack of funding transparency (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010; C. Lewis, Holmberg, Campbell, and Beyoud (2013)). These concerns are further explored in Chapter Seven. A selective observation of the Watchdog.org websites in various states suggested that the organisations produced serious accountability journalism. A further two key organisations formed in 2014, the Intercept and the Marshall Project, were not members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. If these were counted and the Franklin Center organisations included as a single entity, more than 70 investigative non-profit organisations would have been created in the United States between 2007 and 2015.

Table 5.2 categorises the member organisations of the Institute for Nonprofit News in the years they were created. It shows that 19 of the institute’s members started prior to 2000. Older non-profit centres included the Center for Investigative Reporting (1977), the Center for Public Integrity (1989) and the Better Government Association, which was the oldest member, being founded in 1923. This thesis now examines in detail the six additional factors found to have stimulated the formation of investigative non-profit organisations.

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Table 5.2. Non-profit investigative organisations: year created

Year founded Institute for Nonprofit News members pre-2000 Alica Patterson Bay Area Video Coalition Catalyst Chicago Center for Investigative Reporting/Reveal Center for Public Integrity City Limits, New York Colorado Public News Current GW Williams Center for Independent Journalism (Tides) In These Times Investigative Fund at Nation Institute Mother Jones National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting National Institute on Money in State Politics OpenSecrets.org Pacific News Service/New America Media Philadelphia Public School Notebook The Better Government Association Youth Today 2000 Environmental Media Lab Newsdesk org 2002 Environment Health News 2003 Women's eNews 2004 Schuster Center for Investigative Reporting Voice of San Diego 2005 Charlottesville Tomorrow Maplight New Haven Independent The Reporters The Seattle Globalist 2006 Chicago Talks Kansas Health Institute News Service Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Sunlight Foundation The Crime Report/Center on Media, Crime and Justice Toni Stabil Center for Investigative Journalist 2007 Centro de Periodismo Investigativo MinnPost ProPublica The Daily Climate 2008 Oakland Local Raleigh Public Record Signcasts St Louis Beacon/Public Radioa WyoFile

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Year founded Institute for Nonprofit News members 2009 Baltimore Brew Broward Bulldog (FloridaBulldog) CT Mirror FairWarning Hidden City Philadelphia Inewsource InvestigateWest Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting Maryland Reporter MidWest Center for Investigative Reporting New England Center for Investigative Reporting Rocky Mountain PBS I-Newsb San Francisco Public Press Texas Tribune Tucson Sentinel Voice of OC Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism 2010 Austin Bulldog Connecticut Health Investigative Team Florida Center for Investigative Reporting Food and Environment Reporting Network Georgia Health News Global Investigative Journalism Network Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism Juvenile Justice Information Exchange MidWest Energy News NJ Spotlight Oklahoma Watch Philipstown.Info, Inc. The Lens Nola VT Digger WXXI LJC Innovation Trail 2011 100 reporters Aspen Journalism Bridge magazine Carolina Public Press North Carolina Health News Public Herald Public Source 2012 Arizona Centre for Investigative Reporting Eye on Ohio Investigative Post Mongabay New Mexico In-depth Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation The Youth Project

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Year founded Institute for Nonprofit News members 2013 Civic Lab (closed June 30, 2015) Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting Chalkbeat Montana Center for Investigative Reporting 2014 Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism Georgia News Lab San Juan Independent TrueSpeech Hashtag30 2015 Injustice Watch New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Reporting Twin Cities Media Alliance Note: a I-News was founded in 2009 and merged with Rocky Mountain PBS in 2013 ; b St Louis Beacon was founded in 2008 and merged with St Louis Public Radio in 2013. Source: Compiled by the author from Institute for Nonprofit News, (n.d.), the websites of individual non- profit centres and annual returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

Billionaire philanthropists

Three of my interviewees said that journalists who had lost their jobs during the financial crisis had created non-profit organisations in anticipation of foundation support (J. Bracken, personal communication, February 17, 2013; K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012; J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). This was not the case, however, for the organisations that proved to be the most financially secure. They were created by journalists in partnership with wealthy business people. In some instances, the impetus for the investigative organisation had come from a philanthropic business person rather than a journalist. The early involvement of wealthy individual philanthropists provided a stable financial platform for the production of investigative journalism and breathing space for proof of concept until additional revenue streams could be found.

New York-based ProPublica28 was an example of this, though not the only one. ProPublica was founded by billionaire former banker Herbert Sandler and his wife Marion29 in 2008. They promised to provide $10 million a year in funding, according to news reports (Nocera, 2008). Herbert Sandler was said to be disillusioned by the media’s “race to the bottom” and saw a need for an informed electorate and strong

28 See next chapter for case study on ProPublica 29 Marion Sandler passed away in 2012: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/philanthropy/20444-propublica- founder-marion-sandler-remembered.html

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democracy (Perry, 2007a, para. 2). The availability of significant up-front funding enabled the Sandlers to attract highly regarded mainstream editors. They employed Paul Steiger, then recently retired as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to lead ProPublica. Steiger was paid more than $570,000 a year (ProPublica, 2008). His lengthy management experience and symbolic capital, combined with the Sandlers’ financial resources, enabled ProPublica to hire senior editors and reporters and pay them well. With an initial budget of $8.5 million in 2008, ProPublica opened in a tower in the heart of New York’s business district, just a block from the stock exchange and Wall Street. It hired a former managing editor of the Oregonian, Stephen Engelberg, as managing editor, on a package of more than $376,000, and paid senior journalists between $150,000 and $167,000 (ProPublica, 2008). This was substantially more than even the best-paid executive editors at other non-profit organisations. The managing editor of the St Louis Beacon Margaret Freivogel’s total salary in 2012 was $60,000 (St. Louis Beacon, 2012). In Miami, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting in 2013 had revenue of $113,000 and could afford to pay its executive director only $25,000, about one twenty-third of Steiger’s package (Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, 2013). ProPublica’s initial staff of 28 editors and reporters included seven Pulitzer Prize winners. It had the biggest newsroom in the United States at the time that was dedicated solely to investigative reporting (Calderone, 2008).

While many non-profit investigative centres worried about their short or medium-term survival, ProPublica’s financial strength enabled it to produce stories that won key journalism awards and attracted further funding from other philanthropic donors. “When you have enough money in the bank that you can hire really good people and you do really good work... it’s always easier to raise money,” said Kevin Davis from the Institute for Nonprofit News (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). ProPublica was born on third base, according to the non-profit veteran Charles Lewis (Enda, 2012). A year after it was founded, ProPublica had published 138 stories that were co-published in almost 40 different mainstream outlets (Kenix, 2011, p. 38). It won the first ever Pulitzer Prize awarded to an online news organisation in 2010 and a second Pulitzer Prize in 2011 (ProPublica, 2014a).

In the ensuing years, the Sandlers’ contribution remained substantial but reduced proportionately as other financial supporters backed the organisation. In 2015,

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ProPublica had the support of about 100 foundations and substantial individual donors (ProPublica, 2014c).

Table 5.3. The Sandler Foundation’s support for ProPublica

Year Amount 2007 $1.2 million 2008 $8 million 2009 $4.5 million 2010 $6 million 2011 $5 million 2012 $4 million 2013 $4 million 2014 $4 million 2015 $3 million Total $39.7 million Source: Annual Form 990 returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

Table 5.3 shows the Sandler Foundation donated $39.7 million to ProPublica between 2007 and 2015. The size and scope of the donations sent clear signals to the broader journalistic community. First, wealthy businessmen were prepared to support non-profit investigative outlets. Second, their funding could attract top editors and reporters from the legacy press. Third, the stories were readily published in quality mainstream outlets. Fourth, the initial contributions and the success of the journalism attracted other funders. Fifth, businessmen like Sandler knew other business people they could approach for contributions. And finally, some philanthropic businessmen were prepared to repeat their donations year after year.

Wealthy business donors provided funds, access to networks of potential contributors and business acumen. Venture capitalist John Thornton co-founded the state-based Texas Tribune in 2009 in the belief that “a vital press is critical to retail democracy” (Berendt, 2011, para. 3). He teamed up with the editor of the Texas Monthly, Evan Smith, to create and build the organisation. Ross Ramsey, owner and managing editor of the political and government newsletter the Texas Weekly joined in 2009 after the Tribune acquired his newsletter. Thornton previously was a consultant with McKinsey

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& Co with clients in the United States and Europe. He was a founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation. He had an MBA from Stanford Graduate Business School and a BA summa cum laude from Trinity University where he topped his class (Texas Tribune, 2009). Thornton initially invested $1 million and helped raise a further $3 million from individual donors and charitable foundations, including $250,000 from the Knight Foundation and $500,000 from the Houston Endowment, a private foundation (Knight Foundation, 2009; McGeveran, 2011; Phelps, 2011). A pre-launch membership drive relied heavily on his personal connections and direct asks, and attracted 1400 members who paid a minimum of $50 and an average of $100 (Sopher, 2010). Thornton likened the non-profit to any commercial start-up that his fund would invest in and brought a business-like approach to the project (Barnett, 2010). His attitude was that big gifts should be merely the runway on which a sustainable business model could be built (Sopher, 2010). The Texas Tribune, Thornton said, would not rely on philanthropic foundation support for its survival, but would develop multiple revenue streams. There had to be “revenue promiscuity” because philanthropy alone could not save journalism: the organisation would be run like a business even though the goal was “public service rather than profitability” (Thornton, 2010, para. 8, 9).

The Tribune’s editor-in-chief, Evan Smith, echoed the sentiment: business “had to be in the DNA” for journalism to survive (Phelps, 2011, para. 9). Assistant professor in journalism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Jake Batsell, spent a year at the Texas Tribune from August 2013 to July 2014 as a research fellow funded by the Knight Foundation. He found the Texas Tribune was the “most aggressively entrepreneurial” of the non-profit news start-ups. The organisation was “relentless in unearthing new ways to pay for its journalism”. These included an array of sponsorships and corporate underwriting, native advertising, memberships, events including the Texas Tribune Festival, foundation giving, syndication, crowdfunding and monetising data sets (Batsell, 2015, pp. 14, 16).30

Thornton’s upfront funding enabled the Texas Tribune to employ 15 staff and create digital tools that engaged and attracted readers. It hired fundraisers to target both large

30 The Texas Tribune’s acceptance of donations from lobbyists and corporate sponsors was criticised for influencing its journalism and turning it into a pay-for-play operation. See Chapter Seven and J. Moore (2014).

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and smaller donors, giving it the capacity to “look beyond the immediate demands of the day” (Patel & McLellan, 2011, p. 24). In 2010, Thornton agreed to donate another $1 million in the form of matching grants for gifts of $5000 or more – a pledge that was redeemed fully by 2012. The matching grant formula “drove home the blunt message that the Texas Tribune needed to generate more of its own revenue to survive” (Batsell, 2015, p. 15). The Texas Tribune evolved into one of the stars of the non-profit field due to its large readership, revenue diversity and digital innovations. By 2015, the organisation had almost 50 reporters, editors, designers, technology experts and business people on its staff. It had the biggest statehouse bureau in the United States and hosted more than 50 events, including the Texas Tribune Festival (Texas Tribune, 2015). The organisation won national and regional reporting awards. In 2013, the Texas Tribune’s total revenue increased to $6.7 million, consisting of $331,000 in membership dues, over $1 million from events, subscriptions and content sales, and $5.2 million from grants and gifts (Texas Tribune, 2013b). By the end of 2014, the Texas Tribune had raised more than $27 million in donations, memberships, corporate sponsorships, events and other revenue (Batsell, 2015).

Wealthy businessmen and their contacts invested in new non-profit start-ups elsewhere in the United States: Buzz Woolley invested more than $350,000 in the Voice of San Diego and four families funded MinnPost in Minnesota. Apart from Woolley, whose funding was in 2004–2005, the donations occurred in the panicked atmosphere of the financial crisis and were characterised as attempts to rescue journalism in the face of the “brutalities of the market” (Perry, 2007b, para. 4). Warren Hellman, a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. president and the founder of the private equity firm, Hellman and Friedman, in 2010 provided $5 million from his family foundation to create the Bay Citizen, an online news site in the San Francisco area. His business network helped the start-up raise a further $3.7 million, including three separate million dollar gifts and $250,000 from the Knight Foundation (Rauber, 2010). Hellman earlier had founded a group called the Bay Area News Project due to his concern that the San Francisco Chronicle might fold (Rauber, 2010). The fear was widespread and the prospect that San Francisco could become the first city in the US without a daily newspaper was very real (P. Lewis, 2012). Hellman commissioned McKinsey & Company to evaluate a purchase of the Chronicle, but decided to create a new experiment in non-profit journalism.

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Robert Rosenthal, then newly appointed to lead the Center for Investigative Reporting, recalled Hellman asking him whether he should buy the Chronicle. Rosenthal advised him that he didn’t think it would be a good investment (Rosenthal, 2011). A Harvard Business School MBA and well known in San Francisco as the banjo-playing founder of the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival held at Golden Gate Park, Hellman had donated $100,000 to the Center for Investigative Reporting and assisted Rosenthal by hosting a luncheon with wealthy business people: “His advice to me was not to talk about stories, but about the new model” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 6). The Bay Citizen rapidly gained 8000 members and donors. Following Hellman’s unexpected death in December 2011 and the resignation of key editors, the Bay Citizen merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting and California Watch, under Rosenthal’s leadership (Newton, 2012) to create the biggest non-profit news organisation in the United States with 70 staff (Beaujon, 2012).

Buzz Woolley, a retired venture capitalist and philanthropist, founded the Voice of San Diego with a gift of more than $350,000 (Rainey, 2009). Like other wealthy benefactors of non -profit news sites, he saw his funding as a civic effort to provide information to the community about important matters. Newspapers were still strong at the time (2005) but he believed the public had not been receiving good information, resulting in bad decision making (Schaffer, 2009). He was frustrated that the Los Angeles Times had dropped its San Diego edition (Shaver, 2010). While he had no newspaper experience, he knew how to manage funds (Surowski, 2011). Woolley teamed up with a former columnist and editor who had been fired from the San Diego Union -Tribune, Neil Morgan, (Perry, 2007b) and a former business newspaper editor, Barbara Bry. Scott Lewis, who previously worked with Bry, was later named chief executive officer. Woolley, the son of a reporter, contributed $1.3 million of the organisation’s total of $3.5 million funding by 2009 (Moser-Wellman, 2009). He attracted wealthy colleagues to the non-profit’s board and they became its largest donors. The early injection of capital enabled the Voice of San Diego to employ an editor, two reporters and an office manager. It soon had a development director: “… the first money it got was dedicated to finding more money” (Surowski, 2011, p. 71). In November, 2008, the New York Times reported the Voice of San Diego was doing the type of serious reporting that was once the province of traditional media (Perez -Pena, 2008). In 2014, the Voice of San Diego,

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together with another centre, received a grant of $1.2 million from the Knight Foundation to improve its attraction and retention of donor members (Nieman Journalism Lab, n.d.).

MinnPost was created in 2007 by Joel Kramer, a former editor and publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Kramer was concerned about the state of journalism due to staff cuts at the Star Tribune and the St Paul Pioneer Press, the key newspapers in the Twin Cities (Konieczna, 2013). Kramer teamed up with a former advertising executive and two former chief executives from Cowles Media, which had sold the Star Tribune and other media assets to the McClatchy group for $1.4 billion in 1998. Kramer received an $8 million payout after the McClatchy purchase (Edmonds, 2007). Kramer with his wife, Laurie, and his three partners, invested $850,000 in MinnPost. By 2013, MinnPost was still a relatively small organisation with five full- time and a dozen contract reporters. But in its six-year operation, it appeared to have achieved financial stability. In 2013, it recorded its fourth consecutive annual financial surplus, with revenues of $1.6 million consisting of $483,118 in membership donations, $428,754 in sponsorship and advertising, $253,000 in foundation grants, $195,124 in gross receipts from public events such as MinnRoast, $226,627 in growth capital campaign donations and $30,481 in other revenue. After expenses, it had a surplus of $118,072 and $275,755 cash on hand (MinnPost, 2014a). The non-profit made 25 per cent of its revenue from advertising, 37 per cent from donations, 37 per cent from foundations and one per cent from consulting (Konieczna, 2013). In 2014, it appointed its first publisher, with responsibility for advertising and sponsorship, membership, and administration. The publisher was a former journalist who had an MBA and was a senior associate with McKinsey & Co (Kramer, 2014).

These examples pale in dollar terms compared with the commitment in 2013 of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to provide $250 million into a new media venture based on news and investigative reporting. Media academic and commentator Jay Rosen, who interviewed Omidyar after word of the funding leaked, wrote that the billionaire believed that “if independent, ferocious, investigative journalism isn’t brought to the attention of general audiences it can never have the effect that actually creates a check on power” (Rosen, 2013, para. 6). Lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald earlier in 2013 had revealed the extent of US and British intelligence agency domestic spying for the

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Guardian using information from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. He joined Omidyar’s project in what he described as a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity” (Smith & Gray, 2013, para. 2). He was joined by his collaborator in the Snowden revelations, Laura Poitras and the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill. The three were planning to form their own journalism venture before joining forces with Omidyar (Rosen, 2013).

It was too early in the life of the investment and outside the scope of this thesis to assess the success or impact of Omidyar’s venture. He envisaged creating a new mass media organisation that would empower independent journalists by creating a media platform, and enabling them to pursue truth in their beats (Omidyar, 2013). Four months after news of the $250 million funding, Omidyar announced that New Look Media had been created as a tax deductible non-profit flagship organisation that would have a network of digital magazines, each with its “own editorial voice, its own look and feel’’ (McCarthy, 2014, para. 4). The first of these was the Intercept, led by Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill. Its early stories published further Snowden disclosures. However, management issues and personality clashes in New Look Media resulted in a slowing down of the original plans for the quick creation of multiple outlets. Writer Matt Taibbi, who had been employed to create the Racket digital magazine, quit over disputes with management, including Omidyar. The issues were characterised in an article in the Intercept itself as “a collision between the First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with disdain” (Greenwald, Poitras, Scahill, & Cook, 2014, para. 5; Rice, 2014). At the time of writing, the Racket ha d yet to launch, but staff at the Intercept said that after months of “struggle and negotiation” the nonprofit had a workable budget and full editorial control (Greenwald et al., 2014, para. 27).

Without further research or the opportunity to interview these businessmen, their motivations for creating investigative reporting centres can be gleaned only from the few public statements they made. However, a number of observations can be made. Most obviously, they were not motivated by gaining a financial advantage. They were wealthy already, some extremely so. At least two of them, the Sandlers and Omidyar, had committed to giving away half their fortunes in line with a campaign started by

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multi-billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who persuaded many of their peer billionaires to join the Giving Pledge program (Fowler, 2012). The pledge carried a commitment for signatories to give away half of their fortunes before they died. In signing up to the pledge, the Sandlers, whose foundation was worth $1.3 billion, wrote there was no way to spend a fortune and that the initiative could be a game changer; Omidyar said he wanted to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems (Giving Pledge, n.d.). Giving by billionaires and millionaires is part of a US philanthropic tradition. Those with great wealth who gave nothing to charity were considered odd, even morally defective. Conversely, the quickest way a wealthy person could gain renown and social acceptance was through charitable contributions (Rose, 2003). US industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie wrote in 1899 that a rich person could give his money to his family, bequeath it in his will to good causes or use it in his lifetime to improve society. He felt the third choice was the most sensible and had given away 90 per cent of his fortune by the time he died (Carnegie Corporation of NY, n.d.; Rose, 2003).

A common trait among these founders of investigative non-profit organisations was that they had earned their fortunes, rather than having benefitted from inherited wealth. Omidyar founded eBay; the Sandlers created a banking network; others were venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. They funded new reporting ventures rather than investing in established operations. Warren Hellman had explored the possibility of buying the San Francisco Chronicle; Omidyar had looked at the Washington Post (Rosenthal, 2011). Both changed their minds. Most were concerned about democracy and critical of the mainstream media: they wanted to create a different type of journalism. Unlike some foundations that funded non-profit projects to draw attention to other causes they supported, the businessmen appeared to have no such agenda. They avowed that editors would have editorial freedom to run the journalism side of the organisation.

The Internal Revenue Service

A second subsidiary factor in the creation of non-profit news centres was that the IRS approved non-profit status for investigative reporting organisations. This meant that donations to them were tax deductible and that the organisations were exempted from paying certain taxes. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code provides

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exemptions for organisations involved in charitable, religious, educational, scientific, public safety testing, literary, amateur sports, and prevention of cruelty to children and animals activities (Digital Media Law Project, 2014). The IRS does not have a distinct category for media organisations. The fact that an organisation intended to benefit the public by publishing newsworthy information was not sufficient to obtain tax exempt status (Hermes, 2012). Nor did the IRS have the authority to recognise broad new categories of tax-exempt organisations, such as news outlets. Investigative and public interest news organisations gained non-profit status under a broad education category. It was not surprising then that in their annual returns to the IRS, the organisations emphasised their role in educating the public through high-quality journalism. “The IRS … told us to remove the word ‘journalism’ from anything in our corporate articles because journalism is not considered to be a charitable cause. Education is,” said Institute for Nonprofit News’s former head, Kevin Davis (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

Tax law in this area is complex because the IRS applies federal laws, agency regulations and internal guidelines to determine if applicants are eligible for 501(c)(3) status. The education category was an obvious one for news organisations to target: US federal tax regulations define educational as “the instruction of the public on subjects useful to the individual and beneficial to the community” (Council on Foundations, 2013, p. 9). The IRS had ruled that publishing investigations and analysis for the purpose of achieving higher standards “furthers an educational purpose” (Owens & Nokes, 2013, p. 27). The IRS used a four-part test to determine if activities by news organisations were educational. First, the content of the publication was educational; second, the preparation of the material followed methods generally accepted as educational in character; third, the distribution of the materials was necessary or valuable in achieving the organisation’s educational and scientific purposes; and fourth, the manner in which the distribution was accomplished was distinguishable from ordinary commercial publishing practices (Hermes, 2012). As will be seen, the last of these tests in which the IRS sought to distinguish distribution between non-profit and for-profit publishing was the most troubling for non-profit investigative reporting organisations. The IRS imposed a further test to distinguish education from advocacy. The test correlated well with traditional approaches to investigative journalism that eschew advocacy. The following

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suggested to the IRS that an organisation had an advocacy role rather than an educational one: 1. Whether a significant portion of the communication consisted of “viewpoints unsupported by a relevant factual basis”; 2. Whether the facts relied on are “distorted”; 3. Whether the organisation “makes substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms, expressing conclusions based more on strong emotional feelings than objective factual evaluation”, and 4. Whether the “approach to a subject matter is aimed at developing an understanding on the part of the addressees, by reflecting consideration of the extent to which they have prior background or training” (Owens & Nokes, 2013, p. 28).

In their annual returns to the IRS, many non-profit centres defined their mission as an educational one. The Texas Tribune, for instance, described its mission as promoting civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government and matters of state-wide concern (Texas Tribune, 2013b); the Voice of San Diego said its mission was to educate and inform residents of San Diego (Voice of San Diego, 2010); MinnPost’s activities were “public policy research and education” (MinnPost, 2010, p. 1), and the Center for Investigative Reporting in its 2011 return said its mission was to reveal injustice and abuse of power to provide the public with information needed to participate in democracy (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2011). The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism said its mission included training current and future investigative journalists, and fostering an informed citizenry (Wisconsin990, 2013).

A report by the Council on Foundations reinforced the educational role of non-profit news organisations, arguing that academic research demonstrated that media coverage led to higher voter turnout, better informed public opinion and changes in public policy (Council on Foundations, 2013). IRS approval as a non-profit organisation was important to investigative reporting centres because some foundations did not donate to organisations without official non-profit status, and individual donors often only donated when they could get a tax deduction. Centres that did not have 501(c)(3) status could find a fiscal sponsor, usually another centre with tax exempt status, to accept donations on their behalf but then faced having to pay fees for the service. Fiscal

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sponsorship was not as attractive to foundations and wealthy benefactors as centres with approved non-profit status. Some foundations’ policies prevented them from donating to fiscally sponsored projects (Griffith, 2013).

Non-profit organisations were frustrated at delays by the IRS31 in determining the outcome of their applications for tax deductibility and what they saw as inconsistency in the agency’s determinations. A journalism academic at Northeastern University wrote in 2013 that the IRS had “virtually stopped” approving 501(c)(3) status for non-profit news organisations (Kennedy, 2013, para. 2). The delays risked news organisations losing charitable revenue and generated concerns about approaching commercial partners. They were left in an “organizational purgatory” (University of California, 2012, p. 14). Delays were said to be behind the closure of the Chicago News Cooperative in 2012 when an anticipated MacArthur Foundation grant did not eventuate. MacArthur told the cooperative it could provide specific project funding but not a general grant until the IRS approved full non-profit status. The non-profit cooperative closed soon after (Miner, 2012).

Kevin Davis from the Institute for Nonprofit News said that several of the network’s members had waited two years for the IRS to process their applications (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). The underlying issue of whether journalism fitted under the education provision of the US Tax Code that defined non- profit organisations had not been resolved. Davis estimated that about 70 per cent of the investigative network’s members had 501(c)(3) status. But the IRS had “never really fully been comfortable with granting non-profit status to journalism outlets” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

There were more than 500 non-profit organisations with the word journalism in their names that had been recognised as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) (Council on Foundations, 2013).32 It may be the case, that the IRS was inundated with applications from newly formed investigative and public interest news organisations between 2009

31 In July 2014, the IRS replaced the detailed form required for 501(c)(3) status with a simpler three-page form for organisations with less than $50,000 in annual revenue and assets less than $250,000. The move generated hope for a faster process for small non-profit news applications (Ellis, 2014a).

32 Some of these organisations may focus on journalism education.

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and 2012 and either struggled to process them or wanted to formulate policy on how to treat them.

A study by the Council on Foundations, which represents 1700 grant-making foundations and corporations, found delays of up to three years, an inconsistent approach and said that rejections for tax-exempt status were based on the IRS applying antiquated and counter-productive standards to a dynamic sector (Council on Foundations, 2013). The Council on Foundations recommended the IRS shift its focus from operational distinctions between non-profits and for-profits. It argued these now were irrelevant due to communications technology. Instead, the IRS should determine whether a media organisation was involved in educational activities that provided a community benefit, as opposed to advancing private interests, and whether it was organised and managed as a non-profit tax-exempt organisation. An example of the operational distinctions was that the IRS framework required “the manner in which the distribution (of nonprofit media) is accomplished must be distinguishable from ordinary commercial publishing practices” (Council on Foundations, 2013, p. 3). The report said this requirement was inappropriate in the internet age. Kevin Davis asked: “What’s the difference between an investigative news network’s website, the New York Times’s website or Hustler’s website? You could make the argument that they all effectively use the exact same methodology, the difference of course is the content, not the means” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

Davis said that while foundations pressed non-profit organisations to be more entrepreneurial and to diversify their revenue streams, the IRS frowned upon non-profit organisations undertaking unrelated business activities such as advertising. The ability of non-profit investigative organisations to advertise and raise revenue through sales or subscriptions was limited because the IRS rejected applications from organisations whose revenue models mirrored, even in part, those of their for-profit counterparts. Examples of rejections based on earned revenue, as cited by the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard University, included a non-profit organisation that was formed to publish a newsletter on civic, social, business and other news being denied an exemption even though it was distributed for free, received no contributions or grants but set a percentage of each page for advertising. A second instance was a free

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community newspaper that planned to unite men and women in social work but was to be supported by advertising (Hermes, 2012).

Non-profit publications could advertise as long as the amount was considered insubstantial and the profits were counted as unrelated business income tax (Hermes, 2012). However, smaller organisations might struggle to understand the phrase unrelated business income or even what was meant by insubstantial (Waldman, 2011). Another potentially difficult aspect of having tax-exempt status was that non-profit organisations were prohibited from participating or intervening in political campaigns or from substantially indulging in activities such as propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation (Digital Media Law Project, 2014), though the ban on influencing legislation was not absolute (Waldman, 2011). Once again, this area of tax law was complex and concerning to many non-profit news executives. Some feared that even publishing commentary on legislation could jeopardise their tax status. “This potentially chills free speech and makes it harder for a non-profit media entity to do its job – covering important news and civic issues – and restricts development of sustainable business models” (Waldman, 2011, p. 353). A tax professor warned that publishing “even a small amount” of a political candidate’s statements could jeopardise tax-exempt status (Waldman, 2011, p. 329). A key recommendation by a US Federal Communications Commission report was that policy makers recognise that removing ambiguities in the tax code was potentially a crucial step toward enabling non-profit organisations to develop sustainable business models (Waldman, 2011). On a positive note for non -profit organisations, US Department of the Treasury regulations specified that making the results of non-partisan analysis or research available to the public would not disqualify them from an exemption (Hermes, 2012).

The ability of media organisations to achieve tax-exempt status in the United States historically had assisted the growth of major non-profit media organisations such as the Associated Press, Mother Jones, The National Review Foundation, Wikipedia, the Washington Monthly, NPR and others. Despite the recent delays, confusion and frustrations experienced by some non-profit news organisations and the need to be educational, the IRS’s acceptance of tax deductibility was a critical factor in the creation and growth of non-profit centres.

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Individual donors

The third factor identified in this thesis as promoting the creation of non-profit investigative organisations was support from the public through small and medium donations. For several of the 20 non-profit news organisations analysed by the Knight Foundation in 2013, individual donations and membership dues were the fastest growing source of revenue (Knight Foundation, 2015). Median annual revenue from donations almost doubled from $33,000 in 2012 to $60,000 in 2013, though the amounts were far less than the funding from foundations. The average number of donors for the 20 sites rose from 498 in 2011 to 757 in 2013. Big earners of donation revenue were the Texas Tribune, which raised $1.4 million, and MinnPost, which raised $709,745. The Knight Foundation report found that older organisations such as the Texas Tribune and MinnPost generated a greater share of revenue from donations and other earned income, making them less reliant on foundation funding. Non-profit organisations that were more than seven years old earned 34 per cent of their revenue from donations and memberships compared with just three per cent for organisations less than five years old and 17 per cent for organisations between five and seven years old (Knight Foundation, 2015). These figures indicate that a number of non-profit organisations had successfully diversified their income streams but that doing so had taken considerable time.

Non-profit organisations devoted more energy trying to engage readers through events, membership experiences and personal contact than did traditional media. These activities, some of which fitted the IRS’s educational purposes criteria, focused on converting readers into donors. Public media – well known in the United States for their on-air funding drives – and Mother Jones’s subscribers were held up as models for eliciting greater public support. NPR’s member radio stations in 2013 received 34 per cent of their funding from individual donations or listeners (NPR, n.d.). Mother Jones raised more than $3 million of its $9.3 million in revenues directly from subscribers (Mother Jones, n.d.). The Institute for Nonprofit News’s Kevin Davis said that like NPR, investigative non-profit organisations had to be “highly authentic to a subgroup of citizens and then (have) the ability to take an even smaller percentage of them and get them to start paying for it” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Foundations also suggested that in the longer term, investigative non-profit sites should

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focus on attracting civically engaged donors and subscribers. “Communities and families who care about justice, who care about equality, who care about government transparency and accountability, one way to ensure that is to invest in these types of new start-ups that are covering these issues”, said a foundation program director (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012).

NPR and Mother Jones have significant support from citizen donors, but both built their support base over several decades. In contrast, investigative non-profit organisations have focused on building relations with foundations, wealthy individual donors and publishing partners. The idea of attracting income from citizens might work at local levels where organisations could build closer relationships with their audiences. It was unlikely, however, to succeed for national non-profit organisations. “We’re not like NPR”, ProPublica’s editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg told a conference. ProPublica did not have the infrastructure to “bludgeon” people with funding drives (Harris, 2012, para. 3).

In a bid to attract funding and create communities of interest, investigative centres displayed the names of big and small donors on their websites, usually categorised by the size of their giving. Several offered donors memberships with civic engagement benefits such as free or cheaper entry to panel discussions on contemporary issues, talks by public figures, cocktail parties attended by influential local identities and so on. The Texas Tribune, which led the way in this type of engagement, hosted more than 50 events each year, including the Texas Tribune Festival (Texas Tribune, 2015). Its original goal was to raise $1 million based on 10,000 people giving it an average of $100. It attracted about 1600 donors. Founder John Thornton recognised that this was an area in which the least progress had been made (Sopher, 2010).

Donors and subscribers to non-profit news organisations generally were people who were disappointed by legacy news coverage and who also supported public radio and television (Powers & Yaros, 2013). They attended panels and other events organised by non-profit organisations. Mostly over 50 years of age, they overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party and lived in the same metropolitan areas as the non-profit publication. Interviews with 40 non-profit donors indicated that half felt a close personal connection or a greater sense of investment after donating. They valued a rich

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civic life and valued political participation and engagement with one another as well as with editors and reporters (Powers & Yaros, 2013). A survey of Texas Tribune readers in 2012 found that 91 per cent were college graduates, 96 per cent voted in the last election and 52 per cent had a household income of more than $100,000: a “smart, affluent audience that appeals to potential sponsors and advertisers” (Batsell, 2015, p. 20).

Voice of San Diego’s editor in chief Scott Lewis urged donors to give to non-profit investigative centres in a similar way they support the opera, museums and orchestras. “We don’t count on mass traffic, but rather a level of loyalty” (Downie & Schudson, 2009, p. 36). A survey of 465 donors to non-profit organisations33 found the most common amount donated was $100 or less (41 per cent of total donations). The number of donors decreased rapidly as the amounts increased: between $101 and $250 (29 per cent), between $251 and $500 (13 per cent), $501 and $999 (8 per cent), $1000 and $2499 (3 per cent) and $2500 or more (3 per cent) (Powers & Yaros, 2013). The survey said that quality of journalism, including the writing, depth, timeliness and fairness (lack of bias), were the key motivating factors for people to donate. Forty per cent said a sense of community among readers had motivated their giving. The authors, Elia Powers and Ronald Yaros from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, warned that foundation funding was likely to decline in future and that increasing individual donations was crucial to the long-term sustainability of non-profit organisations. The survival of non-profit local news centres depended on “turning as many of the consumers of their digital product as possible into habitual donors” and attracting younger donors (Powers & Yaros, 2013, p. 165). Events involving the public, donors and non -profit staff built a sense of community and provided an opportunity for existing donors to encourage others to give. Just as foundation program directors gave grants for the sake of democracy or coverage in an area of interest to them rather than to watchdog journalism per se, investigative non-profit sites found that donors were not that motivated by support for investigative journalism. They donated in exchange for the stories they read rather than in support of an organisation or its mission. “Overwhelmingly [our donors] don’t say they give us money, they say they pay for a

33 The Lens, the St Louis Beacon, the Austin Bulldog and MinnPost

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service they feel that they owe money for” said one non-profit chief executive (Sopher, 2010, p. 16).

This finding aligns with a comparative study of giving in the United States and the United Kingdom that characterised the ethos of US giving as generosity and that of the United Kingdom as altruism (Wright, 2002). The study by research associate Karen Wright for the London-based Centre for Civil Society found that American gifts were heavily interlaced with socially approved self-interest with the bulk of the donations going to organisations with which donors were personally involved such as a university, church or hospital. Relevant to the foundations that are the focus of this thesis, Wright argues that US giving is interlaced with self-interest, either directly through tax benefits, benefits from the supported organisation or indirectly though the achievement of social goals. Its moral motivation is both individual initiative and reciprocity (Wright, 2002, p. 23).

In the United Kingdom, people gave to those less well-off and often very different to them through international aid, medical research, child and family welfare, religion, heritage and animals. The study characterised this type of giving as altruistic in that it was selfless, more private than in the United States and more peripheral to social identity and civic responsibility. Its moral motivation was collective duty – a foreign concept in the United States – just as enlightened self-interest would not translate in the United Kingdom.34 A combination of factors such as the expectations of public and private agents, attitudes to wealth and money, tax policy, and the strength of fundraising practices and institutions created a “unique and comparatively fertile climate for giving in the United States … clearly the climate is not the same in Britain …” (Wright, 2002, p. 22).

Appreciation of quality journalism and an obligation to pay for it aside, tax deductibility may have played a role in public giving. Kevin Davis believed deductibility had a “significant bearing” though less than other factors. It influenced the size of the donation (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Tax deductibility was an “added incentive for donors” (Downie & Schudson, 2009, p. 78). A Maryland

34 Acs and Phillips (2002) argue the opposite: that altruism is superior to enlightened self-interest as a motivator in the United States and that US history provides examples of that.

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University Journalism College dean said that individual donors were more likely to donate to tax-exempt non-profits because they could make a charitable deduction on their income tax (Griffith, 2013). Non-profit status under the tax laws signalled to donors that the managers and journalists involved were more likely to focus on maximising impact and import rather than financial returns (Hamilton, 2009).

For non-profit journalists who once worked in established media, close engagement with community members might have been a novel experience. They had joined non- profit news organisations to do investigative stories, not be event organisers or participants. Nevertheless, non-profit organisations viewed closer engagement with readers and local communities as a vital but underdeveloped area and were likely to continue experimenting with ways to enhance the relationship and revenues from that source. The development of closer community ties resonated with the public or civic journalism espoused by Jay Rosen and others in the mid-1990s as it sought to consult readers, address public concerns and facilitate solutions (Cook, 2005; Rosen, 1999). “Not only is that important for the business model, it may well lead to better engagement, better impact, and better journalism”, said Mayur Patel, the lead author of a Knight Foundation report on the sustainability of non-profit news organisations (McCambridge, 2013, para. 8). Just how strongly non-profit centres focus on local engagement in the end may depend on the size and socio-economic profile of their local populations. A finding that only two per cent of donors surveyed identified as Republican Party supporters (Powers & Yaros, 2013) should raise questions among non- profit executives who insist their journalism is politically neutral, which does not appear to be the view of conservatives.

University partnerships

A different model for non-profit investigative journalism involved centres locating at American university campuses and interrelating with the field of tertiary education. Eighteen non-profit news organisations had links with universities in 2014 operating under a variety of agreements. Such partnerships served the dual purpose of publishing investigative stories and inculcating “core journalistic values and technical know-how in new generations of reporters and editors” (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 216). Generally speaking, these centres relied on foundation funding and support from universities.

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They offered students internships and the opportunity to work with professional journalists. Journalists at some centres taught courses such as investigative reporting and data journalism or provided specialist teaching.

The partnerships that investigative centres formed with universities provided the fourth secondary factor identified as assisting the expansion of the non-profit subfield. Universities had a number of advantages over other models. “The absence of corporate interference, government control, daily deadline pressures or the need to attract advertising places universities in a strong position to produce quality investigative journalism” (Birnbauer, 2011, para. 1). Other observers cited the advantage of having young aggressive students working for the experience rather than pay, along with the provision of office space often for no or little cost (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010). Universities offered credibility, accommodation and back-office financing (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). Campuses had buildings, offices, libraries, databases, video and other expensive equipment and “earnest and exuberant students” (C. Lewis, 2013b, para. 7).

For universities, the presence of professional journalists opened the possibility of reporters taking classes and creating high profile projects with students that attracted public attention and improved educational opportunities (Houston, 2009). “Journalism schools, only five years ago viewed as out of synch with journalism professionals and behind the times, are leading the way today” (Rowe, 2011, p. 16). A further advantage was that university-affiliated centres could channel funding through universities that already had tax deductibility for donors. The Investigative Reporting Workshop, based in the School of Communication at American University, operated “under the 501(c)(3) designation of American University” (Investigative Reporting Workshop, 2013, para. 6). A university link might help persuade the IRS of a centre’s educational credentials if it sought its own tax status as a non-profit organisation. One San Francisco non-profit organisation was told by an IRS official that non-profit journalism would be more readily approved if it were grown out of a university or a community education centre. “In other words, journalism itself is not sufficiently educational but could be tolerated if associated with an organization that was” (Council on Foundations, 2013, p. 9). University non-profit partnerships had a variety of origins: some were created by universities wanting to expand their teaching offerings; others were initiated by non-

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profit centres seeking a low-cost home and the prestige of a university’s brand; others were instigated by foundations (Rowe, 2011).

University affiliations also had potential drawbacks as the game and the players in the academic field differed markedly in habitus and doxa from those in the subfield of investigative reporting (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The interests of a university and a non-profit news centre could at times diverge and create conflict, and universities might risk legal action due to the publication or activities of partnering with investigative centres. David Protess, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for 29 years and head of the Innocence Project, departed in 2011 after falling out with the university’s administration. His work with students on Innocence Project stories was credited with exonerating at least 12 wrongly convicted defendants, including five who were on death row, as well as leading to the abolition of death row in Illinois (Carr & Schwartz, 2011). The events that led to his departure were too internecine and complex to be detailed in this thesis. They involved personality clashes, accusations and denials from multiple parties and legal issues. I interviewed Protess while in the United States but did not have an opportunity to interview the other parties. Briefly, when the Cook County State Attorney subpoenaed the notes, memos, emails and academic transcripts of Protess’s students who had investigated wrongful convictions, he refused to hand them over. The university later released the documents and accused Protess of making misleading statements to the dean and to the university’s lawyers (K. Davis, 2012).

Protess told me his interest to protect the documents from disclosure was at odds with the university’s interest in handing them over in order to make the issue go away. “I think that there are very few university centres that could withstand a subpoena by prosecutors who are intent on destroying the centre, because that in turn will produce enough bad publicity for the university that the university will cave” (D. Protess, personal communication, February 15, 2012). Prior to the events that led to his leaving the university, Protess was “under the illusion” that a university would provide a safe haven for the Innocence Project. He believed that a university “was probably the most independent institution we had in our society. It is, after all, where research goes on that is cutting-edge, that challenges conventional thinking, that thinks outside … scholars

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are hired to think outside the box” (D. Protess, personal communication, February 15, 2012).

The case may be unique due to its circumstances and the personalities involved – Protess described it as “the perfect storm” – but I raise it as a cautionary tale about colliding cultures and values.35 In early 2015, it was reported that a man who was convicted of a double murder following an investigation by Protess and his students that resulted in another person’s conviction for those murders being overturned had sued Protess, Northwestern University’s journalism school and lawyers for a total of $40 million in compensatory damages. The man who was convicted following the students’ investigations later also had the convictions overturned after spending 15 years in jail. The Cook County State Attorney accused the students of using “alarming tactics”. The 2015 lawsuit said Northwestern had permitted a “culture of lawlessness to thrive in Protess’ investigative journalism classes and investigations” (Main, 2015, para. 7). Once again, this raised questions in my mind about the appropriateness of involving university students in the type of investigative journalism that Australian Emeritus Professor of political science at Sydney University, Rodney Tiffen, describes as “revelations of wrong doing”. Compared with the other two types of investigative reporting – of neglected issues and reconstructions or revisions of major events – that type of reporting entailed uncertainty and conflict (Tiffen, 1999, p. 33). One could readily imagine that university administrations would not regard such activities as a core purpose.

Journalism, and particularly investigative journalism, regularly attracts legal threats from lawyers representing the targets of stories as well as subpoenas and court hearings. Media lawyers hired by news outlets work with reporters to confront and resolve the issues. It is part of the routine of serious newsrooms. However, legal threats, the prospect of public court hearings and publicity may lead to a university administration’s interests coming before those of a non-profit centre. Universities, with a duty of care for students, might also be concerned about students facing the prospect of legal action arising from stories on which they had worked. University of Illinois journalism

35 In December 2014, the Lens departed its offices at Loyola University. There was a suggestion the move followed the non-profit’s critical reporting of the university’s president. This was denied by the university, which said it needed the space (New Orleans Advocate, 2014).

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professor Brant Houston said university lawyers could be “so cautious that it is not practical to carry out some investigative projects” (Houston, 2009, p. 3). Journalists also found dealing with university bureaucracy was “like swimming in molasses” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 9, 2010). Another potential problem was that universities might prevent non-profit centres from raising funds through sponsorships or offering other services (Lieberman, 2016).

The brief examples below of university-based investigative journalism enterprises were selected to highlight the variety of different models operating in the United States. It is not an exhaustive sampling, as there are likely to be other models in existence. Two were chosen because I had the opportunity to interview their directors while in the United States. I became aware of the others through my readings and interviews. The centres are the Investigative Reporting Workshop, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting and several operations that are based on investigative reporters working in the tertiary education field.

Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University

The Investigative Reporting Workshop based at American University’s School of Communication was proposed by the veteran non-profit investigative journalist Charles Lewis in 2007 and began publishing in 2009. Lewis arrived at American University with near legendary social capital in the non-profit investigative subfield. He had created the Center for Public Integrity (see next Chapter) and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was the founding president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism, and with others, helped to create the Investigative News Network (see below). His reputation and experience in the non-profit journalism subfield and, in particular, his long relationship with philanthropic foundations, resulted in the workshop becoming the largest university-based centre in the United States (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 216). It is highly unlikely that any other player could have achieved what he had with the workshop over the same period of time, making it something of an outlier in the university non-profit news area. By 2014, Lewis had raised $9.6 million from 24 foundations (Investigative Reporting Workshop, 2013). The centre employed five senior professional journalists, two of whom had won Pulitzer Prizes, and had

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numerous part-time staff. PBS’s Frontline established a studio with two producers at the workshop, operating as a production unit for investigative documentaries. Lewis’s long involvement in the field also cemented multiple collaborations with quality legacy media and online outlets. The workshop commissioned senior external writers to work on in-depth projects, often in collaboration with mainstream publishers. One such project was “What went wrong”, a series by veteran journalists Don Barlett and Jim Steele that documented middle-class economic woes at the hands of corporations. The writers later developed it into a book and a documentary (Investigative Reporting Workshop, 2013). Lewis was able to achieve innovative funding arrangements across the journalistic, education and economic fields. In 2013, he announced that experienced reporter John Sullivan would be an investigative reporter on the Washington Post, a member of the journalism faculty in the School of Communication and a senior editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Funding for the arrangement was part of a $500,000 agreement between the Ford Foundation and the Washington Post to improve local and national enterprise reporting (C. Lewis, 2013a).

As part of an agreement with American University, Lewis and several other workshop journalists had academic appointments to teach in American University’s School of Communication. Graduate students were hired to work as paid researchers and writers for the workshop, often pairing with professional journalists. A number of graduate students from other universities were offered fellowships as paid interns. Undergraduate students could also be placed at the workshop and achieve academic credit for their work. Lewis established a research arm, ILab, to report on and conduct research on trends and issues in journalism (C. Lewis et al., 2012).

Lewis found benefit in being located in a university setting. Journalists Don Barlett and Jim Steele had worked together as an investigative team since the early 1970s, winning dozens of national awards and two Pulitzer Prizes. Books on investigative reporting described them as the best team in the history of investigative reporting and the most systemic and thorough reporters in the United States (Barlett & Steele, n.d.). In 1991 Barlett and Steele wrote a landmark nine-part series “America: what went wrong” for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Lewis wanted epic-sized projects and felt more confident approaching the two reporters to revisit the “What went wrong” series than he might have if he were based at a stand-alone centre. “I had a feeling I could work with people

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like that, partly because of the university platform of being at a university in the nation’s capital. They never really were willing or able to do stuff with me at the Center [for Public Integrity], but a group is different than a university, and so I felt that I had a stronger, bigger platform in a way, a national university in the nation’s capital” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 9, 2010). In other words, the cultural capital of an institution such as American University provided the gravitas Lewis felt was needed to commission the series.

In contrast, university bureaucracies were more cumbersome and much slower in making decisions than investigative centres, resulting in frustrating delays and irritation. “The idea of going through seven people to get an answer for anything is bothersome … To be encumbered all the time by ducks nibbling at my ankles, it drives me up the wall” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 9, 2010). At one stage he considered re- establishing the workshop as an independent 501(c)(3) entity, a move that did not eventuate and would not have been welcomed by the university.

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, launched in 2004, was the first investigative reporting centre in the United States to be based at a university (Schuster Institure for Investigative Journalism, 2014). Unlike the broader range of reporting topics at Lewis’s centre, it focused mainly on issues of social justice and human rights, areas of passionate concern to its founder, Florence Graves. The institute was funded by donations from philanthropists Elaine and Gerald Schuster, a local real estate developer with close ties to the Democratic Party (Mehta & Stone, 2011).

Much like Lewis and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, the driving force behind the Schuster Institute involved a champion – Florence Graves. She was an experienced investigative journalist before starting the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Graves founded Common Cause magazine in the 1980s, which became the highest circulation investigative magazine in the nation and won a prestigious National Magazine Award. In the 1990s, she investigated a number of political scandals, most famously for the Washington Post complaints of sexual misconduct against Senator Bob

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Packwood (Investigating Power, 2011). Her stories led to the senator’s censure and resignation (Graves & Konieczna, 2015).

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism focused on three areas: political and social justice, including human trafficking and modern slavery; an Innocence Project examining potential wrongful convictions; and a gender and justice project. Graves cited clear advantages to being in a university environment that honoured freedom of inquiry, and was independent of government and corporate influence (Schuster Institure for Investigative Journalism, 2014). Despite having only a handful of reporting and research staff, the institute’s stories were published in leading mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. This was achieved partly through innovative collaborations involving the institute’s senior fellows and mainstream publishers. Fellows appointed by the institute were independent journalists – one worked for public media – who investigated and wrote about humanitarian issues and government accountability for the established media or non- fiction books.

A Schuster fellowship provided an intellectual home, access to Brandeis University’s databases, some research assistance from students, editorial support, enhanced online display of their work and marketing opportunities. When their stories were published in mainstream outlets or aired on public radio, the institute’s website carried additional background information, stories and links on related issues as well as graphics and other supplemental material. The model developed by Graves had obvious advantages and support for independent journalists who often had little contact with busy commissioning editors in the mainstream media. Schuster’s staff were not involved in teaching. Students worked at the institute as research assistants for journalists. Students in the journalism program at the university’s American Studies Department could interact with the Shuster Institute for Investigative Journalism in one of three ways: by earning internship credits toward a journalism minor, being paid for partnering with a scholar on a research project or being hired directly.

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The New England Centre for Investigative Reporting at Boston University

The New England Centre for Investigative Reporting was founded in 2009 by two veteran Boston-based investigative reporters, Joe Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill, along with senior staff from Boston University’s College of Communication. A novel aspect of the centre’s operations was that it developed training programs for high school and international students, which covered about 45 per cent of its operating costs. Content sales, income from subscribers to a monthly investigative report (New England Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d.), and contributions from Boston University contributed a further 20 per cent of revenue (Lapin, 2013). Staff taught Boston University’s journalism students for which the College of Communication contributed $60,000 each year to the centre’s $880,000 budget (Lapin, 2013). The Knight Foundation gave the centre $650,000 over three years to put it on a stable financial footing (Knight Foundation, 2012). The centre maintained its partnership with the university after creating a different model36 in 2013 when it co-located and agreed to share staff resources with a Boston public radio and television outlet, WBGH. By 2014, it had nine part-time and full-time staff and about half a dozen student interns. The centre was supported by nine foundations that contributed about one-third of its revenue (Lapin, 2013).

WGBH is a substantial public broadcaster in New England with 11 public television services and three public radio stations. It was PBS’s single largest producer of television, online and mobile content. Its studios produced programs for Frontline, Masterpiece (Downton Abbey and Sherlock, for example), Nova as well as several educational series among many others. When the public broadcaster sought to build new studios in 2002, contributions from 25,000 donors raised $64 million (WBGH, n.d.). Its 10-month revenue in 2013 was $152.3 million, with $84.3 million from grants and contracts and $21.5 million from individual donations. Only three per cent of it income was from foundations (WBGH, 2014). Its newsroom had 42 staff, including 16 full-time reporters (Lapin, 2013). The partnership between WGBH and the New England Centre for Investigative Reporting was seen as a way of bolstering the public broadcaster’s

36 The inewsource non-profit organisation in San Diego partners with KPBS public media. The non-profit is located at the San Diego State University and its staff teach in the university’s School of Journalism and Media Studies.

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investigative reporting capacity and expanding exposure of the centre’s stories to programs like Frontline and Public Radio International’s The World (Lapin, 2013).

Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University

The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, New York, in 2006 established the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism to offer students a specialised track for a Master’s degree. Of the models discussed in this section, the centre was the most closely integrated with a university. Each year between 15 to 18 students from up to 100 applicants were accepted into the course. Successful students attended classes on computer-assisted reporting and investigative journalism, then spent about six months on an investigative project for their degree, advised by senior staff and experts in digital, radio and documentary platforms (S. Coronel, personal communication, February 13, 2014). Students were expected to complete several assignments but the key was to produce investigative stories that would be published in mainstream outlets. Once their assignments were completed, students who had successfully pitched their projects to media would be offered a paid internship to upgrade their stories for publication. Student work had been published in Salon, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, PBS, NPR and local outlets. Two projects were published as book-length investigations (Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, n.d.). Sheila Coronel, who heads the program, said three projects had received front- page treatment in the New York Times in the previous three years. The opportunity to publish in the New York Times meant the centre inevitably lost some editorial control over the final version. “If they publish under the Times, I can’t say ‘this is how you should do it’, so they [students] have to work with the Times editor to develop and write the project as the Times sees fit” (S. Coronel, personal communication, February 13, 2012). Coronel was one of the founders of the Philippines Center for Investigative Reporting and a highly experienced investigative editor, reporter and author. The Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism’s funding was from an endowment from alumna and former investigative reporter Toni Stabile, whose late brother was wealthy and left her money. Students paid $42,000 to attend.

These cooperative ventures were examples of university-based investigative journalism models and there are numerous others. For example, Lowell Bergman, co-founder of the

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Center for Investigative Reporting and a producer and correspondent for PBS’s Frontline, taught investigative reporting at the University of California’s Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley for two decades. He used student journalists in collaborations with the New York Times and Frontline (University of California, 2014). Brant Houston, from the College of Media at Illinois, received a $75,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation to create a collaborative reporting network of students and lecturers at Midwest universities (Illinois College of Media, 2010). The News21 program brought together students from a dozen US universities to partner on investigative stories over 10 weeks during the mid-year summer break. In the spring semester, the students engaged in a weekly webcast seminar that briefed them on a topic that would be investigated and written during the summer when they met at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona University. Their work was supervised by experienced news professionals such as Professor Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of the Washington Post (News21, n.d.). The program was funded jointly by the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Institute for Nonprofit News

The fifth factor that supported the growth of non-profit investigative journalism was the creation of what is now called the Institute for Nonprofit News. Located about 40 minutes’ drive from Los Angeles, the Institute for Nonprofit News is a relatively small organisation that has played an increasingly important role in the non-profit subfield. Its board of directors include respected players in the field: Charles Lewis, Brant Houston, Robert Rosenthal and others with high levels of social and cultural capital. It has collaborative relationships with the Knight Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation and other key organisations. Its chief executive between its founding in 2009 and 2015 was Kevin Davis, whose previous experience was in the strategic development and growth of online news and media organisations. The institute grew rapidly since 2009 when it had 27 members to 104 members at the time of writing (Institute for Nonprofit News, n.d.). Its total income, mainly from eight foundations and fiscal sponsorship, was $3.2 million in 2014 (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014b).

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The institute provides invaluable practical tools and advice to journalists establishing not-for-profit newsrooms. It developed an online content management system for non- profit organisations, developed a social media fundraising tool, acted as a fiscal 501(c)(3) sponsor for newly formed centres, offered members preferred premium and subsidised insurance cover for media liability and other insurance, and promoted collaborations on investigative projects (Institute for Nonprofit News, n.d.). In early 2014, the institute launched the $1 million Knight Foundation-funded INNovation Fund that would assist non-profits to develop new revenue streams, experiment with technology and move to long-term stability.

The Institute for Nonprofit News also provided the non-profit subfield with a framework for ethical practice. It created standards that required donors of more than $1000 to be identified on its members’ websites. Member organisations needed to have tax exempt status or a fiscal sponsor. Their journalism and information had to be nonpartisan in character. Reports could not be based on or “influenced by or supportive of the interests or policies of any single political party or political viewpoint or any single religion or religious viewpoint”. The only lobbying allowed was on freedom of information and press freedom issues (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014a, para. 11). These standards had a subsidiary effect in that they created a brand and level of integrity that offered comfort to mainstream partners (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012).

The idea for the Institute for Nonprofit News originated at a dinner in Washington that was attended by Robert Rosenthal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, Bill Buzenberg from the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis from the Investigative Reporting Workshop, Jon Sawyer from the Pulitzer Centre for International Reporting, Melinda Wittstock of Capitol News Connection, and National Security Archive executive director Tom Blanton (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010). It was discussed soon after with additional organisations at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in June 2009 and was the central issue at a meeting soon after at the Pocantino Center, north of Manhattan. It was there that Charles Lewis presented what has become known as the Pocantino Declaration: “I was the one who made the pitch to the group that this was something we must do, we must create this thing”, Lewis told me (Institute for Nonprofit News (2009); C. Lewis, personal

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communication, November 8, 2010). The declaration began with an assertion that investigative reporting “so crucial to a functioning democracy, is under threat” (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2009, para. 4). As demonstrated in Chapter Two, this echoed similar statements by Lewis and other non-profit advocates, including foundations, during the financial crisis. The declaration nominated ways in which non-profit organisations could collaborate on editorial, administrative and financial issues. A committee was created to prepare grant applications, design and construct a website and develop standards for network members. The institute has been a significant force in the development of business models, training and editorial collaboration in the field. Membership provided assurance to media and foundations that a non-profit organisation was a serious player that abided by the subfield’s rules and conventions. An unintended result of its formation was that the institute competed for foundation funding with its founding organisations. “That’s what is a little awkward, but the truth is, we love INN [Institute for Nonprofit News], we want that to work” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication November 11, 2010).

Mood of the nation

The sixth and final factor is more speculative than those preceding it and deserves further study. It is that the political, economic and social environment associated with the financial crisis may have helped spawn the birth of non-profit investigative reporting centres. The primary factors described in previous chapters, including concern about the impact of a weakened traditional media on democracy, the shift of senior editors to the non-profit field, the donation of millions of dollars to non-profit news organisations by foundations and the secondary factors listed above, have led some players to liken the period since around 2008–2009 as a golden era for watchdog journalism. Kevin Davis said: “… my long-term belief is we’re going to look back at this as potentially a new golden era … in investigative journalism, absolutely” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Others argued that despite the grim outlook for newspapers, more great journalism was being produced than ever and that journalism had entered a golden age (Blodget, 2013). More investigative and semi- investigative reporting was being done even in the years preceding the financial crisis than since the muckraker era, and more journalists were involved (Aucoin, 2005, p. 2).

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When media academics, historians and journalists refer to a golden era for investigative journalism, they usually cite the muckraker era between 1902–1912 and the reporting from the 1960s and 1970s broadly covering the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and Watergate (Feldstein, 2006; Goodwin, 2013; Protess et al., 1991; Steiger, 2014). Some scholars dispute this standard version of history, noting that the traditions of investigative journalism preceded the muckrakers and that this analysis excluded the work of people such as Jessica Mitford, I.F. Stone, Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, small- circulation opinion magazines, books and a few newspapers following the muckraker era (Aucoin, 2005; Lanosga, 2011; Shapiro, 2003). Others regard the notion of a golden age as “historical fallacy” (C. Anderson et al., 2012, Section 1, para. 18). A number of large journalistic organisations at the time did “some very big things while everybody else did nothing … we tend to pick these eras based on extraordinary performance rather than on average performance” (R. Picard, personal communication, July 10, 2014). Paul Steiger, a founder and the executive chairman of ProPublica and a former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, felt the current era did not match with the other two: “… creating millions of lone-wolf, single-person bloggers doesn’t get us to a golden age” (Steiger, 2014, para. 42).

It is not intended here to provide a content analysis or direct comparison of the journalism or achievements of Progressive Era muckrakers such as Lincoln Steffens, who exposed municipal corruption in The Shame of the Cities; Ida Tarbell, who documented the crimes of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in a 19-part series in McClure’s magazine and later in a book; Upton Sinclair, working undercover in Chicago meat-packing plants to write, The Jungle (Feldstein, 2006), nor the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with their Watergate revelations nor Seymour Hersh for exposing the My Lai massacre nor Neil Sheehan who reported on the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. However, US investigative journalism has historically ebbed and flowed (Downie, 2012) and it is relevant to briefly conjecture that the three periods, which I have called for the sake of easy description – muckraker, Watergate and non-profit – had a combination of social, economic, technological and political aspects in common that may have stimulated interest in, and production of, investigative journalism.

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Mark Feldstein, a US journalism professor and former reporter, in 2006 developed a muckraking model in an attempt to better understand the conditions under which investigative journalism flourished (Feldstein, 2006). He identified four categories of variables, “archetypes conceived to facilitate understanding and analysis” (Feldstein, 2006, p. 114) that are summarised below: 1. A period in which demand and supply of investigative journalism was high: ignoring earlier periods, this would cover the muckraker and what I have called the Watergate period. It was characterised by economic, political and social turmoil. 2. Demand for investigative reporting was high, but supply was low: Feldstein included the Popular and New Deal eras when economic dislocation was high but media, with little competition, were uncritical of the status quo. 3. Supply of investigative reporting was high, but demand was not: Feldstein suggested the mid-2000s with TV and the internet providing a lot of pseudo- muckraking and the 1830s with mass-produced penny press publications. 4. Demand and supply were low: for instance, in the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Feldstein concluded that a critical mass of investigative reporting would occur again when there was a confluence of two disparate historical forces – public demand created by some combination of political, economic and social turmoil, and media supply, most likely the result of new technologies and journalistic competition, assisted by a tolerant legal climate (Feldstein, 2006). To assess the non-profit period from the financial crisis years to the present time in relation to the golden eras, it is necessary to provide some context with brief descriptions of the earlier eras.

Golden era 1: Muckrakers

The Progressive era saw a “unique combination of social forces” create widespread and sustained investigative reporting (Protess et al., 1991, p. 34). The period was characterised by widespread alienation in the middle and upper middle classes due to the rise of newly wealthy industrialists to positions of influence over government and the economy. At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, the arrival of immigrants fostered machine politics, displacing Americans from positions of power at a local level

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(Protess et al., 1991). It was a period of social unrest wrought by industrialisation (Aucoin, 2005, p. 32). The Progressive movement was led by presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson and was committed to reform of corrupt or unjust local and national political and monopolistic corporate systems that had developed in the preceding Gilded Age decades. Middle-class professionals aimed to press their values on the rich as well as on workers and immigrants. These included self- reliance, a Protestant religious belief that showed its public face as an “evangelistic psychology”, individual initiative, fairness and the rule of law (Hofstadter, 1955, as cited in Grossman, 2011, para. 4). Progressives viewed voters as “informed citizens” who could choose between alternatives rather than pledging affiliation to a group. Journalism generally became less partisan and more independent (Schudson, 2008, pp. 73–74).

In the same period, the number of newspapers and magazines rose sharply: in the three decades to 1900, the number of newspapers increased four-fold, and by 1916 there were 2461 daily newspapers, the most ever. Intense rivalries developed between newspaper publishers. By 1900, there were 5500 magazines in the United States. New printing technologies allowed for mass production and photographic displays, and paper prices dropped sharply. Transcontinental rail enabled national distribution, marketing and the rise of advertising (Feldstein, 2006; Protess et al., 1991). Government action played a part: copyright laws were tightened in the 1870s, providing authors with extra protection and mailing privileges that included free rural delivery were extended to magazines (Wilson, 1970, p. 28).

The possibility of cheap, well-illustrated monthly magazines created for the first time a mass national audience focused on news and current affairs in addition to more traditional magazine content like literature, women’s fashion and housekeeping (Daly, 2012). McClure’s magazine was founded in 1893 by the enigmatic and energetic Samuel S. McClure, who had migrated with his family from Ireland when he was nine. The magazine’s in-depth series on Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Standard Oil, municipal lawlessness and industrial unrest (by staff writers Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens) together with the serialisation of authors such as Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and Anthony Hope proved extremely popular. By the turn of the century, the magazine had a circulation of about 360,000 and

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carried 216 pages of advertising. In the January 1903, edition, McClure’s magazine published another chapter of “Tarbell’s History of Standard Oil, Baker’s The Right to Work”, a series of case studies of workers during a long coal strike, and Lincoln Steffens’ “The Shame of Minneapolis” accompanied by an editorial that linked the three stories under the headline “The American Contempt of Law”. The editorial posed the question of who would uphold the law and concluded: “There is no one left; none but us” (Wilson, 1970, p. 148). Magazines such as Colliers, Cosmopolitan, World’s Work, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, Hamptons, American Magazine, Everybody’s and Public Opinion followed with stories about corruption, bribery, trusts and monopolies (Protess et al., 1991). Journalist and author Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle based on Chicago’s meat packing plants, which he had investigated by working under cover, ignited national controversy and resulted in Congress enacting the Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act (Roots, 2000).

Muckraking journalists were more than exposers; they were the “vanguard of a revolution in thinking” (Wilson, 1970, p. v). Their stories reflected the growing public interest in literary realism, pragmatic philosophy, institutional economics, the cult of efficiency, sociological jurisprudence, and experimental psychology (Wilson, 1970, p. v). They focused on big business, power politics and social injustice: “big business corrupted powerful politicians, which resulted in social injustice” was their formula (Protess et al., 1991, p. 37). The journalism matched the economic, social and political conditions of the period to “an extraordinary degree. The fundamental critical achievement of American Progressivism was the business of exposure, and journalism was the chief occupational source of its creative writers” (Hofstadter, 1955, as cited in Feldstein, 2006, pp. 112–113). Two mutually reinforcing phenomena converged as Feldstein suggested in Category One of his model: demand for information about societal ills from an alienated literate population and a fiercely competitive national media supply (Protess et al., 1991).

President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1906 borrowed from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress to invoke the image of a muckraker – a character always looking at mud and filth – to describe the journalism of exposure, nevertheless was a close collaborator with many of the muckrakers and introduced reforms such as the Pure Food and Drug Act, the outlawing of child labour, federal income taxes, the direct election of

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senators, and the antitrust prosecution of Standard Oil, among others (Feldstein, 2006; Protess et al., 1991). Some of these reforms were either enforced, under way or on the agenda before the publication of muckraking stories but there was “no doubt that muckraking crusades and the changing climate of public opinion significantly facilitated the enactment of reforms, but perhaps not in that order” (Protess et al., 1991, p. 42).

Scholars argued that Roosevelt’s speech, which did not identify publications or journalists, was directed at Democrat Congressman, political rival and publisher William Randolph Hearst who had purchased Cosmopolitan magazine and had embraced muckraking with a series called “The treason of the Senate” (Neuzil, 1996). Historians have shown that the speech had a chilling effect on muckraking, but perhaps it was the mood of the nation that changed. The muckraker era ended after about a decade and was followed by what have been called the Dark Ages for investigative reporting, from World War I to the Vietnam War (Feldstein, 2006).

A number of reasons were suggested for the demise of muckraker journalism: financial strain on magazines as advertisers and bankers retaliated; individual journalists moving on; readers suffering a type of compassion fatigue from on-going negative stories; the reforms had satiated the public’s demand for change and fixed the worst abuses of the industrial revolution; libel suits; the purchase of magazines by the businessmen they had targeted; World War I turned the public attention abroad; irresponsible muckraking and alienation of the public, and the decline of the Progressive movement (Aucoin, 2005; Daly, 2012; Hofstadter, 1955, & Regier, 1932, as cited in Feldstein, 2006). Later, World War II, the Cold War and the threat of communism saw the press deferring to authority and clinging to neutral objective reporting, though there were exceptions, notably Edward Murrow and Fred Friendly’s “See it now” broadcast that exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s half-truths and distortions (Protess et al., 1991, pp. 46–47).

Golden era 2: Watergate

Public faith in government and institutions in the United States eroded dramatically from the late 1950s into the 1970s as politicians and officials were exposed as liars and distorters of their own actions (Aucoin, 2005, pp. 42–84; Daly, 2012, pp. 322–351; C. Lewis, 2014). The media, after decades of homage to established power structures and

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hamstrung by a convention of objectivity that precluded investigation (for instance, of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s aims), adopted a more aggressive reporting of the status quo. The civil rights movement “forcefully challenged the notion that America was trouble free” (Aucoin, 2005, p. 51). It questioned the integrity of institutions and changed the definition of news by turning social justice into daily news stories: “Like the early twentieth century muckrakers who had come before them, journalists in the 1960s saw in-depth reporting in the post-war era as a responsibility to society in the face of great injustice and social upheaval. It was a defining moment for the news industry” (Aucoin, 2005, p. 52).

University of South Alabama journalism professor James Aucoin, in The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism, documented a series of lies and government scandals in the late 1950s and 1960s that eroded trust in government and other institutions: the U-2 spy plane incident, Bay of Pigs fiasco, Cuban missile crisis, exposure of corrupt politicians and the Vietnam War. Historians found that the United States was rocked by more dissension, tumult and violence than any time since the Civil War: the social and economic system, cultural values, the merit of technological expertise, New Deal-style liberalism, big government and the concept of presidential power were all questioned. The counterculture, drugs, promiscuous sex, rock ‘n’ roll, movements for free speech, Black Power, student rights, feminist, gay, poor people, consumer and environmental rights were spawned (Heath, 1975; Hodgson, 1976).

Offset printing technology and typewriter improvements aided the growth of numerous underground and alternative media, including Ramparts magazine and Liberation News Service, that challenged the objective reporting of the mainstream media but embraced the tradition of exposure. Vietnam War atrocities were exposed by freelance reporter Seymour Hersh in 1969. Eventually, mainstream reporting changed with more journalists disbelieving the official version of how the war was proceeding, culminating in the publication of the Pentagon Papers, leaked by a former Pentagon consultant, Daniel Ellsberg to Neil Sheehan, a reporter on the New York Times (Aucoin, 2005, pp. 72–74). Television coverage, which previously had sanitised the Vietnam conflict (Schudson, 2003, p. 13), and programs like Sixty Minutes amplified the critical national sentiment. The public could see for itself the violence at civil rights marches, the horror of Vietnam and the inadequacies of elected political representatives. The public

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expected a more aggressive approach from the media; one outcome was the re- emergence of investigative reporting (Aucoin, 2005, pp. 82–83).

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s reporting in the Washington Post of the Watergate burglary and the White House’s involvement and the resignation of President Richard Nixon entrenched investigative reporting in US journalism (Downie, 2012), despite the fact that much of the detail of the scandal emerged from hearings by a Senate committee, special prosecutors, a federal judge and other players (Schudson, 2003, p. 12). Nevertheless, adversarial relations between reporters and officials became a “recognised cultural phenomenon” (Protess et al., 1991, p. 20). In 1974, four Pulitzer Prizes were awarded for investigative stories, and Time magazine declared it the “Year of the Muckrakers” (Protess et al., 1991, p. 53). The following decade saw an investigative frenzy only rivalled by muckraking’s golden age (Protess et al., 1991, p. 53). Watergate came to be seen as the “apogee of independent journalism in America” (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 168) and thousands of young reporters wanted their own Watergate to bring them fame and fortune (Aucoin, 2005, p. 118). This was despite the media’s role in the President’s resignation and the prosecution of more than 70 people including his advisers being “unknowable in any conclusive sense” (Feldstein, 2014, p. 551).

Around this time, several organisations were created to enhance the quality of investigative reporting or to carry it out: Investigative Reporters and Editors was a national organisation aiming to promote best practice in investigative journalism; the Center for Investigative Reporting (see next chapter) was a philanthropically funded outlet for the production of serious journalism, and the Fund for Investigative Reporting helped to finance independent journalists preparing investigative stories and books. However, “history keeps happening, and the media keep changing” (Schudson, 2003, p. 83). By the early 1980s, public confidence in the press dropped sharply and criticism of media negativity and lack of fairness began to emerge: the public disenchantment may have reflected changes in the social agenda; “…in the 1980s, an upsurge of national pride, almost in reaction against a decade of bad news, seemed to catch the media by surprise” (Lichter, Rothman, & Lichter, 1986, p. 16). The amount of soft news doubled since the 1980s, together with marked increases in human interest, crime and disaster stories, sensationalism and stories “without public policy components” (Picard, 2006, p. 15).

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A third golden era?

As shown in this thesis, two-thirds or 68 member organisations of the Institute for Nonprofit News were created during and immediately following the financial crisis. But the momentum for the media to engage in serious journalism had been growing even before the financial crisis as scholars and journalists became increasingly concerned about the impacts of cost cutting and the trivialisation of news content (Akst, 2005; Meyer, 2009; Overholser, 2006). The focus of these earlier concerns emerged in discussions, conferences and papers and centred on saving quality journalism rather than creating new models for investigative reporting hubs. This disquiet, however, may have ploughed the field for the later response from journalists, foundations and wealthy philanthropists. It is not possible due to time and research constraints to make definitive findings about the links, if any, between the social, economic and political factors associated with the financial crisis and public demand for more informative journalism. But tentative conclusions are possible.

In his article on investigative reporting cycles in US history, Mark Feldstein argued that investigative reporting reached a critical mass when both supply and demand were high. He defined demand as “an aroused public hungry for exposés in times of turmoil” (Feldstein, 2006, p. 113). With that definition in mind, the demand side of the equation, I suggest, may have been evident during the financial crisis. The official US inquiry into the financial crisis that reported to the President and Congress found that the crisis was ignited by the collapse of a housing bubble that was fuelled by low interest rates, easy credit, scant regulation and toxic mortgages. Trillions of dollars in risk mortgages were embedded throughout the financial system as mortgage-related securities were packaged, repackaged and sold to investors around the world. When the bubble burst, hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in mortgages and mortgage-related securities shook markets and institutions that had significant exposures and had borrowed against them. The crisis reached seismic proportions in September 2008 with the failure of Lehman Brothers and the impending collapse of the giant American International Group. Credit markets seized up, the stock market plummeted and the economy plunged into deep recession (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011). The crisis left devastation in its wake: 10 million Americans were uprooted by foreclosures, 26 million were unemployed or under-employed or had given up looking for work, communities

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set back a generation, “shocking bailouts for the perpetrators, political polarization here and instability abroad” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011; Starkman, 2014, para. 3). Nearly $11 trillion in household wealth vanished, “with retirement accounts and life savings swept away. Businesses, large and small, have felt the sting of deep recession. There is much anger about what has transpired, and justifiably so” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011, p. xvi). The evidence suggests that this was a time of turmoil. It seems self-evident that the public would want good information about what was happening, how it happened, who was to blame and what would happen next. That might well equate to a demand for exposés on the underlying issues of the economic meltdown.

The question about the supply of such information and whether journalism fulfilled its watchdog role has been vigorously contested. There were claims that the serious financial press had failed to sound the alarm about the looming crisis on one hand and business reporters insisting that they did their job but the public wasn’t paying attention on the other (Kurtz, 2008; Manning, 2013; Roush, 2009; Starkman, 2014). Content analysis by an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, Dean Starkman, concluded that after 2003, the business press had lost its appetite for head-on investigations of the core practices of powerful financial institutions. Starkman examined financial news coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg News, the Financial Times, Fortune, Business Week and Forbes between January 2000, and June 30 2007, for terms such as “predatory lending”, “mortgage lending”, “securitisation”, and “collateralised debt obligations (Starkman, 2009). He asked that publishers provide their best work during this period. He found the best journalism about lending practices including sub-prime mortgages was done between 2000 and 2003, after which financial media developed a case of collective amnesia about Wall Street’s connection to sub-prime, rediscovering it only after the fact. “Missing are investigative stories that directly confront powerful institutions about basic business practices while those institutions were still powerful. The watchdog didn’t bark” (Starkman, 2014, para. 10). Business journalism scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chris Roush, rebutted claims that journalists had been negligent and cited numerous stories that showed the “business media have done yeoman’s work during the past decade-plus to expose wrongdoing in corporate

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America” (Roush, 2009, para. 5). A review of business publications showed that issues like subprime loans, adjustable-rate mortgages, credit derivatives had been “blanketed” by reporters but that government regulators and the general public “ weren’t paying attention” (Roush, 2009, para. 5, 7).

In the Feldstein model, if we categorised quality financial reporting as equivalent to investigative reporting, the result would be in either Category One (high supply and high demand) or Category Two (low supply and high demand) depending on which analysis of business reporting were accepted. I suggest that the financial crisis and the demand for quality information during this period fed into a broader concern among foundations and concerned citizens that the mainstream media no longer could fulfil its watchdog role nor explain the turmoil around them. Accompanying the near collapse of the financial system was the collapse of the business model for journalism, due in part to advertising withdrawal followed by mass layoffs and numerous newspaper closures. These factors combined into a perception that The United States’ tenets of democracy and accountability were under strain, resulting in foundations, wealthy concerned individuals and journalists coming together in an attempt to fill the gap in quality reporting. This is supported by my analysis that showed that the majority of non-profit investigative and public interest reporting centres were launched during and in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis. Economists believe that non-profit firms may arise naturally as a means of efficiently rationing services when demand may exceed supply (Holtmann, 1983). This appears consistent with the view of non-profit organisations that they could provide information that was being insufficiently met by traditional news rooms (Shaver, 2010). Non-profit evangelist Charles Lewis wrote that the United States was witnessing a “new dawn” for non-profit journalism in which the most ambitious reporting projects emanated from the non-profit realm rather than private or commercial media (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 177). The financial crisis and its aftermath most likely were a period of high demand and low supply, with non-profit organisations being created in an attempt to increase the quantity of quality reporting, especially at state level.

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Conclusion

This chapter identified the additional factors that in combination promoted the creation of non-profit investigative reporting centres in the United States. The factors included donations and managerial support by wealthy benefactors, smaller donations from individuals, the granting of charity status by the United States government’s tax office, agreement by universities to physically accommodate and incorporate centres in their teaching programs, the creation of a network of member organisations to assist and advocate for the sector, and the possibility that the economic and social environment was such as to create a greenhouse environment for non-profit investigative journalism. These factors were added to those identified earlier: concerns that democracy and the media were under threat, the shift of individuals with cultural capital to the subfield of non-profit journalism and the response by foundations in support of such journalism. The factors coalesced to expand the non-profit journalism subfield, which rapidly produced innovative award-winning stories that were widely distributed. The field of technology played a role as it had in the muckraker era with advances in the printing and distribution of magazines, and in the Watergate era with gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the Senate hearings and later the Judiciary Committee hearings into the affair. The internet, which had so badly damaged the business model of the mainstream media, facilitated the creation of non-profit centre online platforms for the distribution of stories, databases and interactive graphics. The creation of non-profit investigative centres resulted in many thousands of journalistic projects that otherwise would not have been produced. It led to innovations in website design, story-telling and use of data that may not have been developed if left to the mainstream media. Several non-profit organisations grew and developed strong financial platforms; a few found stability by merging with public media but others remained vulnerable due to their dependence on foundations.

My analysis showed that at least 70 non-profit investigative organisations were created between 2007 and 2015. Approximately half were launched in 2009 and 2010, amid concern that the financial crisis had irreparably damaged the ability of the mainstream media to carry out their fourth estate role and the subsequent impact on democracy. From 2013 particularly, the rate of formation had slowed suggesting that the factors that had stimulated the earlier growth either were no longer in play or were of less concern.

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Certainly, the alarm associated with mass layoffs, newspaper closures and moves to digital-only publication had dissipated. By 2015, fewer people were talking about a crisis for democracy – at least not one that was directly linked to the demise of mainstream media. Questions about the future of journalism remain, but are the concern mainly of journalists and media academics. Investigative non-profit organisations now are seeking financial sustainability through mergers and a greater diversity of revenue streams, including smaller donors. Investigative units at major legacy media organisations still exist; public broadcasters PBS Frontline and NPR produce accountability stories, and new online media such as Buzzfeed, Vice, TalkingPointsMemo, Wikileaks, Huffington Post and others also are creating investigative content. A key question remains for non-profit organisations: in the absence of a perceptible crisis for journalism and democracy, will foundations and communities of American citizens support investigative journalism under a non-profit model. We return to this problem in the final chapter.

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CHAPTER 6: Case studies of three non-profit investigative reporting centres

Introduction

This chapter presents case studies of three US-based non-profit investigative reporting centres. It examines their formation, function, financing and challenges to determine whether their experiences can inform us more generally about the subfield of non-profit investigative journalism. The Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica were selected because they are the largest centres in the United States, the most prolific producers of non-profit investigative journalism and appear to have achieved financial stability. This makes them the exception among US investigative non-profit centres, most of which are smaller and less financially secure.

The circumstances in which the centres were created differed and they launched in different media environments: one in the aftermath of Watergate in the 1970s, another in the late 1980s as media sought to maintain big profit margins and cut costs and the third in 2008 during the financial crisis. This chapter analyses their progress, the reasons for their success, their finances and the challenges they faced. It identifies factors that assisted the organisations and may be applicable to others in the subfield. Table 6.1 shows the key financial details of the organisations in 2014. They employed a total of 175 reporters, digital producers, engagement, development and administrative staff. Their annual financial statements put their combined total revenues in 2014 at $30.2 million. They collectively spent just under $30 million on, and in support of, investigative reporting. Of that, $21.4 million was on salaries and employee benefits. Other significant expenditures included fundraising, information technology, rent, travel and legal costs.

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Table 6.1. 2014 financial details of three non-profit investigative organisations

Center for Center for Public Investigative ProPublica Integrity Reporting Revenue $10.3 million $9.6 million $10.3 million Expenditure $10.1 million $8.4 million $11.4 million Revenue − $148,777 $1.2 million −$1.1 million expenses Net assets $4.7 million $6.7 million $6.6 million Salariesa $7.3 million $5.6 million $8.5 million Staff numbersb 72 43 60 Note: a Includes salaries, compensation and benefits; b Based on website information and includes reporters, digital, administrative, engagement and development staff. Source: Annual returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

The stories produced by these organisations were acknowledged in the journalistic field with numerous industry awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, George Polk Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, the Goldsmith Prize, Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting, and awards and honours from the American Society of News Editors, Online News Association, National Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists, and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

All three centres co-published their major investigative stories with mainstream media partners, giving them greater political heft and bigger audiences. Such collaborations were facilitated by non-profit executive directors with lengthy experience and symbolic capital in the mainstream media. The centres could be regarded as production houses for investigative stories that appeared in public media and in quality newspapers, magazines and broadcasts. These outlets gave the centres large and influential audiences and the sort of impact their funders wished to see. Commercial and public media gained quality content – months or even years in the making – for little or no cost. The financial advantages for mainstream media were detailed in an article about the Center for Investigative Reporting in the New York Times as early as 1983 (Prial, 1983). It said that a network reporter with little or no experience in deep investigative work could earn $85,000 a year; 60 Minutes correspondents made $500,000 or more. A Center for Investigative Reporting journalist, who may know more about getting court records and elusive witnesses, might earn $15,000. “Network officials … acknowledge that they

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saved money by using the freelancers instead of their own employees” (Prial, 1983, para. 6).

The impact of these three centres on US investigative journalism transcended the prestigious awards won, the thousands of stories published, their self-described role in filling the information gap in mainstream media and their innovative use of technology. They enlivened an idealised notion of investigative journalism as the scaffold of democracy and provided hope to those who despaired that the tide of celebrity, spin, and the varnished on message statements of politicians would swamp both the media, the public and ultimately democracy itself. However, as will be seen, this was not achieved without a number of financial crises, management and personality issues, risk taking and decisions that ultimately proved to be wrong.

This chapter uses a collective case study methodology in which the three centres are examined to investigate a phenomenon, that is, the creation, development and operation of non-profit investigative newsrooms in the United States. A multi-case study approach was chosen because “understanding them will lead to a better understanding, perhaps better theorizing, about a still larger collection of cases” (Stake, 2000, p. 437).

While I examine the background of each centre, and its social, economic and legal issues, I acknowledge that the whole story of each centre cannot be told due to research limitations and because the whole story exceeds anyone’s knowing (Stake, 2000, p. 441). This chapter elucidates the complex legal, political and personal issues that confronted the non-profit organisations at various stages of their histories. It shows that the creation and development of new ventures is a complex interplay of resources, opportunities and capabilities (Thakur, 1999). Two of the centres suffered financial crises and faced the prospect of closure but were able to survive under new managements. The chapter’s conclusions draw on the evidence presented to generalise on the key factors that were at play in the creation, development and operation of non- profit centres. The case studies are presented separately but in common have “exploratory, descriptive or explanatory” (Yin, 1994, p. 3) components, and chronological narrative structures. Common themes and propositions are then discussed in the conclusion (Creswell, 1998, p. 63). The case study methodology is appropriate for this chapter as it appears to be a preferred strategy when how or why questions are posed

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and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context (Yin, 1994).

Research for this chapter consisted of semi-structured interviews with the founders of two of the centres and others familiar with the work of the centres, including executives, journalists, funders, academics and fundraisers. I visited the United States in November and December 2010 and again in February 2012 and conducted face-to-face interviews, which were recorded and later transcribed. I maintained contact by email or phone with sources in the United States to clarify or gain further insights into their interview contributions. Archival material was made available to me and extensive reviews of literature, online websites, transcripts and other texts converged the data in a triangulating fashion. Searches of US academic journals and online industry publications found a relatively small number of texts about the creation and impact of non-profit investigative journalism centres. I demonstrated in previous chapters how a combination of factors led to the formation of non-profit centres. This chapter provides more detailed evidence of the broader political and economic environments at the time of founding, the circumstances and individual motivations of the founders, the challenges and mixed fortunes they faced and how their organisations gained a path to sustainability.

The Center for Investigative Reporting

The Center for Investigative Reporting was created in 1977, three years after the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate revelations. It was a period noted for the quantity of investigative reporting and adversarial relations between reporters and government (Protess et al., 1991, pp. 3, 20).37 As would be the case with several non-profit centres 30 years later, the Center for Investigative Reporting was created after two of its three founders lost their jobs and wanted to continue writing investigative stories. Lowell Bergman and David Weir were California- based investigative reporters for Rolling Stone magazine when the magazine’s founder and publisher Jann Wenner announced during a Christmas party that the magazine was moving to New York and told them they no longer had jobs (L. Bergman, personal

37 See Chapter Five on the Watergate era.

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communication, September 2, 2014; D. Weir, personal communication, August 20, 2014). The third founder, Dan Noyes, a journalism educator and administrator, was part of a team of journalists, including Bergman, that in 1976 collaborated on an investigation into the killing of a reporter by a criminal outfit, a cooperative journalistic venture that became known as the Arizona Project (Investigative Reporters and Editors, n.d.-b). The Arizona Project experience convinced Noyes that journalists from different backgrounds and jobs could work cooperatively on complex investigative stories (D. Noyes, personal communication, November, 4, 2010).

The founders had a variety of reasons for creating an investigative centre. Noyes felt a centre would reflect the aggressive watchdog “spirit of the times”; Weir wanted to create an alternative media channel; and Bergman, the most experienced investigative journalist of the three, found himself without a publication (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010; D. Weir, personal communication, August 20, 2014; L. Bergman, September 2, 2014).

Bergman had studied Marxist theory under philosopher, social theorist and political activist Herbert Marcuse – dubbed by the media as the “father of the New Left” (Bourne, 1979; Kellner, n.d., para. 1). In the late 1960s, when student activism was at a high, he wrote about corruption for a number of alternative newspapers in San Diego, including the Free Press which later became the Street Journal. He moved to San Francisco in 1971 and worked with the left-wing Ramparts magazine before moving to Rolling Stone (L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014). In the mid- 1970s, Bergman and another reporter faced a $522 million libel action over an article for Penthouse magazine in which they alleged a resort was linked to organised crime. The lawsuit was settled after 10 years of legal hearings and appeals with Penthouse and the resort owners meeting their own costs reportedly totalling $20 million (Acuna, 1985).

Bergman had other writs seeking a total of about $1 billion in damages (L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014). Disputes with local Hearst Corporation newspapers limited his options for investigative reporting in the Bay Area. The New York Times was a possible employer, but Bergman and the other founders wanted to stay in the Bay Area (L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014). They

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wanted to pursue stories that were “too hot to handle for … other publications” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010). The partners started in the garage of Bergman’s Berkeley home before moving to an office in Oakland with funding that included a small grant from a fund created by the family of Philip Stern, whose grant- giving several years earlier had assisted Seymour Hersh to report on the My Lai massacre (Fund for Investigative Journalism, n.d.). They were not confident that the Center for Investigative Reporting would have a long-term future or that foundations would continue supporting it (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010; D. Weir, personal communication, August 20, 2014; L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014).

Creating a non-profit centre for investigative journalism in the post-Watergate period may appear at odds with the view of academics that it was a golden era with opportunities to do watchdog journalism in the mainstream media (Feldstein, 2006; Protess et al., 1991; Steiger, 2014). However, an unpublished research paper prepared in 1975 by Noyes and colleagues at the Urban Policy Research Institute concluded that while the New York Times and the Washington Post competed in Washington, only several dozen newspapers and magazines did some investigative work. “What does this mean to the masses of readers of the 1750 dailies, the score of news weeklies and the millions of viewers of television news? It becomes academic to try to identify those local papers which consistently do investigative work because most have not yet begun” (Levett, Churchill, & Noyes, 1975, pp. 5–6).38

It is not the intention here to detail the Center for Investigative Reporting’s hundreds of projects across all media in the decades since its formation. What is of note is that the centre survived periods when investigative journalism generally was less popular; that it adapted to an online environment; was among the first of the non-profits to collaborate with mainstream outlets; charged fees for its work and pioneered a newspaper syndication model and television and radio partnerships that took its stories to audiences around the United States and beyond (California Watch Media Network, 2013).

38 Document given to me by Noyes. See Appendix 3.

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The centre introduced a series of important innovations in multimedia presentations of its investigative projects. One of its key innovations, I believe, was to create a model that virtually tracked down audiences. For example, in recent years it shaped projects into multiple formats to fit different target audiences. It localised its stories, translated them for foreign language outlets, organised town hall style meetings on specific issues, sought to present its findings in animation, finger puppetry, stage plays, as well as radio and television broadcasts. These innovations helped its funding through specific grants, donations and syndication payments: in other words, they contributed to its sustainability and contributed to journalism and democracy by reaching audiences that otherwise would not have seen them. Many of these innovations occurred under executive director Robert Rosenthal, but his predecessors also sought partnerships and platforms for their investigative projects.

Early partnerships and recognition

The centre’s early stories in the pre-internet 1970s were published in liberal magazines that were more receptive to outside contributors than newspapers that did their own reporting. The magazine editors were like-minded and interested in pursuing complex investigative stories (M. Schapiro, personal communication, November 4, 2010). Magazines were attractive also because they routinely paid for outside contributions whereas newspapers had small or no freelance budgets (D. Noyes, personal communication, April 16, 2012). The centre’s stories were published in left-leaning publications such as Mother Jones, New Times and The Nation. The distribution options were limited: commercial publications had a rule not to take outside stories because they were difficult to vouch for. Mother Jones was based in San Francisco, not far from the centre’s offices, as was another destination publication, New West. The New Times may have had a local editor. “These were all publications where we had personal connections to the editors,” Noyes said. The editor of New Times, for example, wrote a supporting letter that was included in the centre’s first funding proposal (D. Noyes, personal communication, April 16, 2012).

Early stories on the criminal activities of the Black Panther Party, published in the New Times magazine (Coleman & Avery, 1978), and others in Mother Jones attracted the attention of Mark Schapiro, a young journalism student who had interned at the centre.

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At the time, David Weir was looking at how chemicals banned in the United States were used in products sold in developing countries. A pack of Kool-Aid he had purchased in a remote bazaar in Afghanistan in the 1970s contained cyclamates, which were banned in the United States (Weir & Schapiro, 1981). Weir investigated further and Rolling Stone eventually published the story in February 1977 (Weir & Noyes, 1983). Rolling Stone was moving away from in-depth political stories to expanded coverage of music and entertainment and did not promote the story, which was overlooked by the US press (Weir & Noyes, 1983). Nevertheless, the issue of hazardous exports gained traction in Washington, D.C. through Congressional hearings and conferences. Mother Jones asked Weir to research hazardous exports further and write about pesticides in the Third World. Schapiro joined Weir and another reporter from the centre, Terry Jacobs, on a series of stories on pesticide exports that were published in Mother Jones. One story explained how US companies shipped pesticides banned in the United States to developing countries and then imported food contaminated with poison residues (Weir, Schapiro, & Jacobs, 1979). “The Boomerang Crime” was part of a series of stories that appeared in the November 1979 issue of Mother Jones and was financed by grants from Philip Stern’s Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Mother Jones Investigative Fund.

The stories, while initially ignored or downplayed by mainstream media, nevertheless had impact. They led to a United Nations resolution on hazardous exports, the introduction of legislation in Congress, new regulatory standards for pesticides in several developing countries and provoked the US Environmental Protection Agency into tightening the loophole that had allowed the export of banned pesticides. Mother Jones won a national award for the series (Weir & Noyes, 1983, pp. 171–185). Mainstream media interest increased due to the political response: dozens of reporters contacted the centre to write their own versions of the pesticide export story. Associated Press conducted a worldwide survey of hazardous exports, as did Newsday, and PBS aired a two-part documentary that relied on the centre’s work for a significant portion of its content (Weir & Noyes, 1983). Soon after, another investigation by the centre, “The Most Captive Consumers” – about faulty wheelchairs – won a National Press Club award. The story was published in The Progressive, a monthly left-wing magazine of investigative reporting, political commentary, cultural coverage, activism, interviews,

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poetry and humour (The Progressive, n.d.). The response to the pesticide series and an award from an established industry body like the National Press Club brought both profile and industry credibility to the centre.

A significant development for the centre was the partnerships it developed with national television broadcasters. This was more than a shift in platforms: it was a shift from niche, left-wing magazines to working in collaboration with nationally focused, mainstream broadcasters. It was an example of outsourcing by national television stations of journalistic research and story conception and development. The shift occurred because Bergman in 1978 was employed by ABC News as a reporter, producer and head of its investigative team. He became one of the original producers on the ABC’s 20/20 program and worked with the Center for Investigative Reporting on at least two stories for 20/20. In 1979, for example, Noyes initiated a television story for 20/20 that identified the fundraising arm of the United Nation’s International Year of the Child as a front for gunrunning and drug smuggling (Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d.-b). Bergman used his contacts in law enforcement to develop the story, which he produced.

These stories led to the centre contracting with ABC News, and later with CBS News’s 60 Minutes and Frontline39, as Bergman moved to different media organisations (L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014). “We had a long-term relationship”, Dan Noyes said (D. Noyes, personal communication, April 16, 2012). At the time it was unprecedented for a non-profit organisation to have a long-term content and consulting contract with a mainstream media group. The partnership brought much needed funding to the centre as several magazine outlets had closed and foundation monies were scarce (Prial, 1983).

The centre’s partnership with television networks was the subject of a story in the New York Times in 1983 (Prial, 1983). The article noted that San Francisco’s NBC television affiliate, KRON, had started using the centre to improve its service. It was happy with the results (Prial, 1983). The article quoted reporter Mike Wallace of CBS News describing the centre’s work as “first-rate”, “thorough” and “careful”. Not wanting it to

39 Frontline is created by public media producer WGBH in Boston and distributed by PBS.

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look like outsourcing, Wallace added that CBS News was not delegating journalistic responsibility by using the centre (Prial, 1983, para. 7). CBS usually did further reporting, beyond what the centre provided. Two concerns were expressed in the story about the centre’s operations. News executive Cy Perlman from NBC News worried about the centre working for several different news clients. “Who gets which story; the show with the best ratings?” (Prial, 1983, para. 15). The second concern was that non- profit centres might be costing full-time professional journalistic jobs.

The centre published Circle of Poison (Weir & Schapiro, 1981), a book based on Weir and Schapiro’s investigations into banned pesticide exports to developing countries. The book was commissioned by the Institute for Food and Development Policy, which asked the reporters to return to their investigations and dig deeper. The basic story had already been told in Mother Jones and Rolling Stone and the centre had low expectations about the revenue the book would earn. The story, however, led NBC News: “... all of a sudden we had foundations interested in environmental issues, not so much journalism, who said ‘we want to fund you to do these kinds of stories on environmental issues’” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010).40

Despite these approaches, Noyes remained concerned about the centre’s finances due to what he feared was a lack of long-term certainty. Commercial fees charged to the media were not sufficient to recover the full cost of a six-month or year-long investigation. Weir and Noyes had to lay off reporters when project money ran out and there were periods when staff were not paid for a week each month (M. Schapiro, personal communication, November 4, 2010). Over the next 15 years, the centre’s fortunes “ebbed and flowed” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 2) but it consolidated its reputation and strengthened its links particularly with television networks. It continued to produce and collaborate with television and radio broadcasters as well as alternative magazine publishers, though its stories appeared in only a small number of quality mainstream newspapers. In 1990, it produced its first independent television documentary, “Global Dumping Ground”, which was about the traffic in hazardous wastes and was reported by Bill Moyers and produced by Lowell Bergman. Bergman took leave from 60 Minutes to develop the documentary with Noyes and others at the centre, including his wife

40 See Chapter Four: Foundations and advocacy agendas.

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Sharon Tiller41 (D. Noyes, personal communication, April 16, 2012). The documentary opened a new season on PBS’s Frontline and sparked a federal investigation (Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d.-b).

In the 1990s, the centre’s work increasingly was funded by the Frontline program and charitable foundations. The MacArthur Foundation donated $500,000 in a capacity- building general grant, which was one of the first big contributions received by the centre that was not tied to a specific story or project. Frontline allowed far greater editorial input by the centre’s reporters than did the ABC’s 20/20 program or 60 Minutes, which mainly wanted story ideas for their own reporters to pursue. “Sometimes we were not sure of the story’s outcome until it was ready to air” (D. Noyes, personal communication, April 16, 2012). The centre’s Frontline investigations were funded in part by the program and with funds raised by the centre, which gave it a greater say in production, even though PBS retained full editorial control. PBS itself was a non-profit organisation whose members included about 350 public television stations across the United States. Its weekly documentary program, Frontline, was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Reva and David Logan, and other foundations (PBS Frontline, n.d.).

The early history of the Centre for Investigative Reporting reflects a number of points raised in this thesis about the growth, development and sustainability of non-profit centres. Among these was the importance of personal relationships in fostering collaborations between non-profit centres, the established media and funders. Were it not for the relationship that Bergman had with Noyes dating back to 1975, it is unlikely that the centre would have been able to establish on-going partnerships with commercial television programs like ABC News and 60 Minutes. Bergman also was involved with the Frontline/World program, whose production facilities were located near U.C. Berkeley’s investigative journalism school where he taught investigative reporting. His graduate students worked as fellows at Frontline/World’s editorial and production facility. Bergman’s academic position was supported by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, which also donated to the Frontline program. His wife, Sharon Tiller,

41 Sharon Tiller at various times was a senior producer at Frontline and Frontline/World and worked at the Center for Investigative Reporting as executive director.

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worked at various times for Frontline, Frontline/World and the centre (Tiller, n.d.). Bergman later became an investigative correspondent for the New York Times and forged a relationship between the newspaper and the Frontline program (Investigating Power, 2012).

Personal relationships, trust and social and symbolic capital were critical to these partnerships. The financial vulnerability of the centre was evident in the period before the television partnerships when the centre had to lay off staff. The benefit of multiple publishing partners became apparent as several left-leaning magazines, including Ramparts and New Times, closed from the mid-1970s, unable to attract advertising or other funding as the economic and political environment become more conservative. The partnership with PBS built on the synergies that exist between public media and non-profit centres: a similar socioeconomic audience, capacity to produce quality journalism and mutual financial benefit from collaborations.

Confronting financial pressures and management issues

Serious financial issues arose once again in 1994 when the centre was “hanging on for dear life”. The $500,000 MacArthur grant was “all gone and the centre basically had no money in the bank” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010). A year earlier, the centre had made its first high-level outside appointment by hiring Rick Tulsky as its executive director. He was considered a brilliant reporter: a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist with a background of investigative reporting in mainstream outlets that included the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was a former president and board chairman of the Investigative Reporters and Editors organisation. However, the founders soon realised he was the wrong choice due to the administrative and fundraising skills the role required (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010; L. Bergman, personal communication, September 2, 2014). Tulsky later complained that every centre project had a foundation or corporate sponsor and that virtually every underwriter had an axe to grind. A television documentary on mining pollution had been funded by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, an organisation focused on protecting the environment and building a sustainable world. He had felt like a paid hand of the foundation, producing fodder for the foundation’s environmental agenda (Edmonds, 2001). Noyes responded that Tulsky had given the

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impression in his complaint that he had left the centre over ethical concerns and disagreements but “as far as the centre is concerned, he left because of differences over management and performance” (Noyes, 2001, para. 4).

Noyes said the centre kept funders at arm’s length and provided no assurances as to how stories would be reported (D. Noyes, personal communication, September 23, 2014). Foundations wanted “a person that they can talk to, that they feel inspired by, connected to, motivated to give their money to, even though obviously the work may be done by somebody else at the organisation” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010). In an email to me, Tulsky said he had no control over the budget or a documentary project that had consumed most of the centre’s funds. “If somebody’s left you with the impression that somehow I misspent a half million dollars or anything close to it, I can say that would be very false” (R. Tulsky, personal communication, May 2, 2012). Almost 20 years later, in 2014, it was announced that the Medill Watchdog at Northwestern University, which paired students with experienced journalists under the direction of Tulsky, would close due to funding issues. “We were in the middle of significant journalism projects, and I guess I was always hopeful we would do the journalism and the money would take care of itself”, Tulsky said (Exstrum, 2014, para. 3).

Noyes returned to the executive director’s job and was forced to lay off staff. He set about rebuilding the centre, which managed to survive due to a number of Frontline projects (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2010). He stayed in the role for four years until 1999 when Burt Glass was appointed, allowing Noyes to focus on journalism. He resumed the executive job with associate director Christa Scharfenberg when Glass left. The centre’s next significant appointment was former mainstream media editor Robert Rosenthal (see Chapter Three). Rosenthal understood and adapted to the non-profit environment. One of his first hires was an experienced fund raiser, a move he later described as crucial to securing the centre’s finances (Rosenthal, 2011). Rosenthal arrived during the financial crisis and found the centre to be at risk. It had seven staff and a budget of $1.5 million, most of which was dedicated to a documentary project. Foundations and traditional funders of non-profits were “going backwards, cutting all their funding” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010).

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Rosenthal had a vision and was determined to change the way the centre operated, despite the lack of unanimous support from the centre’s board (Rosenthal, 2011). Rather than working with individual outlets like PBS’s Frontline, he envisaged a news organisation that would publish stories on multiple platforms to reach bigger and more diverse audiences. The strategy was “create-once-distribute-many, realising the digital cost of the second copy is nil” (Doctor, 2011, para. 20). Funders, however, remained to be convinced. “There were doubts and challenging questions about the necessity of creating new models out of small existing nonprofits” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 3). During a pitch to the Los Angeles-based James Irvine Foundation, the foundation’s program director Amy Dominguez-Arms wondered if it could focus more attention on Californian issues. The centre’s board had already expressed interest in doing that and Rosenthal saw an opportunity to introduce his vision in a new, locally based investigative reporting organisation. The result was California Watch, a non-profit organisation that would report on local issues and distribute its stories to local and regional newspaper partners, as well as local public radio and television and ethnic media.

The James Irvine Foundation, joined by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (see Chapter Seven), supported the idea sufficiently for California Watch to hire 14 full-time staff. Rosenthal, Schafenberg and development officer Cherilyn Parsons secured philanthropic funding commitments of $3.7 million over three years. When California Watch advertised for staff, nearly 700 journalists applied including multiple Pulitzer Prize winners (Rosenthal, 2011). Rosenthal’s vision for California Watch to be a multimedia, multi-platform content creator led to a number of practical and innovative initiatives. Agreement was reached with public broadcaster KQED to share the salary of a reporter who would produce radio versions of the centre’s stories; the ethnic media organisation New America Media would translate some of the stories and provide them to its media members; an in-house video production unit was established when Sharon Tiller and her team of producers at PBS’s Frontline /World program lost their program and moved to the non-profit. Some of its more creative and innovative story-telling involved developing a colouring book on earthquake safety for children, the use of animation and finger puppets to illustrate the dangers of imported toys and partnering with a theatre company to produce one-act

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plays based on its investigative reports. It even used a spoken word poet in a youth- oriented story-telling program (Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 2013). Centre editors shaped stories for geographical relevance and appropriate local detail for newspapers across California. In 2011, a membership syndication model was created for both print and broadcast media. The centre coordinated the reporting of competing newspapers on state-wide issues such as a high-speed railway development.

It would not have been possible to engage competing newspapers in the same state were it not for the conjunction of a number of important factors. First, the centre had an established reputation for quality journalism. Local editors were aware it had produced good stories over a significant period. Second, Rosenthal had a background in the mainstream press and the same journalistic intuition, ethics and culture as local editors. The centre’s then editorial director, Mark Katches, also had a background in established newspapers as a Pulitzer Prize winning editor. Third, staff cuts in local media made well-edited and locally relevant stories attractive at low to no cost. Fourth, even in good economic times for newspapers, few could devote the time or had the resources to do projects such as “On shaky ground” as depicted in Figure 6.1 below. Media now had access to series that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce for a small fraction of the cost. Fifth, was the erosion of a newsroom culture that once would have rather missed a story than run another organisation’s stories. Rosenthal was surprised at how easily the need for exclusivity “once so sacrosanct throughout print as well as broadcast, fell by the wayside” (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 11). On some days, the same story would be published simultaneously on 30 to 40 websites including those of highly competitive Bay Area newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010).

In its first year, California Watch partnered with almost 80 news organisations and reached an audience of 25 million people. Its online site attracted more than 200,000 unique visitors. Revenue from news organisations remained poor: it earned just $27,375 from sales but, on a positive note, it had established the “principle of payment” for content (Rosenthal, 2011, p. 14). In an interview with me in November, 2010, Rosenthal said he hoped that within three to five years, the Center for Investigative Reporting would raise 25 per cent of its revenue from sources other than foundation funding, such

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as fees, subscriptions, and individual donations. This appeared ambitious at the time and has proven to be so. According to its 2014 IRS return, the centre had earned $395,839 from content fees, $6577 from publications/ advertising, and $37,445 from fiscal sponsorship. These amounted to less than four per cent of its total revenues of $10.3 million (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014d).

Create once, distribute often

An example of the centre’s publication and multiple platform distribution model was a project called “On Shaky Ground”. This was a complex 19-month investigation that involved analysing tens of thousands of documents about earthquake safety inspections of school buildings. The project, depicted in Figure 6.1, resulted in a three-part series of about 20,000 words, video and audio content, a searchable database of more than 10,000 school inspection reports, a colouring book explaining seismic safety to children and an iPhone app pinpointing earthquake fault locations (California Watch, 2011). The project cost $550,000 to produce, mostly in staff salaries (Doctor, 2011). Almost 30 newspapers, radio programs and television outlets ran either parts or the entire series. Two Korean newspapers, a Chinese newspaper and a Chinese TV station also ran the stories; 12 PBS affiliates broadcast a 30-minute special (Doctor, 2011). The multimedia series won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the top honour available at the Investigative Reporters and Editors organisation (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014a).

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Figure 6.1.California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground” published in 30 different media. Source: California Watch (2011).

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Figure 6.1. California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground” published in 30 different media (continued). Source: California Watch (2011).

Another example of Rosenthal’s vision for multiple publishing partners was a series on the sexual harassment of migrant female labourers working on farming properties (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2014c). The “Rape in the Fields” series was produced by the centre in collaboration with Univision, Frontline and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. It included a one-hour documentary, multiple written stories, radio segments and graphic animation (Green-Barber, 2014). The stories reached an estimated audience of six million people. It aired on Frontline with 3.3 million viewers, was reported in seven daily newspapers, a four-part series ran on radio KQED and it had about 100 screenings in local communities. Parts of the series were presented in both English and Spanish. Stakeholders met for a solutions summit to discuss the issues raised by the series and in May 2014, the Californian Senate passed a bill under which a farm contractor’s licence could be revoked if it hired a supervisor who had sexually harassed workers in the past three years.

Despite the impact of its journalism, Rosenthal worried about the sustainability of the venture. Much of his time was spent visiting foundations and giving talks rather than

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doing journalism (Rosenthal, 2011). “What I need to do is keep raising money, because when you build it, you’ve got to keep it going” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). The centre’s income depended on foundation support. The revenue earned by California Watch for its “On Shaky Ground” stories, which cost an estimated $550,000, was between $35,000 and $40,000 (Rowe, 2011). In early 2012, the MacArthur Foundation announced that the centre would be the recipient of its $1 million award for creative and effective institutions. Despite this, Rosenthal again expressed concern about the money. “The challenges really for all of us in this sector is how to sustain it. No-one has figured out the business model” (MacArthur Foundation, 2012). His concern reflected a sentiment of Lowell Bergman that investigative journalism was anti-profit (University of California, 2012). In March 2012, the centre merged with a local online news site, The Bay Citizen, which had launched two years earlier. The merger created the biggest non-profit reporting organisation in the US with almost 70 staff. The centre had the capacity to produce Bay Area news, state-wide news as well as national and potentially international stories. A significant factor in the centre’s growth was its location in a state with a big population (about 37 million) that was more liberal, better educated and more highly paid than almost any other state in the United States (US Census Bureau, 2011a, 2011b, 2012).

In April, 2012, the Knight Foundation, in line with its emphasis on supporting innovation, announced it would give the centre $800,000 to curate an investigative journalism channel on YouTube. The centre also strengthened its association with public media, both on radio and television. It partnered with PRX, a non-profit public media company, to produce a weekly radio program of investigative stories under a new brand and website called Reveal. The first pilot of the program aired in September 2013 on 140 public radio stations and an estimated 410,000 listeners across the United States (Reveal, n.d.). The centre, in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, also produced a four-part investigative series under the Reveal title for PBS’s affiliate stations. “We’re delivering content through every possible means – print, online, data delivery, video, radio, and multi-media. We’re doing it a way that sort of brings all the components together and that’s what makes us unique”, the centre’s editorial director Mark Katches said (MacArthur Foundation, 2012). The centre was the only non-profit organisation in the United States that could produce high quality stories on every

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platform, according to Sharon Tiller, its director of digital media (MacArthur Foundation, 2012).

The initiatives highlighted the growth in partnerships between the non-profit investigative reporting sector and public media field in the United States. Reveal began with monthly audio programs and started producing a weekly investigative radio program in 2015 that was broadcast on 206 public radio stations, including some of the largest in the United States (Doctor, 2015). Audiences could listen to the program on podcasts and stream them on their mobile devices at their convenience. The strategy essentially extended Rosenthal’s vision of “one story, many audiences” into the mobile platform and apps era. It recognised that audiences increasingly were using their smartphones, iPads and other mobile devices not just for music but for more serious content of the sort that was once restricted to NPR’s affiliated public radio stations. The centre’s Reveal platform and branding was funded by a three-year $3 million grant from the Reva and David Logan Foundation and a $500,000 grant by the Ford Foundation (Ellis, 2014b).

As mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, the centre and the other non-profit organisations profiled here were the exceptions – the leading exponents – in the subfield of non-profit investigative reporting. But the centre’s longevity provides evidence that investigative non-profit organisations can survive in the United States with good leadership, productive partnerships and some risk taking. Noyes and Bergman forged partnerships with television broadcasters at a time when programs like 60 Minutes and Frontline were at the height of their popularity. Rosenthal took a risk in abandoning the system of working with individual media, instead taking stories wherever an audience could be found. Reveal built on that vision. “CIR [Center for Investigative Reporting] has consistently adapted, grown and taken risks”, Rosenthal said (Salladay, 2015, para. 8). The centre’s history shows that innovation and constant project renewal by non- profit organisations is needed to elicit new grants from foundations. Foundations supported the creation of California Watch; funded the I-Files collaboration between the centre and YouTube, and financed the Reveal project. In 2012, the MacArthur Foundation gave the centre a $1 million Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The award recognised organisations that “provide new ways of addressing problems, generate provocative ideas, innovate within their field, reframe the debate and have

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impact altogether disproportionate to their size”, Rosenthal wrote at the time (Rosenthal, 2012a, para. 2).

The Center for Public Integrity

The second investigative non-profit organisation examined in this chapter is the Center for Public Integrity, located in Washington, D.C., and founded 12 years after the Center for Investigative Reporting. Its launch, focus, and early method of investigative story production and distribution differed significantly from that of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Like the Center for Investigative Reporting, it would face financial and management challenges and develop an innovative model of journalism. The Center for Public Integrity has been at the forefront of the evolving non-profit investigative movement for more than 25 years. Like the Center for Investigative Reporting, it started in the home of its founder, Charles “Chuck” Lewis (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 201).

Prior to establishing the Center for Public Integrity, Lewis was a researcher and producer on CBS’s high-rating 60 Minutes program. He worked directly to the program’s top journalist Mike Wallace, creating and researching potential stories, arranging interviews and assisting in the editing and production of about four stories a year (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010). Before joining 60 Minutes, Lewis had been a producer at ABC News, including its 20/20 program in the late 1970s. His brief in Washington at the time was to come up with scoops. After more than six years at ABC News, Mike Wallace invited Lewis to join 60 Minutes following a recommendation from Lowell Bergman who was then at 60 Minutes. Lewis started working as an associate producer for Wallace in 1984. In his first year he researched about 150 stories but found that big original investigations were impractical due to intense time pressures and other restrictions (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 189).

After several of his ideas were resisted by senior editors, Lewis became embroiled in an argument with Wallace and other editors over a story that concerned former US government officials who worked in Japan as agents for mergers and acquisitions in the United States. A segment in the proposed story was to include the names and a photo from a Japanese newspaper advertisement that featured a group of former US officials,

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including a former US Commerce Secretary to President Richard Nixon who was a close friend of the founder of 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt.42 Wallace did not want the photo used, which led to a “huge expletive-filled shouting match, toe to toe, our faces close” (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 194). Other officials mentioned in the story put further pressure on CBS and its editors. Lewis felt under siege: an inhospitable environment for investigative reporting, pushback from powerful interests and “spinelessness” by his employer (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 195). The photo was broadcast but another former official was named instead of Hewitt’s friend. Lewis resigned the day after the program screened. “Foreign Agent” was later nominated for an Emmy award for “most outstanding investigative journalism”. His bosses were perplexed at his resignation: “Mike Wallace thought I was having a breakdown. He called my wife” (Keiger, 2000, para. 11). Television journalism had no further appeal: Lewis, then 34, was no longer interested in people crying on camera nor comfortable with the tight deadlines and internal political pressures of 60 Minutes. He was frustrated, too, that the media had missed big stories like the Iran-Contra scandal and the savings and loans crisis. The national press corps was doing “clubby, access journalism”, leaving an opening for an organisation dedicated to “digging deep beneath the smarminess of Washington’s daily access journalism into the actual records and documents few reporters seemed to be reading” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8 & 10, 2010; C. Lewis, 2014).

With two political science degrees, Lewis was interested in political power structures and influence in Washington and how they might be better reported. Lewis, with a mortgage and young family, joined what he called the “dark side” for nine months as a consultant for Kroll, a global finance and intelligence management company, that in the 1980s became known as Wall Street’s private eye due to its due diligence work (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010; Kroll, n.d.). The consultancy revealed how much more information was available to lawyers, forensic financial analysts, historians and other investigators than to journalists. Lewis witnessed a financial take-over investigation that involved 60 people around the world over several

42 Lowell Bergman also fell out with Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt after a 60 Minutes interview with a tobacco whistleblower was axed due to legal concerns. Bergman had cultivated the whistleblower while working as a producer on the program. Bergman later was played by actor Al Pacino in The Insider, a fictionalised version of the events.

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months and produced 36 volumes of data: “the stuff they were amassing was jaw dropping” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010).

Lewis made no mention of his time at Kroll in a book he wrote that included the 60 Minutes incident and chronicled the formation of the Center for Public Integrity (C. Lewis, 2014). But the model of journalism that the Center for Public Integrity undertook in its early days and the later creation of a global network of investigative reporters who would work collaboratively on stories reflected the model of investigative research he had witnessed at Kroll. Lewis developed a model that would use a hybrid journalistic- political science methodology in its investigations. Stories would involve months, even years, of investigation into issues of national importance, the results of which would be released in reports to the media, unlike the Center for Investigative Reporting’s early partnering with particular magazines. Lewis believed, and this proved to be the case, that the potential distribution of information and stories through detailed reports would be far greater than if the centre were to partner with one or two news outlets. The question was how to fund such a “journalistic utopia” (C. Lewis, 2007, p. 8) while avoiding conflicts of interest and pressure from corporate interests.

Lewis floated his early ideas for an investigative centre with a number of influential Washington identities and well-known journalists including historian and writer Arthur Schlesinger; the president of the University of Notre Dame, the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh; a former head of the New York Times’ Washington bureau, Bill Kovach; Pulitzer Prize winner, Hodding Carter; and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, later a professor of communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He received positive feedback (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 201). Schlesinger had worked closely with John F. Kennedy when he was US President and wrote a detailed account of his administration, A Thousand Days, and later supported Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign. He wrote a biography of Robert Kennedy several years later (Tanehaus, 2007). Father Hesburgh was chairman of the Civil Rights Commission until he was asked to resign by President Richard Nixon after the 1972 election. He was critical of the Nixon administration’s policies (N. Anderson, 2015). Hodding Carter worked for the Robert Kennedy campaign in California and had supper with Kennedy and his family on the night before he was shot and killed. He was on a plane the next morning and heard about the shooting on the news (Carter, 1968).

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An advisory board of the people contacted by Lewis was established. In addition to those mentioned, it included James MacGregor Burns, a historian and political scientist who was a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential biographer and a former Democrat nominee and delegate ("James McGregor Burns," 2012) and Pearl Stewart, who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to edit a metropolitan daily newspaper in a major American city (Reuters, 1992). Lewis later wrote that the centre was taken seriously in large part because it included respected individuals (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 6).

Lewis had two co-founders: Alejandro Benes, with whom Lewis had worked at ABC News, and Charles Piller, a print journalist on the west coast. Both were “trusted friends” but did not know one another (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 8). Lewis became chairman; Benes, the treasurer; and Piller, the secretary. They called the new organisation the Center for Public Integrity, an “audacious name” that was “a little pompous. A little pretentious. A little strange” (C. Lewis, 2000, pp. 6, 8). It seemed apt, however, as three journalistic organisations already had the word investigative in their titles: the Center for Investigative Reporting, Investigative Editors and Reporters and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. A for-profit model was ruled out because corporate donors could quickly withdraw their support if the stories offended them. The founders settled on a mixture of support from foundations, corporate sponsors and unions. “I didn’t know anything about this world”, Lewis said, referring to fund raising (C. Lewis, November 10, 2012). Nor would funders have heard of him because his television jobs had involved behind-the-scenes roles. A high-profile advisory board, though, would assist with fund raising. The founders favoured trying to win foundation support in preference to donations from companies and unions but relented, accepting such funding until 1994 when they decided no longer to take these donations due to potential perceptions of conflict of interest. They started with donations from several unions and companies and a small consulting contract with ABC News (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 8). The first annual budget, in 1990, was $200,000.

The centre launched in October, 1989 and moved from Lewis’s guest bedroom to an office. Its first project returned to the issue that had aggrieved him at 60 Minutes. In December 1990, at the National Press Club, he released a 201-page study entitled America’s Frontline Trade Officials (C. Lewis, 1990). The report found that 47 per cent of former US trade officials had personally registered or registered their firms as foreign

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agents, working with countries or overseas corporations: a revolving door issue that encouraged serving government officials into cosy relations with groups they ought to be regulating or monitoring in the hope of landing lucrative roles after leaving office (C. Lewis, 1990, 2014). The media conference was covered by CNN, Frontline, ABC News and other networks: “Lewis and the CPI were off and running” (Keiger, 2000, para. 18). The centre’s 2000 annual report noted the study had sparked an investigation by the General Accounting Office and a Justice Department ruling; it was referred to by four presidential candidates in 1992 (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 5).

Over the next three years, Lewis and his partners, with the assistance of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate interns and freelance reporters, wrote 13 detailed reports about money, power, political influence and corruption in Washington and by the 1992 election “we were being called daily for quotes about the candidates and ethics-related situations” (C. Lewis, 2000, p. 9). What Lewis called the centre’s first prototypical study was released in 1994 amid controversy over the Clinton Administration’s health care reforms. Written by 17 researchers and more than 200 pages long, it exhaustively tracked the lobbying activities of 662 health care interests (C. Lewis, 1994). The findings included everything from privately funded trips and revolving door examples to campaign contributions and personal investments. More than 50 reporters plus seven cameras covered the news conference when Lewis released the findings. In 1996, Avon Books published The Buying of the President by Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, which tracked the relationships between presidential candidates and their career patron supporters. It was published weeks before the primary votes were cast. The book’ s findings received wide media coverage, were serialised in the New York Times and triggered a PBS Frontline documentary, “So you want to buy a President?” (PBS Frontline, 1996).

One review said that its aggregate effect “should succeed in persuading even the staunchest believers in the integrity of the current US political system that something is seriously wrong” (Weissman, 1996, para. 10). Similarly themed books were published in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 election years. Exhaustive investigations were also conducted into corruption, lobbying and conflicts of interest in state legislatures, the beneficiaries of US government contracts in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts and media ownership and lobbying by telecom companies. A project that spawned Global

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Integrity, a new non-profit organisation, sought to assess and monitor government transparency and corruption around the world. The first report of 750,000 pages was published online in 2004. Global Integrity publishes updated reports annually (Global Integrity, n.d.).

Lewis’s investigative think-tank methodology of producing lengthy detailed reports reflected both his location in the heart of national politics in the United States, his political science background and his experience at Kroll. The issues that the Center for Public Integrity investigated centred on politics, power, money and influence. Media conferences attracted the attention of Washington’s political reporters and national broadcasters. In addition, the centre published stories on its own website from 1999 and its books extended its reach: the 2004 edition of The Buying of the President was on the New York Times best seller list for three months (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 205). Lewis, who was critical of the media’s “idiot culture”, found there were large numbers of people who were interested in long-form, detailed public affairs reporting (C. Lewis, 2014, p. 208). The centre’s methodology changed soon after Lewis departed in 2004. The centre adopted a more conventional approach focused on multimedia display and a quicker turnover of stories.

Management, funding and legal issues

It is not the intention of this thesis to describe journalistic projects unless they assist our understanding of the operations and issues associated with non-profit reporting organisations. This section will evaluate the key challenges the centre faced as it developed. I have explored elsewhere the difficult transition professional journalists faced when moving to the non-profit field. The following paragraphs illustrate those challenges in three categories: management, funding and legal issues. I was fortunate in being at the Center for Public Integrity when a number of management issues were playing out. At the time, I did not understand the significance or the internal politics of those issues. They ultimately led to the departure of two senior executives and other staff and threatened the financial viability of the centre. Three separate categories of management challenges are explored below.

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Management issues. One: It was at a conference of international investigative reporters in Moscow in 1992 organised by The Nation magazine and a university that Charles Lewis had a notion that journalists in different countries could collaborate on stories. Acclaimed journalist Phillip Knightley had asked why he couldn’t ring a reporter in a foreign country and ask him or her to check something or work collaboratively on projects (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010). Lewis spent five or six years refining the idea, which I speculate owed something to the international financial investigations he witnessed at Kroll. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was launched in 1997 as a network of 75 reporters in about 40 countries. Projects involved journalists investigating common issues in their respective countries and reporting to the same project editor. The project editor would draw together the material into a story or series for the non-profit’s website, and the participating reporters could publish versions in their own countries. The rationale for the project was that criminal activities, environmental and health issues, corporate corruption and dubious business practices did not stop at a nation’s borders. Its reporter members43 were selected partly by filtering lists of overseas journalists who had completed fellowships through the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University or the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. By 2014, the consortium had 185 journalists located in 65 countries (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 2014).

Maud Beelman, a former reporter with Associated Press who worked in the United States and overseas covering the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, was hired as the consortium’s first director. Tensions emerged between Beelman and Lewis over the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ status. “She felt strongly from the first week on the job that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists should be a stand-alone non-profit; it should not be within the centre” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010). When Lewis returned from sabbatical in 2001, he was incensed that a sign with the consortium’s name had been placed in the lobby’s directory while he was absent. In his view, the consortium was predominantly funded by the Center for Public Integrity and was the centre’s “family jewel” rather than

43 Bill Birnbauer has been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists since 1998.

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a separate organisation (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010). It was a stressful period for those involved. Lewis sacked the deputy director of the Center for Public Integrity, Peter Eisner, and several staff members. Beelman stayed until 2004, helping to establish the consortium as well directing major investigations including one on tobacco smuggling and another on global water privatisation, both of which I reported. The consortium won a number of prestigious awards for the investigative projects that Beelman had coordinated.

Two: In 2004, Lewis turned 50 and told the centre’s board he was leaving. He was restless and wanted to pursue other projects. Years of stress fighting litigation launched by two Russian oligarchs was a contributing factor (Sullivan, 2010). In his view, the founder had to leave the building for the long-term wellbeing of the enterprise (C. Lewis, 2007). “The board was astonished, they almost fell off their chairs, it was like dropping a nuclear bomb, they were very upset, I have to say” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 10, 2010). Two successors followed him before Bill Buzenberg, a former NPR managing editor, became executive director in 2007. The three years before Buzenberg’s appointment were testing times for the centre and numerous senior staff resigned. Many of the stories produced were unremarkable and generated little media interest. Revenue dropped sharply in 2005 and 2006 to about half of that in 2004.44 Staff numbers were cut by a third (C. Lewis, 2007). Buzenberg was interviewed for the job as early as 2004 but was not available at that time. “Unfortunately, when [Buzenberg] did get there, he inherited a much weaker organization than he would have had he come earlier” centre reporter Bob Williams told American Journalism Review (Hartmann, 2008, para. 8). Buzenberg confirmed in the article that the centre had faced serious financial challenges after Lewis left. A month after the article was published, Roberta Baskin who had replaced Lewis as executive director responded in a letter to American Journalism Review (Baskin, 2008). She said she had let go Bob Williams after he had threatened a senior manager and that he could not be considered a credible source. She disputed Buzenberg’s view of the financial state of the centre and noted that she had redirected the centre’s emphasis on “paper- heavy reports and books” (Baskin, 2008, para. 5) to a more user friendly online site: 50 reports were produced in her time, winning seven prestigious awards. “I was surprised

44 Also see below under Funding issues.

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that Chuck Lewis, who remained a highly paid consultant to the centre during my tenure, criticised our work for not having ‘the pop of some of the earlier ones’” (Baskin, 2008, para. 6). An evaluation of the centre’s progress in 2010 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation said that “it is well known within the journalism industry that CPI [Center for Public Integrity] struggled to remain a potent force after founder Chuck Lewis left” (Coffman et al., 2010, p. 6). It said that Buzenberg and several senior reporters had renewed confidence in the organisation’s potential (Coffman et al., 2010). Once again, this episode demonstrated the importance of non-profit executives having both journalistic capital and competent financial and managerial skills.

Three: In March, 2010, former Associated Press and Washington Times and Washington Post reporter John Solomon was appointed as the centre’s first journalist-in-residence. His aim was to do stories on government accountability issues and have a “very fun time” (Center for Public Integrity, 2010b). Described as charming, garrulous, brimming with swagger and sprouting ideas, he quickly started picking up management responsibilities (Blake, 2012). Solomon brought with him a new vision for the centre that would soon be supported by Buzenberg and the centre’s board. His strategy led to his appointment as executive editor in November 2011. He also became the centre’s chief digital officer. It was a rapid rise for a journalist who had moved on quickly from two previous employers and whose reporting had been the subject of critical commentary (Blake, 2012; Corley, 2008; McLeary, 2007). Solomon’s strategy envisioned that huge new revenues could be created by launching the “nation’s first all- digital, non-profit newspaper dedicated solely to accountability journalism” (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a, para. 4). An executive summary of the business plan, entitled the A Digital Strategy for Expanding and Monetizing CPI’s Investigative Reporting45 (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a), outlined a radical realignment of the centre’s operations.

Instead of focusing on the well-researched, extended deadline journalism pursued by Lewis and others, the emphasis would be on breaking news daily. The aim was to develop the centre’s website into a primary destination site and boost revenue through advertising, email marketing, e-publication, subscription revenue and content

45 I obtained a copy of the strategy document from senior staff at the Center for Public Integrity. See Appendix 3.

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syndication (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a). A subscription publication would update throughout the day. The strategy predicted a massive jump in revenue. By the end of the fifth year, the strategy would gross $11.8 million in revenue, web traffic would grow to 20 million views and an e-edition of stories would have 100,000 subscribers, according to the strategy document (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a). The number of reporting staff would double, as would the capacity to produce long- form investigative projects. At the same time, daily news would be read by millions of people. “Instead of producing content that others use and monetize … the Center would transform itself into a destination news source able to command and monetize a national audience…” (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a, para. 34). In the first two years, approximately two dozen additional staff would be needed for content generation, web development and digital development at an additional annual cost of about $4 million. The Solomon strategy was embraced by the board. The Knight Foundation provided a $1.7 million grant toward the redesign of the centre’s website and the opening up of new revenue streams (Knight Foundation, 2014a).

A dozen staff were hired and in May 2011, the new, daily updated iWatch News website was launched at Washington’s National Press Club. The future must have looked bright, particularly as the Huffington Post’s Investigative Fund, then believed to have $2 million, was expected to merge with the centre, providing additional staff and funding. Under the agreement, the centre’s projects would appear on the Huffington Post’s website, which had 44 million users per month: “... it will be more than double our traffic, if that works” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, November 11, 2010).

David Kaplan was appointed editorial director of the Center for Public Integrity and director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2008. He was an award-winning investigative reporter and editor with US News & World Report and the author of several investigative books (Global Investigative Journalism Network, 2015). “He [Kaplan] thought the push toward a more daily journalism model was a terrible idea, and he let that be known, in meetings and to Buzenberg, according to several people present at the meetings” (Hagey, 2011, p. 2). Kaplan worried that Solomon’s “dubious revenue-generating schemes” would result in financial chaos and compromise the centre’s ability to do the investigative reporting it was founded to do (Blake, 2012, para. 20). An acrimonious relationship developed between Kaplan and Solomon and

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Solomon made accusations about improper access to a database in a project being overseen by Kaplan and the use of a consultant in research conducted for the same project (Blake, 2012). Kaplan later said of Solomon: “It was apparent that these attacks were in response to questions I raised over serious flaws in Solomon’s business plan, a plan that has now largely been abandoned” (Hagey, 2011, p. 2). Tension between the two developed into “full-scale warfare, and fierce shouting matches began erupting in the newsroom” (Blake, 2012, para. 32).

The truth of the numerous claims and counter claims made at the time is not the point here, though it should be recorded that the centre’s board supported Kaplan in a statement that recognised the quality of his team’s reporting (Blake, 2012). The fallout demonstrates some of the complexities of personal and business relationships in what is a difficult and stressful creative field. By the time the iWatch site launched, Kaplan had left and Solomon resigned in the week of the launch (Blake, 2012). The episode shows how easily a bold vision can be sold when hard-headed analysis is absent. The financial crisis that resulted from the implementation of the plan led to million-dollar budget deficits, deep staff cuts and Buzenberg having to reassure funders that the centre’s “story is a good story” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). I interviewed Buzenberg in November 2010 as the strategy was embraced. He was enthusiastic about the new direction and believed total staff might grow from 50 to about 70 in the next few years. Interviewed again 15 months later, he conceded the plan was “way overly optimistic” and that many of the targets and aims either were not met or dropped. “We were too optimistic, the numbers were completely exaggerated frankly, and I’m glad John Solomon is not here anymore” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012).

The strategy envisaged that circulation of a premium e-edition of the site, essentially the site without advertisements, would grow from 30,000 to 100,000 member donors by the end of year five. Buzenberg later revised this, saying he would be happy if membership reached 10,000 by the end of 2011. Advertising revenue projected at $500,000 earned just $10,000 (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2011). Buzenberg said he dismissed an advertising staff member because the income she made did not even recoup her salary. The iWatch-themed brand was dumped in favour of the original and much stronger public integrity label. “We are all trying to figure out what is

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the way...there’s a big transition underway, how is it going to work? And no one has figured it out. We thought we had a way to figure it out. We did get some very nice grants from people like the Knight Foundation, but in truth we spent more than they even gave us ... ” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012).

The three examples described above while not researched in-depth due to time and resource constraints, nevertheless highlight the difficult issues that arose at various times in the centre’s development. These issues most likely were not unique to the centre. They serve to demonstrate the importance of human relations and leadership. Non-profit organisations are as susceptible to internal tension and disputes as commercial operations. The Solomon plan proved to be quixotic and wasted precious funds and staff talent. The creation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, on the other hand, was highly successful. These experiences demonstrate that small, journalistic organisations can innovate and take risks that larger commercial media would not contemplate. Foundations can be persuaded to support such ventures. But they won’t work every time.

Funding issues. The Center for Public Integrity’s ability to attract significant foundation funding depended to a large degree on the executive director’s relationship with funders, the research conducted for this thesis shows. Like most other non-profit news organisations, the centre depended on foundation funding and executive director Bill Buzenberg told me “there is no other way” to fund the centre’s work (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). The centre’s founder, Charles Lewis, said foundations had provided about 90 per cent of the $30 million in revenue he raised for the centre (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010). The revenue trends in Table 6.2 and in Figure 6. 2 highlight the importance of the executive director’s role in fundraising. They clearly indicate the sensitivity of foundations to internal issues in their grantees’ organisations.

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Table 6.2. Center for Public Integrity finances, 2002–2010

Program Gifts and Surplus/ Year Expenses Revenue services grants deficit 2002 $3.2 million $2.9 million $3.6 million $2.9 million −$747,953 2003 $3.3 million $4.2 million $4.3 million $4.3 million −$48,695 2004 $3.4 million $6.4 million $4.5 million $6.4 million $1.9 million 2005 $3.1 million $3 million $4.4 million $3.1 million −$1.2 million 2006 $3.3 million $3.1 million $4.7 million $3.2 million −$1.5 million 2007 $3 million $3.8 million $4.2 million $4.1 million −$78,476 2008 $3.1 million $7.6 million $3.9 million $8.2 million $4.3 million 2009 $4.1 million $5.6 million $4.9 million $6 million $1.1 million 2010 $6.4 million $8.8 million $7.7 million $9.2 million $1.5 million Total $33 million $40 million $42 million $48 million $5.3 million Source: Compiled by the author from 990 Forms filed with Internal Revenue Service: from http://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-organization/annual-tax-returns

Figure 6.2. Center for Public Integrity’s revenue and expenses, 2002–2010. Source: Compiled by the author from 990 Forms filed with Internal Revenue Service; http://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-organization/annual-tax-returns

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The data in Table 6.2 and Figure 6.2 was drawn from the Form 990 documents that the centre was required to lodge each year with the IRS. Form 990 returns are lodged by organisations that are exempt from income tax. In the table, “Gifts and grants” represent donations made predominantly by foundations. ‘Revenue’ includes those contributions in addition to extra income from contractual services, publication sales, investment income, and other revenue sources. “Expenses” is total spending on salaries and entitlements, fundraising fees, promotion, leases, travel and so on. The table and chart show that after Charles Lewis left in 2004, revenues declined sharply and did not improve until after 2007 when Bill Buzenberg was appointed as executive director. Revenue of $6.4 million in 2004 fell to $3.1 million in 2005 and a similar amount the following year. Despite the fall in revenues, the centre’s expenses remained fairly constant, resulting in three consecutive years in which spending outdid revenue. The 2005 deficit of $1.2 million represented a turnaround of $3 million in the centre’s budget. Following his appointment in 2007, Buzenberg managed to double revenues from $4.1 million to $8.2 million. In 2008, the centre finished with a surplus of $4.3 million. Between 2007 and 2014, the centre raised $56.7 million in gifts and grants. Table 6.3 shows the second financial issue faced by the centre – the impact the Solomon plan.

Table 6.3.Center for Public Integrity’s financial results under Bill Buzenberg’s leadership

Program Salaries and Gifts and Surplus/ Year Expenses Revenue expenses benefits grants deficit

2007 $3,076,464 $2,781,395 $3,870,985 $4,212,835 $4,134,359 −$78,476 2008 $3,112,639 $2,600,929 $7,692,526 $3,913,389 $8,271,362 $4,357,973 2009 $4,191,710 $2,912,517 $5,610,122 $4,903,472 $6,024,115 $1,120,643 2010 $6,487,393 $3,863,196 $8,845,667 $7,708,349 $9,264,997 $1,556,648 2011 $8,666,767 $5,700,760 $5,128,583 $10,076,320 $5,371,676 −$4,704,644 2012 $6,732,000 $4,363,015 $8,858,926 $7,633,950 $8,998,063 $1,364,113 2013 $5,631,896 $4,692,500 $7,464,706 $6,802,136 $7,634,713 $832,577 2014 $6,887,886 $5,632,462 $9,313,650 $8,413,507 $9,616,998 $1,203,491 Source: Compiled by the author from 990 Forms filed with Internal Revenue Service; http://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-organization/annual-tax-returns

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The centre recorded a $4.7 deficit in 2011 as it struggled to contain the fallout of the additional staff hiring, web redesign and other costs of implementing the Solomon strategy. Expenses rose by $2.3 million on 2010 while revenues fell by $3.8 million. Buzenberg said that while 2010 was the centre’s most successful fundraising year, the costs associated with the Solomon plan together with the big shortfall of anticipated revenue meant that in 2011 the centre had to dip into its reserves, take out a loan and cut staff (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). Ten positions were eliminated and five other people lost their jobs. Figure 6.3 depicts the two periods discussed here when financial challenges occurred between 2004 and 2007 and in 2011.

Figure 6.3. Financial crises affected the Center for Public Integrity twice since 2004. Source: 990 Forms filed with Internal Revenue Service: edited and updated from http://www. publicintegrity.org/about/our-organization/annual-tax-returns

My analysis, using an Excel spreadsheet and data from the annual Form 990 documents showed that from 2002 to 2014 inclusive, the Center for Public Integrity spent $75.3 million on the production of investigative journalism.46 Over the same period it raised $79.4 million in revenue from donations. Other income in the form of royalties and consulting fees raised just $1.3 million over same the period or 1.6 per cent of its total

46 Total functional expenses include salaries and benefits, taxes, fundraising, office expenses, information technology, occupancy, travel and investment management fees.

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revenue. When I suggested to Buzenberg that the mainstream media loved the cake but wouldn’t pay for the ingredients, he said, “You got it in one” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). The lack of payment by media for non-profit stories might seem unfair to organisations that spend months or even years working on complex stories for little or no direct financial return. But publication in mainstream outlets gave non-profit organisations an audience, credibility and impact, each important in attracting grants from funders. Non-payment also meant non-profit organisations did not have to establish administrative systems for processing payments and avoided potential tax issues associated with having charitable tax exempt status. The arrangement did create some unusual situations. For example, R. Jeffrey Smith was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post who became the centre’s managing editor for national security in 2011. His articles for the centre were routinely published by the Washington Post. “The Post loves it, they’ll take everything he does, we pay him”, Buzenberg said (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). In 2012, Buzenberg told me that he would approach the Washington Post and ask that it pay about $25,000 a year for the centre’s articles. He would have similar discussions with the Gannett, McClatchy and other organisations. Two years later, he was yet to succeed in securing major funding from mainstream media. “Getting any news organisation to pay us has been extremely challenging … they all like our work and will use it and thus distribute our work really well, but most have not been willing to pay us for it” (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, September 3, 2014).

Legal issues. In 2000– 2001, the centre faced three libel writs including one from two Russian oligarchs who were represented by a prestigious Washington law firm (C. Lewis, 2007; Sullivan, 2010). The centre had published an article about links between Halliburton Company and a Russian oil conglomerate whose “roots are imbedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organised crime funds” (Royce & Heller, 2000, para. 2). Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney who was George Bush’s running mate in the 2000 Presidential election. The article reported that Halliburton had lobbied for a $489 million taxpayer-insured loan to a Russian company controlled by the Alfa Group conglomerate. It quoted allegations made in a Russian intelligence report that the Alfa Bank had been involved in organised crime and drug activities. The allegations were “hotly disputed” by the

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Russian company (Royce & Heller, 2000, para. 3). The centre’s report said that under Cheney, Halliburton had secured $2.3 billion in US Government contracts. The case of Alfa Bank v. Center for Public Integrity led to one of the longest discovery processes in recent US history, involving five years of hearings, 20 depositions and 107,000 documents (C. Lewis, 2007). The defamation suit was unsuccessful, even though the judge found that at least some of the allegations in the story were exaggerated or inaccurate. The lapses amounted to negligence or bad journalism rather than actual malice. “To ensure the ascertainment and publication of the truth about public affairs, it is essential that the First Amendment protect some erroneous publications as well as true ones”, the judge said (Leagle, 2005, para. 122). Lewis said the Russians had spent between $8 million and $10 million on the case; the centre’s defence cost $4 million and it lost its libel insurance. The case highlighted the fragility of non-profit investigative reporting generally as the enterprise “can fail at any time. We were up against multibillion-dollar people” (Sullivan, 2010, p. 29). To protect the centre from future legal action, Lewis established the non-profit Fund for Independence in Journalism as a legal defence support organisation with initial foundation contributions totalling $4 million (Lewis, 2014, p 214). Five law firms vowed to protect the centre from litigation on a pro bono basis. The fund provided the centre with $1.5 million in transition funding soon after Buzenberg started in 2007 enabling it to “get its expenses and revenue in balance” (Fund for Independence in Journalism, 2008, para. 8).

In concluding the case study, there is no doubt that the Center for Public Integrity has contributed significantly to journalism and democracy in the United States through its scrutiny of government and power. Its early focus on campaign funding and lobbying and its more recent reporting on national security, environmental and health issues, communications and finance were published in media across the country. It won its first Pulitzer Prize – the third by US investigative non-profit organisation – in 2014 for a year-long investigation that exposed how doctors and lawyers worked with the coal industry to deny benefits to workers who had black lung disease (Center for Public Integrity, 2014). Its global project, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists produced hundreds of stories on tax havens, the trade in human tissue, exploitation of fishing grounds and tobacco smuggling among others under an innovative model of reporting that was published in media around the world. A series of

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investigations on tax havens included “Swiss Leaks” about the giant HSBC bank profiting from money laundering, tax dodgers and criminals and working with blacklisted countries like Iran. It was the largest journalistic collaboration in the world, with 170 reporters from 65 news organisations working together (Buzenberg, 2015). More than 400 media organisations contacted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists seeking to investigate further by accessing a dataset with details of 100,000 of the bank’s clients.

The Center for Public Integrity’s longevity shows that the non-profit model is adaptable and robust enough to withstand management, financial and legal issues while continuing to produce quality journalism. As mentioned, the centre is an exceptional case in the non-profit field due to its financial strength, focus on national issues and location in Washington D.C. Nevertheless, we can draw understandings from its history. The case study highlights the importance of the organisational leader, both in terms of dealing with internal issues and outside perceptions. Both relate directly to funding, which is the key challenge for non-profit directors. Word of internal ructions spreads quickly to funders of the small subfield of investigative reporting. The centre’s experience shows that foundations are reactive to such events. The evidence shows that a decline in support occurred after Charles Lewis departed and before Buzenberg repaired the damage. Buzenberg announced in May 2014 that he would leave the centre in early 2015. He had raised more than $50 million during his eight years at the centre. “I am leaving behind commitments of $7 million, compared to the financial deficit I faced in my first days on the job” (Buzenberg, 2015, para. 5). Under Buzenberg, the organisation won 81 national and international reporting awards. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “almost moribund and without resources” when he started was revitalised and had 185 reporters in 65 countries (Buzenberg, 2015, para. 7). Over 25 years, the centre had transformed itself from an organisation focused on investigative books and reports that suited the times into a modern, online multimedia organisation. It repositioned itself from having a national and state political focus to reporting more broadly on issues of public concern. It proved to be financially sustainable through a combination of loyal and on-going foundation supporters and new funders.

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ProPublica

The third case study focuses on ProPublica, the most recently created of the three non- profit organisations examined in this chapter. ProPublica was founded during the financial crisis when numerous non-profit organisations were launching or preparing to do so. What distinguished it from the others was that it started with substantial funding that allowed it to concentrate on journalistic projects without concern over its short to medium-term survival. Billionaire former banker Herbert Sandler and his wife, Marion, launched ProPublica with a commitment of spending $10 million a year on investigative journalism (Perez-Pena, 2007). The Sandlers had sold their company, Golden West Financial Corporation – which they had built into the second biggest savings and loan organisation in the US – to Wachovia Corporation for $25 billion, reaping $2.4 billion for their stake. They placed $1.4 billion of their money in the Sandler Foundation (Nocera, 2008). The Sandlers had been thinking about establishing a journalism outlet for over a decade (Perry, 2007a). Herbert Sandler was frustrated by the media’s focus on celebrities rather than issues like global warming and the war in Iraq. He was critical of the coverage of the 1980s savings and loan scandal and subprime mortgage issues during the financial crisis. Like other funders of non-profit reporting, Sandler said that he was disturbed that the erosion of the mainstream media could weaken democracy. He wanted to help create stories with moral force that would sustain democracy. He promised to be a long-term funder unless extraordinary circumstances occurred (Perry, 2007a). Sandler appointed himself chairman of ProPublica’s board.

In sharp symbolic contrast to the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity, which started in their founders’ homes, ProPublica launched in a luxury tower in Manhattan’s financial district, not far from Wall Street. It hired several of the United States’ top editors and reporters. Paul Steiger had retired as the long- serving managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and joined the Sandlers in establishing ProPublica. As the managing editor of a national newspaper that was awarded 16 Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure, Steiger arrived with huge social and symbolic capital. His involvement brought the start-up immediate journalistic credibility and attention. When ProPublica sought to staff its newsroom, hundreds of journalists, including high-profile award-winners applied. Stephen Engelberg, a former

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managing editor of the Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, and a former investigative editor on the New York Times, was appointed managing editor. Engelberg later reflected that it was a “leap in the dark” to leave an established news organisation for a start-up (Ellis, 2013, para. 11). ProPublica paid its senior editors significantly more than the Center for Public Integrity or the Center for Investigative Reporting. Steiger was paid $571,689 and Engelberg’s salary in 2010 was $341,181, according to the non-profit site’s tax documents (ProPublica, 2010). This compared with Buzenberg’s salary of $233,769 (Center for Public Integrity, 2010c) and Robert Rosenthal’s $203,750 (Center for Investigative Reporting, 2010). ProPublica’s journalism advisory board included Jill Abramson, executive editor, the New York Times historian and biographer, Robert Caro, and other high-profile editors, funders and academics. Its founders understood the importance of economic stability. A business advisory board that included venture capitalists and executives from equity investment, public relations and corporate advice firms was appointed (ProPublica, n.d.-a).

By spring 2008, Steiger and other editors were working their way through 850 job applications (Steiger, 2008). The strategy of hiring experienced, highly skilled journalists brought the organisation quick results and recognition. First, ProPublica produced high quality stories and data; second, its mainstream media networks enabled it to partner on exclusive stories; third, its stories won major awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes; and finally, it was able to attract other funders. The Sandlers’ involvement came at a cost. Their support of Democrat and liberal organisations attracted strong criticism from right-wing commentators, as will be described in the next chapter. Their former corporate activities at the World Savings Bank also drew scrutiny and criticism in the mainstream media. A New York Times article accused their bank of aggressively marketing risky loans at the height of the housing bubble. The article said that one of the bank’s mortgage options was regarded as the “Typhoid Mary” of the mortgage industry (Moss & Fabrikant, 2008). The Sandlers defended their bank’s behaviour in the article and in a long letter to the New York Times’ then executive editor Bill Keller in which they highlighted what they regarded as inaccuracies and distortions. They maintained their business careers had always been based on “ethics, integrity, discipline and fair dealing” (Sandler & Sandler, 2009, p. 1). The Times published four corrections based on the information the Sandlers provided (Keller, 2009). At about the

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same period, the Sandlers were parodied as greedy bankers on Saturday Night Live, a skit that later was removed from the internet after complaints and an apology (Moss & Fabrikant, 2008). 60 Minutes featured a World Savings Bank whistleblower who said he had warned senior executives that the bank was “sitting on an Enron” and was “breaking the law” by issuing loans to those who could not afford them (Pelley, 2009, para. 6, 4). And Time included the Sandlers on its list of people to blame for the financial crisis (Horowitz, 2010). The critics extended their condemnation to ProPublica itself, suggesting it had a hidden political agenda. ProPublica was described as a vehicle for left-wing “hit pieces” financed by donors who wanted to promote “radical left-leaning change in American society” (Chumley, 2009, para. 3, 10). ProPublica’s stories on foreclosures contained little to no information about the Sandlers’ role in the 2008 market crash. “This is perhaps not coincidental” one article said, noting the “obvious conflict created by the incongruent interests of ProPublica’s chairman” (Gabbay, 2012, para. 4). Another critic asked, “What do the Sandlers want for their millions? Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press” (Shafer, 2009b, para. 6).

My research shows that the Sandlers’ proportion of total foundation funding of the non- profit declined each year since its founding, apart from in 2014. My analysis of the returns that ProPublica submitted to the IRS, in Table 6.4, shows the percentage of funding provided by the Sandlers dropped from 94 per cent in 2008 to less than 30 per cent in 2013, but increased to almost 40 per cent in 2014.

The Sandler Foundation provided about half of ProPublica’s funding between 2008 and 2014. It contributed $35.5 million to the organisation between 2008 and 2014. Total donations were $69.7 million over the same period. Other big donors to ProPublica included the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. ProPublica in 2014 had about 100 philanthropic donors who gave it a minimum of $5000, achieving a greater diversity of funding than in previous years (ProPublica, 2014c).

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Table 6.4. The Sandlers’ support of ProPublica

Year Sandler Total % of total 2008 $8 million $8.5 million 94.1 2009 $4.5 million $6.3 million 71.4 2010 $6 million $10.2 million 58.8 2011 $5 million $10.1 million 49.5 2012 $4 million $10.9 million 36.7 2013 $4 million $13.6 million 29.4 2014 $4 million $10.1 million 39.6 Total $35.5million $69.7 million 50.7 Source: Compiled by the author from Form 990 returns to the Internal Revenue Service; https://www.propublica.org/about/documents/

While ProPublica succeeded in attracting other donations, this analysis puts in perspective the importance of the Sandlers’ support. Without it, ProPublica’s funding between 2008 and 2014 would have been a maximum of about $34 million, though probably less as its early editorial success funded almost solely by the Sandlers likely attracted other funders. ProPublica’s general manager Richard Tofel told me he was confident that funding from sources other than the Sandlers would continue to grow. A diversified funding base was more secure and was an important market indicator of success. “… if the only people you can convince to give you money are the founding donors, that’s not terrific in terms of what that would say about convincing people of the importance of the work that we’re doing” (R. Tofel, personal communication, November 17, 2010). Tofel said this in 2010 when the Sandlers’ proportion of total revenue was almost 60 per cent. By 2014, the Sandlers’ proportion had declined to 40 per cent – still a sizeable amount of the annual revenue, which was virtually the same as in 2010.

Unlike the Center for Investigative Reporting, which charged some of its media partners a small fee for its stories, and the Center for Public Integrity, which would like to charge, ProPublica invited anyone to “steal our stories” (ProPublica, n.d.-c). Where it collaborated with other publishers in partnership deals, media were welcome to run the stories following publication on ProPublica’s own site (Editors Weblog, 2009). When the organisation launched, doubts were expressed that established news outlets would

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partner with a non-profit on exclusive stories (Ellis, 2013; Miner, 2007; ProPublica, 2014b). These doubts proved to be incorrect. Since launching, ProPublica has had 127 different publishing partners distribute its stories (ProPublica, n.d.-a). It has had exclusive deals with media such as the New York Times, NPR , the Washington Post, Frontline, the Atlantic magazine and This American Life (Ellis, 2013).

ProPublica has led innovation in data journalism. It was a key developer of easily accessible and searchable databases that provided the core information for many of its stories. The databases, displayed on its website, enabled readers to customise searches for information that was relevant to them. For example, they could look up their own doctors ’ prescribing habits or list the payments individual doctors had received from drug companies. The creation of information that the public could use, and that was useful to them, proved immensely popular. The Dollars for Docs database recorded more than 6.6 million page views and spawned local stories in 175 news organisations (ProPublica, 2013).

The database enabled people to see the payment that their doctors had received from pharmaceutical and medical device companies, often for promotional speaking engagements, consulting and honoraria (Sagara, Ornstein, Weber, Grochowski Jones, & Merrill, 2014). Another database enabled readers to check the average waiting times at emergency departments. The database provided the average time patients spent in emergency rooms before being sent home, the average wait to receive pain-relieving medication for broken bones, and how long they had to wait before being taken to their rooms (Groega, Tigas, & Wei, 2014). ProPublica used such applications to leverage its journalism through local, regional and national media cherry picking the data to do their own stories (Ellis, 2013). The project represented a “new kind of reporting” (C. Anderson et al., 2012, section 3, para. 10).

ProPublica was the first of a new generation of well-funded national accountability news organisations in the non-profit investigative reporting subfield. It was followed by the Intercept, funded by Pierre Omidyar, and the Marshall Project, headed by former New York Times editor Bill Keller, and funded initially by former reporter and successful hedge fund manager Neil Barsky. ProPublica’s success, both journalistically with two Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other awards, and financially through foundation

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support, demonstrates that it is feasible for well-resourced non-commercial organisations to undertake and distribute high quality investigative stories. Its ability to find new funders and retain older ones, suggests that funders may not be as fickle as some observers have proposed. Finally, while scholars lamented the popularity of celebrity journalism and the dumbing down of newspapers, ProPublica’s visitor figures suggest that demand exists for serious journalism, compellingly presented. Its website in 2014 had an average of 1.6 million monthly page views; it attracted 672,000 unique monthly visitors, 335,000 Twitter followers and more than 94,000 fans on Facebook (ProPublica, 2014a).

Conclusion

In the subfield of non-profit investigative journalism, these three organisations were power players in terms of economic, political and cultural capital. They attracted the bulk of the funding, had networks of mainstream media publishers, won key industry awards and employed some of the nation’s leading reporters and digital producers. Table 4.6 in Chapter Four showed that the three organisations received a total of $146.4 million in donations between 2009 and 2014, or 77 per cent of the donations given to the 15 non-profit organisations that were analysed.

Each organisation was founded by people who believed that better investigative journalism could be done in the non-profit subfield than in commercial media. The organisations developed under the leadership of visionary executive directors, most of whom had experience in the established media. Their symbolic capital facilitated collaborations with mainstream media and attracted foundation funding. Despite concerns expressed by observers, including foundation program directors themselves, that foundations might lose interest in investigative reporting, to date there is no evidence of that occurring. The substantial on-going funding by foundations and wealthy philanthropists reflects both an appreciation of the journalism created and a conservatism in funders who prefer to stay with known entities. Of greater concern is that the evidence also suggests that mainstream media are unwilling to pay more than a token amount, if anything, for non-profit stories despite acknowledging their quality.

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The organisations were important innovators in investigative journalism practice. Intent on transforming complex issues into publicly accessible stories, they developed interactive digital graphics and maps, searchable databases and animated videos to accompany their findings. They told their stories online, on radio and on television. Major investigations generated dozens of related stories. Unlike traditional media investigations, which may have one or two reaction stories following first publication, non-profit journalists stayed with the topic and pursued other angles, often for months. ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” series in early 2015 produced 63 stories; “Buying your vote”, a project on super political action committees, resulted in 121 different stories.

The organisations created new approaches and models such as a global network of investigative reporters to cover important transnational issues. The Center for Investigative Reporting created its own platform, Reveal, in partnership with public media to distribute its work more widely. Some innovations did not work: the Center for Public Integrity’s John Solomon attempted to introduce a more commercial approach; it proved to be a costly failure. However, lessons were learned about the nature of non- profit journalism.

The histories and funding experiences of the three organisations suggest the following about the current state of the non-profit subfield. First, foundations and wealthy philanthropists are willing to fund the on-going operation of successful non-profit organisations. This questions the assumption that foundations only fund start-ups and then move on. Second, funders are sensitive to the internal affairs and the activities of non-profit organisations and their executive directors and will respond accordingly. Third, significant upfront funding is a preferred start because it gives organisations time to prove the concept journalistically and locate other revenue streams. Fourth, non- profit organisations need to innovate constantly and develop new projects to attract foundation funding. Fifth, non-profit organisations must be active in seeking new audiences as well as media partners. Sixth, public broadcasters are a natural partner for collaborative projects as they have similar missions and audiences. Seventh, mainstream media will publish non-profit stories but are reluctant to pay for them. Earned revenue remains hard earned, though the Center for Investigative Reporting has succeeded in raising significant revenue from content fees. Eighth, difficult issues involving human relations and finances will be a challenge from time to time. The Center for

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Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity confronted financial crises, management clashes, legal battles and so on. ProPublica may have had similar issues, but I had less access and time to interview its staff. Ninth, while major funding by a wealthy individual might provide initial stability, robust criticism and scrutiny will surely follow due to the United States’ contested political climate.

The three non-profit organisations were prolific producers of investigative journalism. Their stories led to reforms, hearings, inquiries and the exposure of corruption, ineptitude and systemic failure. They provided a haven for journalists to work without the pressure of deadlines and time to dig until they got the story. Their projects won dozens of industry awards. Two of the centres survived the financial crisis, one was born during it. They appear to have established financially sustainable models, though they remain reliant on foundation and individual funding. The following chapter demonstrates that the involvement of foundations in the non-profit field has attracted criticism from academics and politically inspired commentators.

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CHAPTER 7: Ethical issues in foundation funding of journalism

Introduction

Previous chapters identified and explored the factors that stimulated the creation and development of non-profit investigative news centres and provided case studies of three of the most successful centres. These chapters show that the increase in the number of centres since the financial crisis could not have occurred without the support of foundations. And while non-profit centres recognised the need to create new revenue streams, the vast majority continued to rely on grants from foundations. This chapter deals with the ethical issues and questions that may arise from the funding of investigative journalism by foundations and wealthy philanthropists. It analyses the concerns of critics and the responses of funders and senior non-profit centre executives. The predominant concern raised related to the sometimes opaque agendas of funders. This was of concern for two reasons. First, non-profit organisations were heavily dependent on philanthropic funding. Unlike the established media with multiple advertisers and other revenue sources, non-profit investigative news organisations, particularly smaller ones, relied on a limited number of funders that provided a large percentage of their income. Without alternative sources of funding, this had the potential to make them susceptible to the whims of their funders. Second, foundations financed other causes and used their media donations to generate coverage of the issues in those areas. This potentially propelled journalism toward advocacy. “Mega-foundations also devote substantial resources to selling their ideas to the media, to government at every level, and to the public. This is called ‘advocacy’. They also directly fund journalism and media programming in their fields of interest” (Barkan, 2013, p. 639).

Common rejoinders to these issues in essence were: from non-profit editors – we have a firewall; and from foundations – we are hands-off on stories. Non-profit organisations failed to acknowledge that their reliance on a philosophical firewall between their journalism and their funders borrowed an ideal from mainstream media that did not translate easily into the non-profit field. There, senior managers were responsible for

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both the journalism and the funding. In any event, the concept of a firewall has applied unevenly across the established media, depending on the size of the publication, the backgrounds and training of the reporters and editors and the attitudes of proprietors and publishers. As for foundations being hands-off stories, their influence could be more subtle than blatantly demanding a particular story or angle. Simply raising an issue in the public sphere may be sufficient return for a donation (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012).

This chapter presents a case study that involves a number of large donations made to the Center for Investigative Reporting for the creation of California Watch, a state-based news and investigative project. The donations were made under a foundation’s education program and funded California Watch’s launch and education reporting. The foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, had an education policy reform agenda in California, which raised questions about the purpose of the funding and about the transparency of some of the centre’s education stories. This chapter also recognises that the non-profit reporting subfield both affects and is affected by the powerful field of US politics. The political field is alive with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu might describe as struggles for power through various forms of capital, with capital being “what is efficacious in a given field, both as a weapon and as a stake of struggle, that which allows its possessors to wield a power …” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). In the political field, mainstream media such as the New York Times, broadcaster MSNBC, investigative non-profit organisations along with funders such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations are said to be liberal or left-wing by conservatives. A number of non-profit centres and leftist critics view with suspicion reporting organisations funded by the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, which they say has a conservative right-wing agenda. In a highly politicised climate, it was inevitable that the stories, agendas and funding of investigative non-profit centres would be drawn into political struggles.

Ethical questions arise constantly in journalistic practice and the business of journalism. Who to interview, when to interview them, how much to tell them about the story, who not to interview and how to frame an issue are questions faced daily by journalists. Editors may be pressed to cover real estate matters to attract more advertising or retailers may sponsor a section, blurring journalism into advertorial content. Unlike the

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law or medicine, which have institutionally defined ethical rules, journalists are unlicensed and are not regulated by statutory boards. Various codes of ethics and traditional practice provide guidance but, in the end, it is up to journalists themselves to decide what is acceptable or not. This is true for commercial, public and non-profit journalistic endeavours.

Ethical issues that arise in the funding of non-profit investigative news also are set in a wider context in which investigative journalism operates. Serious investigative journalism, no matter how it is funded, is an acknowledgement that something needs to be righted or reformed and the outcomes are framed as a moral judgment about the behaviour of those involved. Investigative journalism does not stand as the final arbiter of moral standards but “it does locate, select, interpret, and apply standards for assessing the performance of officials and institutions. In these ways it contributes to the crafting of the moral order’’ (Ettema & Glasser, 1998, p. 185). The paradox is that journalists claim to be objective or neutral in their news judgments rather than applying personal moralities (Christians et al., 2009, p. 146). Yet investigative journalism demonstrates that journalism can both “respect truth and engage value” while denying this to be the case (Ettema & Glasser, 1998, p. 186).

Journalists maintain they are dispassionate in their judgments, applying established standards of behaviour that are set out in laws, regulations, shared public values and common decency. Scholars have called this process an “objectification of moral standards’’ (Ettema & Glasser, 1989, p. 62). The community may respond with outrage to a story or it may be indifferent to the information. “Thus investigative reporting may be a party not only to the definition and development of values but also to their debasement and dissolution’’ (Glasser & Ettema, 1989, p. 16).

Research for this chapter involved two visits to the United States during which I incorporated scholarly criticisms of foundation funding in the questions I raised with foundation program directors and non-profit-centre executives. Other information was obtained from online journalism sites and further reading of academic literature.

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Is the piper playing an ethical tune?

If we accepted the assertions of foundation program directors that they supported investigative reporting centres to strengthen democracy and were completely hands-off on stories, there may be few ethical issues. But the relationship is more complex and questions remain about the degree to which foundations influence, or even have a right to influence, story selection and content. Foundations and non-profit centres do not operate in a vacuum: external factors influence the relationship. Foundations, like major advertisers, are vast enterprises with links to the very governments, government agencies and politicians who could find themselves under scrutiny by investigative news centres. In Ireland, a non-profit investigative organisation supported by a large philanthropic fund closed when the foundation abandoned its backing following what appeared to be a smear campaign of the centre’s director by government ministers. The foundation “had to work with state bodies in relation to other projects” (Browne, 2010, p. 898). In the United States, a foundation director told me that the foundation had donated to a non-profit investigative organisation because it supported watchdog media as crucial to democracy. The centre’s subsequent investigations led to the resignation of a key government agency executive over his use of a credit card. The foundation had been planning a cooperative venture with the government agency and had a high regard for the executive who was the target of the centre’s reporting. The foundation director, who asked that the foundation not be identified, said only a small sum was involved and that the government executive did nothing wrong. The foundation program director complained to the non-profit organisation that the issue had been blown out of proportion. The experience raised questions in the program director’s mind about the relationship between foundations and non-profit centres.

How might a foundation take on its grantees without stomping on the freedom of the press? What rights did funders have to object? What did non-profits owe their funders? Was it a good idea to have non-profit journalism that relied on donations? These were complex questions that remain largely unaddressed in the non-profit sphere other than with an inadequate reference to a firewall or the standards of behaviour set out for members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Those standards require members to be nonpartisan in their reporting and to disclose funding of over $1000 (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014a). “The member is engaged in investigative and/or public interest

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news reporting that is not based upon, influenced by or supportive of the interests or policies of any single political party or political viewpoint or any single religion or religious viewpoint” (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014a, para. 12). Members can only lobby on freedom of information or freedom of press issues and must apply high journalistic standards of accuracy and fairness that prevent conflicts of interest that may compromise the integrity of their work (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014a).

The firewall argument would be familiar to those with experience in traditional newsrooms: firewalls are boundaries between journalistic activity and the business side of newspapers. “One’s news- professional identity is supposed to be distinct and separate from the newspaper’s bottom line; one’s news decisions are not supposed to be economically motivated” (Cotter, 2010, p. 61). Further, the standard is that news decisions are to be based on “their merits, by editors and reporters, and that the ‘bean counters’ on the business side of the news organization have no role on the news side” (Jones, 2009, p. 45). In practice, it traditionally was the journalists who guarded against advertising or commercial considerations intruding on the independence of the journalism. A typical view of journalists might be that of former television news producer and media columnist Tim Knight who wrote that the firewall between journalism and management at times wasn’t enough to protect honest journalism. “But much more often, it is. And without that firewall, there would be no honest journalism at all” (Knight, 2012, para. 21).

Other than demanding adherence to a voluntary code of conduct and having the ability to publicise transgressions, journalists in reality had little power over what appeared in their publications. It was the media owners and chief executives who hired and fired editors and publishers, allocated editorial resources and news space, and ultimately determined quality (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007, p. 63). The traditional divide between journalism and business, in the view of one academic, had disempowered journalists: “The idea that somebody else is responsible for securing our livelihood was not only unwise strategically, it was infantalising for journalists” (J. Rosen, personal communication, November 17, 2010). It left mainstream journalists with a porous philosophical firewall to protect their ethical standards. The operation of the firewall varied from company to company depending on the size and financial status of the media organisation, the leverage of its staff and journalism union, the political whim of

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its publishers and proprietors, and the demands of its advertisers and sales staff. “The wall was either impenetrable, high, and thick, or it didn’t exist at all. Its presence, or lack of presence, was determined by the owners …” (Merritt, 2005, p. 123).

In the nineteenth century, the Chicago Tribune had separate elevators for editorial and business staff. Today, editors and other news staff regularly share meetings with marketing and advertising managers; they share overlapping management by objectives targets and journalists experience “direct and very personal pressure” to align their standards with those of the business side (Merritt, 2005, p. 124). There was growing recognition that newspapers had dual characteristics, both as a service and a product (Lacy & Simon, 1993, pp. 4–5). “A nasty, unreported truth about journalism is this: journalism is a business. Journalists like to pretend this is not so, but it is” (Serrin, 2000, p. vii).

In the non-profit field, senior managers had responsibility for both the journalism and the finances. At the non-profit Texas Tribune, editorial and business staff worked collaboratively. Reporters and editors hosted fundraising events and business staff sat in on weekly news meetings. “Over time, the newsroom and business side have developed a mutual sense of trust underpinned by the Tribune’s non-profit mission” (Batsell, 2015, p. 17). Robert Rosenthal from the Center for Investigative Reporting would have preferred to devote all his time to journalism. But he had wider responsibilities. “I am a publisher in the sense that I’m responsible for keeping people employed. I have to bring in the money, and the money in our model, 95%-plus, 90%, comes from foundations, and the foundations want to all deal with me” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). When he retired as head of the Center of Public Integrity in 2015, Bill Buzenberg talked about both the award winning journalism he had overseen and the $50 million he had raised (Buzenberg, 2015).

The ideal of a firewall has transferred from the mainstream journalistic field to the non- profit subfield. Senior non-profit journalists were socialised in established newsrooms and imbued with conventions that included independence from business pressures. So while they pitched for funding, senior editors insisted that the resulting stories were not influenced by their funders. This assertion was critical to their journalistic credibility. If non-profit organisation stories were seen by readers and the industry as having been

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influenced by foundations, philanthropists or political considerations, trust would be lost and the stories would be considered something other than journalism. That would be disastrous for the credibility of non-profit media organisations. It would probably rapidly bring an end to collaborations with mainstream media. It was therefore not surprising that the executive directors and fundraisers I interviewed declared editorial independence from their funders.

Even so, some mainstream reporters retained a “definite scepticism” about partnering with non-profit organisations (Kaplan, 2008, p. 119). Responding to a questionnaire- based study of 243 investigative reporters, for-profit reporters expressed pride that their media was independent and not beholden to interests other than their readers. One reporter said that publishers of the New York Times, Newsday and the Washington Post would have a “natural and to some degree understandable caution” accepting the work of somebody they couldn’t completely oversee (Kaplan, 2008, p. 120). Before agreeing to partner with a non-profit organisation, journalists said they would want to know its history and funding sources. They expected to have full transparency and access to all the documents and sources used in the non-profit story (Kaplan, 2008, pp. 120–124). Similarly, former Boston Globe investigative editor Tom Farragher said he would want to see the “innards of the work as it’s being done”. The non- profit organisation’s funding had to be untainted to the degree that was possible so that the story was not crippled and dismissed as being part of an agenda. “That’s the central problem: what is the agenda of the people with the money? Once the reader concludes, ‘oh, yes, they investigated X but they would never investigate Y because the funder wouldn’t allow it ’, then you’re in trouble” (T. Farragher, personal communication, February 25, 2014).

While mainstream reporters considered their organisations not beholden to commercial interests, a study by journalism professor Philip Meyer found that editors representing 79 per cent of daily newspaper circulation in the United States reported sometimes being pressured by advertising to the extent that it was serious enough to “require a newsroom conversation to resolve the issue” (Meyer, 2009, p. 226). Other media critics pointed out that most newspapers received about 75 per cent of their revenue from two dozen advertisers, and in many cases five or six advertisers provided about half of the advertising income. Significant financial damage would occur if an advertiser reduced or withdrew funding because it was offended by a paper’s content (Picard, 2005, p.

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342). Professor Meyer downplayed the idea that foundation funding of journalism was more ethically fraught than taking advertising dollars. “Allowing charitable foundations to pay for the news might be risky, but it is probably no worse than a system in which advertisers pay for it” (Meyer, 2009, p. 226). Veteran non-profit field advocate Brant Houston said the idea of “purity of purpose is a daily job, whether you are in a for-profit or not and to think otherwise is naïve” (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010).

The majority of non-profit organisations were smaller than newspapers and more heavily reliant on a limited number of funders. “No one is in a financial position to say, ‘You know what, thank you for offering that $300,000, $400,000 to us, we’re okay; ethically we feel that is troubling’,” (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). In the real world of competitive funding, where to draw the line ethically may be somewhat flexible. A veteran non-profit organisation founder said: “My line for many, many years at the centre was ‘ethics are what you have the ability to pay for’. If you can finance yourself travelling all around the country on a story you can have great ethics, but if you don't have the money you might have to scrape together some things that aren ’t quite as ethical. But are you going to not do the story?” (D. Noyes, personal communication, November 4, 2012).

Non-profit organisations dealt with potential ethical issues by limiting the amount of detail they provided funders about their stories. They spoke about stories in broad terms, rather than providing specific angles or substance. Center for Public Integrity chief development officer Robin Heller told foundations they were not to contact the centre’s reporters. The centre’s reporting staff knew not to take calls from a foundation. Her discussions with foundations consisted of “very broad brushstrokes” about topic areas. For example, use of the words “climate change” to describe a project area would be the “narrowest articulation” that would occur in discussions with potential funding partners (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). ProPublica’s Paul Steiger said the organisation’s key funders, Herbert and Marion Sandler, and other members of the board did not know in advance what stories its journalists were working on, nor were they to have contact with reporters (Schilders, 2008).

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That there have been attempts by foundations and wealthy individuals to initiate and influence stories, there can be no doubt. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Robert Rosenthal said: “I have had foundations approach me and want us to work with advocates for considerable amounts of money …” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 20120). Non-profit veteran Charles Lewis said: “I had murky characters come to me offering me money. I have had donors that I didn’t feel comfortable with … I’ve had other cases of ideological people who feel strongly about something. After the 2000 election, I had liberals who were very upset about Gore losing wanting us to investigate voting machines and offering money, like, in my face, cheques, waving almost in my face, they were so upset with what had happened” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2012). Lewis rejected these offers which he felt would turn him into an “adjunct to the Democratic Party”. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, billionaire George Soros became active in the Democratic campaign and offered the Center for Public Integrity $750,000, which Lewis also rejected (Schilders, 2008). One funder asked a reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting to provide information in advance of publication to an advocacy group that the funder was supporting. That approach was refused by the centre’s fundraiser: “What we could say we would do is we would be happy to put those advocates on a story alerts list, and as soon as the story is published they can get access to it immediately, but we can’t do anything in advance, we can’t favour one constituency over another” (C. Parsons, personal communication, November 2, 2010). Several non-profit executives said they had rejected ethically dubious grants. This proved, they said, that their firewall was effective.

Non-profit organisation leaders argued that firewalls meant that foundations did not see the stories prior to publication nor did they vet the stories (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, November 11, 2010). Non-profit centres were not “hired guns” for funders, and their firewalls operated “just like you have with advertisers” (D. Kaplan, personal communication, November 10, 2010). The firewall concept was explained to foundations (Walton, 2010b) and non- profit board members were not allowed to contact reporters about the stories they were doing (Schilders, 2008).

Offers of funding were not automatically accepted. The Center for Public Integrity might talk to foundations that wanted to fund environmental stories but would accept

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such projects only if it had already decided that the environment was an area of interest (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, November 11, 2012). The Investigative Reporting Workshop might look at the super fund program of the Environment Protection Authority but would not look at a story in “Secaucus, New Jersey, because the next door neighbour is pissed off and wants to give us $30,000” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2012). The Center for Investigative Reporting would cover clean water issues in California, but would not work with an advocacy group or provide information they could then use. “If we publish a story and they see it and want to take the information and use it as they like, sure” (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, November 3, 2010). These examples involve executives with many decades of experience and socialisation in journalistic culture and practice. But what might happen when they retire and are replaced by people with a more corporate outlook and little or no journalistic culture? Would a wink and a nod to foundations guarantee funding?

Foundations and editorial control

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the biggest independent foundations in the United States, in 2014 donated $203.5 million to 521 recipients (MacArthur Foundation, n.d.-a). Between 2003 and 2014, the foundation donated more than $29 million to investigative journalism projects, as seen in Table 7.1. The table shows that the MacArthur Foundation favoured big nationally focused investigative centres: the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, and documentary makers at Frontline and Frontline/World. The foundation has financed media projects for 35 years, beginning with television documentaries, then public television and radio programs. It also supports a large number of other areas, including reform of state juvenile justice systems, human rights programs, the environment and has backed initiatives to provide affordable rental accommodation (MacArthur Foundation, n.d.-a).

The MacArthur Foundation insisted it made a deliberate effort to separate its media donations from its other investments: it did not have influence over stories nor did it seek it. “Our media funding ... is not designed to bring more visibility to the fields we otherwise support. It’s designed to strengthen the quality of information that citizens in

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a democracy get to experience” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012). Nevertheless, its program director said that it was useful for foundations to know about a non-profit centre’s area of reporting. The MacArthur Foundation provided general funding rather than grants for specific projects. Its vice president of media, culture and special initiatives, Elspeth Revere, looked for “some overlap in interest. We just try to make sure that it’s not one-dimensional or very narrow in an area that we’re just not interested in supporting” (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

Foundations appeared to be conservative when deciding which non-profit investigative journalism organisations to support. The MacArthur Foundation stayed with the same investigative organisations each year rather than risking anyone new; see Table 7.1. Some foundations were more comfortable giving to centres they knew well rather than fostering additional start-ups (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012). Foundations said their support was directed at centres with a record of quality journalism. But another reason for staying with the grantees they knew might be a fear that a funded centre’s reporting may involve the foundation or its directors. The “last thing” a foundation program wanted to fund was something that would investigate its own board of directors or “something that one of them cares about … it’s like playing with fire to them” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012).

Table 7.1. MacArthur Foundation grants to investigative journalism

Fund Date Amount Institute for Nonprofit News 2014 $400,000 ProPublica 2014 $1,000,000 Center for Public Integrity 2014 $500,000 Nation Institute 2014 $150,000 UC Berkley Graduate School of Journalism 2013 $300,000 ProPublica 2013 $1,000,000 Center for Public Integrity 2013 $500,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2012 $750,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2012 $100,000 Center for Public Integrity 2012 $400,000 WGBH Frontline 2012 $2,250,000

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Fund Date Amount WNET.org 2012 $250,000 Investigative Reporting Workshop 2012 $600,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2012 $100,000 Investigative News Networka 2011 $300,000 WNET.org 2011 $1,500,000 UC Berkley Grad School of Journalism 2011 $250,000 ProPublica 2011 $500,000 Center for Investigative Reporting (Award) 2011 $1,000,000 Center for Public Integrity 2010 $750,000 WNET.org 2010 $100,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2009 $600,000 ProPublica 2009 $500,000 WGBH Frontline 2009 $100,000 Investigative Reporting Workshop 2009 $600,000 WNET.org 2009 $800,000 Center for Public Integrity 2008 $450,000 Center for Public Integrity 2007 $250,000 ProPublica 2007 $250,000 WGBH Frontline/Frontline World 2007 $5,000,000 WNET.org 2007 $1,250,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2005 $75,000 WNET.org 2005 $575,380 WGBH Frontline/ Frontline World 2005 $700,000 WNET.org 2004 $500,000 Center for Investigative Reporting 2004 $250,000 Center for Public Integrity 2003 $600,000 WNET.org 2003 $800,000 Center for Public Integrity (Award) 2003 $3,000,000 Total $29,000,380 Note: a Now called the Institute for Nonprofit News Source: MacArthur Foundation (n.d.-a)

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Several foundations said they favoured general purpose grants rather than funding specific stories or projects because it seemed ethically more acceptable. “I’m tempted sometimes to fund content, but … even though we are totally hands-off … in a sense that’s a distortion of the marketplace of ideas”, one foundation director said (B. Shute, personal communication, February 13, 2014). The Chicago-based McCormick Foundation has funded non-profit journalism for about 20 years. Its preference was to fund non-editorial items such as tax or accounting advice, in recognition of the fact that most journalists lacked such expertise. “We want the journalists to be able to concentrate on journalism” (C. Bell, personal communication, February 16, 2012). A former program director with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations also preferred to give general funding: “we are agnostic as to what the journalism is, as long as it is useful” (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).47 Non- profit organisations also preferred to receive general funding because it enabled them to spend the money where it was most needed. “This is what allows you to immediately repair the collapsed ceiling in the ladies’ room. It lets you take on a story that you didn’t plan for. It is essential”, ProPublica’s executive chairman, Paul Steiger, said (Steiger, 2015).

In Chapter Four, the James Irvine Foundation’s program director described her desire for California Watch to undertake journalism that provided solutions to community issues rather than gotcha exposes. The director recognised that the foundation and California Watch might have different imperatives regarding stories but insisted those discussions were not “about ‘we should do that topic’ and ‘why don’t you do this topic’” (A. Dominguez-Arms, personal communication, January 1, 2012). The MacArthur Foundation funded a small number of groups that advocated on issues but did not fund media that had a “very obvious and decided point of view”. It sought information from investigative centres on the topics they planned to cover with its funding but told them it did not want to know the stories they were going to pursue (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

I raised with MacArthur Foundation’s chief media program director Elspeth Revere the question posed by the unidentified foundation director earlier in this chapter about the

47 See below on partisan funders.

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extent to which foundations could object to the reporting of non-profit centres they funded. Revere said she had never objected about a news organisation’s reporting: “I don’t think that would be proper for us. I think that we both express our confidence in the … professional editorial leadership of the place and put the money in, or we don’t feel confident and we don't put the money in”. The foundation had donated to a centre whose stories had conflicted with the foundation’s other support but “we’re big enough, we can live with it”, she said (E. Revere, personal communication, February 17, 2012).

While tangible deliverables such as stories in a particular area might be discussed by foundation program directors and non-profit fundraisers, no-one I spoke to nor the relevant literature suggested that foundations commonly demanded a specific editorial slant in the projects they funded. Critics admitted as much: “It is extremely rare to find a non-profit funder who received the final say on news content, set specific ideological criteria by which news stories were developed, or demanded the inclusion or exclusion of a specific point of view” (Edmonds, 2002, para. 6). That did not mean foundations had no influence, just that it was more subtle, or even undetectable due, perhaps, to the cultural similarities that aligned non-profit staff with those of their funders. “Not much more may be needed to see that the intent is carried out … Cultural affinity can sometimes make it difficult for editors and journalists to draw the distinction between accepting a grant and accepting a funder’s point of view” (Edmonds, 2002).

Foundations did not expect editorial control over the content of stories in return for their funding. The Ford Foundation, for example, thought simply raising an issue in the public sphere was sufficient return for foundations (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). The research undertaken for this thesis shows that a variety of motivations existed for foundations to fund journalism.

Foundation agendas

The foundation program directors I interviewed said they supported investigative reporting due to its role in democracy but a former foundation program director and now academic Professor Jon Funabiki said that was not the real reason foundations funded investigative reporting centres. “It’s not necessarily a larger interest in investigative journalism as a function of society”, but more likely was due to their

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support of an interest such as climate change, coalmining, health and so on. Journalism was a way of moving the funders’ agendas (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). This was consistent with the view that foundations “always want something” (R. Picard, personal communication, July 10, 2014) and that “handouts come with conditions” (Shafer, 2009a, para. 6). Non-profit centre staff acknowledged there were strings attached to foundation money: donations came with “some kind of editorial responsibility” for a deliverable such as responsibility to build an interactive data site, “to write X number of stories on a particular subject policy” (Pew Research Center, 2013, pp. 3–4).

That foundations had agendas should be neither surprising nor viewed as a negative. Foundations want to change or improve things in their areas of interest; funding journalism often was a small part of a larger strategy for doing that. The ability of non- profit investigative centres to report deeply on those areas, given sufficient funding, was where and how the interests of the two fields intersected. Non-profit investigative centre development officer Robin Heller said: “So they (foundations) have an agenda. They’re looking to impact and often we can talk with them about ways that policy or laws have literally changed (due to stories). They want to see the discourse elevated and we can do that. Sometimes they are interested in the magnitude of our distribution, we’re able to show that” (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). The ability of non- profit organisations to publish stories in influential media was one way that foundations could have an impact in their advocacy areas. A story on the front page of the New York Times was hard to ignore, whereas most foundation donations attracted no media. Foundations “have experience of being ignored so they have this sense of how important the press is”. The press “gets results” (J. Rosen, personal communication, November 17, 2010).

Many foundations were open about their agendas. They favoured grants for specific projects that aligned with their agendas rather than general operating grants (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012). This appeared to be the case also in earlier times. Charles Lewis estimated that one-third of the $30 million he raised for the Center of Public Integrity between 1989 and 2004 was in general purpose grants; two-thirds was in grants to cover a specific area such as Congress (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010). More recently, a number of US philanthropists

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have tried to influence public policy rather than working quietly behind the scenes. For example, the Peterson Foundation, owned by Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson, funded a documentary about the United States’ “addiction to debt” (Strom, 2008, para. 2) and launched a “media blitz” on the debt issue (Harwood, 2008, para. 2). The foundation vowed to spend $1 billion to spread its concern about deficits and fiscal responsibility where youth would see them: “new media, bloggers, YouTube, MySpace, MTV and networks and web sites that have not even been invented” (Peterson, 2008, para. 12). Peterson, the co-founder of a private equity firm, said that if you were concerned about something “you have to speak out” (Strom, 2008, para. 3). Other philanthropists doing just that included George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Jeff Skol and Bill Gates. The Gates Foundation’s former chief executive noted the issues the foundation cared about required public engagement “so advocacy is kind of baked into the way we do things” (Strom, 2008, para. 20). “Buzz” Woolley, the founder of the Voice of San Diego non-profit was a long-time supporter of pro-charter school legislative candidates (Potter, 2011). His opposition to a vote on a proposed program of school construction and refurbishment through a bond issue in 2012 led to local news bloggers attacking the Voice of San Diego’s coverage of the issue (Remer, 2012). In another example of pushing funders’ agendas, the Foundation on Child Development financed a fellowship on child and family policy at the University of Maryland. Student stories, which had no editorial limits set by the foundation, appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Mother Jones, Salon, NPR and other outlets. After a time, the foundation’s board wanted a greater alignment between a number of issues it favoured and its future grants (Guensburg, 2008).

Despite such open advocacy, critics questioned the real agendas of foundations in funding journalism. They said that in addition to serving possibly hidden agendas and hewing to establishment-defined ideological limits, non-profit reporters may find themselves being encouraged to anticipate and chase the “idiosyncratic whims of funders …” (Browne, 2010, p. 891). Foundation donations allowed funders to share in decisions, at least indirectly, about what to cover and how to cover to it: “foundation support often carries with it an implied association with an agenda that the foundation, or its benefactor, pursues in separate undertakings” (Edmonds, 2001, para. 3). Broadcaster and journalist Ted Koppel said: “When a soap company sponsors

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‘Nightline,’ I know what they want—so many million eyes on an ad for their soap. But when the money is from Pew (Foundation), what is it you’re looking for?” (Edmonds, 2002, para. 6). That is a pertinent question because in philanthropy it is not controversial that the activities of foundations were intended as an “exercise of power for particular ends”, with those ends being depicted as benign (Browne, 2010, p. 893). But journalists were more suspicious or aware of commercial pressures than foundation influence. A grant from the Ford Foundation to report Eastern Europe would be acceptable, but a grant from General Motors to cover international trade would be regarded as a conflict of interest (Edmonds, 2002). Such “doublethink” was common in the journalistic field despite the fact that General Motors’ interests were obvious whereas those of the Ford Foundation were clouded in a “benevolent fog” (Edmonds, 2002, para. 2, 8).

Foundations advocate for policy reform

American foundations were active in promoting education reform in the United States and provided about $4 billion a year to transform K–12 education with programs centred on student performance, charter schools48 and teacher effectiveness (Barkan, 2011; Picciano & Spring, 2013). They often worked collaboratively with governments and corporations for those purposes. Foundations also donated millions of dollars to advocacy groups that promoted education reform and pro-charter school groups that lobbied or endorsed candidates. One analysis found that charter school advocates in Pennsylvania had donated $10 million to politicians over nine years (Simmons-Ritchie, 2015). Critics said foundations in effect were in control of public education policy without any accountability to the public (Levine & Levine, 2014). They asked whether the voices of stakeholders such as students, parents, educators and those who supported

48 Charter schools are publicly funded but operate independently of the public school system. Freed of many of the regulations that govern the public school system, charter schools are accountable to local or state school boards. Their charters or performance contracts mean the schools are under constant pressure to perform due to the prospect of not being renewed when their three- to five-year contracts expired (Chen, 2014). Foundations have funded non-profit charter management organisations that operate and launch new schools, the management of which sometimes is given to for-profit companies. The number of charter schools increased from 1651 in 2000–2001 to 5712 in 2011–2012 and enrolled an estimated 1.9 million students. This compared with the public school system with 59 million K–12 students (Levine & Levine, 2014).

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public education had been strengthened or weakened by foundation campaigns, concluding in one case that “philanthropy’s involvement in the ed-reform movement has undoubtedly undermined democracy and civil society” (Barkan, 2013, p. 641). The same critic wrote of surreptitious campaigns and bogus grassroots activities used to promote reform and increase the number of charter schools (Barkan, 2013).

One of the foundations that supported education reform was the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.-a). Using the foundation’s online grants database and an Excel spreadsheet to total grants from its education program, the foundation was found to have donated about $525 million between 2001 and 2013, almost $210 million of which went to the west’ region of the United States, mainly California (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.-d).

The Hewlett Foundation was one of the inaugural funders of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s state-focused news offshoot, California Watch. In 2009 and 2010, Hewlett provided grants totalling more than $1.6 million and, two years later gave the centre an additional $400,000 special project gift. The foundation had no specific program for funding media. Rather, $1.6 million in grants was donated under the Hewlett Foundation’s education program. The total consisted of two donations. A donation of $1.2 million in 2009 was listed on the Hewlett Foundation’s website as being for “multimedia reporting on California education and other policy issues” (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.-c). The grant would “build a team of experienced reporters” to cover the issues (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2009, para. 7). A $400,000 grant in 2010 was specifically for the California schools report card project (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.-c).

Hewlett’s 2009 and 2010 funding of California Watch was not intended as general support of investigative reporting, but was part of a broader strategy of education reform and improvement. Hewlett’s former communications officer, the late Jack Fischer, said in an interview that the foundation had invested heavily in reforming the state education system and was concerned that the issues it cared about were covered in the media. Grants for media typically came from the foundation’s program directors wanting media coverage of an issue in areas like environment or education. In this case, the education program director “of course was pushing to do more education coverage” (J. Fischer,

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personal communication, February 3, 2012). California Watch published dozens of stories about charter schools particularly and education more broadly. Many of the stories were written by Louis Freedberg who became the education reporter after co- founding California Watch with Robert Rosenthal.

A guiding principle for journalists in western democracies is to act independently and avoid conflicts of interest that can occur when faced with competing loyalties such as their organisation’s “economic needs as opposed to the information needs of the public” (Black, Steele, & Barney, 1993, p. 79). In this case, Hewlett was aware of the ethical sensitivities: its education program director did not want to big foot California Watch by insisting it had to cover particular items as “everyone would have been uncomfortable” with that (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). It was up to California Watch to decide “how, when and what” stories it published. Nevertheless, the education program director was interested in the centre’s education coverage and had urged the centre to do more (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012). This was achieved in large measure as California Watch published multiple stories on state education. Many of its education stories, including those on charter schools, did not disclose Hewlett’s funding of California Watch or the foundation’s interest in education reform. The examples below demonstrate a mixed disclosure record of potential conflicts of interest.

In May 2011, California Watch published a story on state education funding that was based on a study by the Rand Corporation and Policy Analysis for California Education (Freedberg, 2011). The story said that the study was funded by three philanthropic organisations including the Hewlett Foundation but did not refer to Hewlett’s funding of California Watch. In April, 2011, California Watch published another education story based on a poll done by the Public Policy Institute of California. On this occasion, the story declared that the poll “was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (also a major donor to California Watch)” (C. Davis, 2011, para. 6). In December, 2010, California Watch reported on a parents’ petition created by the organisation Parent Revolution (Freedberg, 2010), that did not mention that Parent Revolution was funded by several foundations including (indirectly) the Hewlett Foundation. A reader raised Hewlett’s funding in the online comments page that accompanied the story. Nor did the story disclose Hewlett’s funding of California Watch. In June 2010, Freedberg wrote

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favourably about an education website that “demonstrates the potential of what one person with deep knowledge of education policy issues can accomplish”. He noted the website was funded by the Hewlett Foundation. He added that Hewlett “also underwrites California Watch’s education coverage” (Freedberg, 2012, para. 7).

These examples do not suggest that Freedberg’s or other California Watch stories on education were influenced by anything other than normal journalistic standards, apart from an obvious editorial emphasis by the centre on education issues. But for an investigative reporting organisation to have an education reporter whose job was underwritten by a foundation that was campaigning to reform education and that funded studies and organisations that were then reported by journalists at the centre without declaring a potential conflict of interest lacked transparency. “The fact they are saying ‘look at problems in particular types of education’ may be not bad but at what level does it feed into a political campaign? That’s when you start getting into issues that affect your credibility” (R. Picard, personal communication, July 10, 2014).

Freedberg responded to questions I sent to him by email about Hewlett’s funding of California Watch via its parent, the Center for Investigative Reporting. He said the Hewlett Foundation had no “explicit reform agenda” in 2009 when it provided its major grant and did not “really present a substantive conflict” for reporting at the time (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012). Hewlett’s goal in a general sense was to promote better education outcomes in California and eventually more school funding but it had no specific agenda.49 Freedberg said that California Watch’s website listed Hewlett as a funder but citing it as a funding source in stories would be done on a case by case basis. It was not “feasible or reasonable” to expect California Watch to mention Hewlett’s funding of organisations it reported on given that Hewlett “supports multiple – in some cases hundreds – of organisations each year” (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012). Freedberg said he had been unaware that the non-profit group, Parent Revolution, was funded by Hewlett when he wrote the story (see cited above) and still doubted that was the case. Parent Revolution received money from a fund operated by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, to which

49 Hewlett’s website states that since 2002 its Education Program has “concentrated on improving the conditions for education policy reform in California” (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.- b).

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Hewlett had outsourced its Californian education reform business but “Hewlett has no input into what organisations are funded by RPA” (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012).

Freedberg said that non-profit reporters should disclose possible funding conflicts but that seemed a higher standard than applied in the for-profit area “which has almost no standards in this regard” (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012). For instance, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter was not expected to mention that Chevron provided advertising revenue while reporting a Chevron refinery fire. Yet for- profit reporters arguably were more vulnerable to advertising pressures than they would be from a foundation. Advertisers could pull their advertising in response to a story but foundations more likely would not renew their grant when it expired rather than asking for their money back. “The relationship between a specific story or series of stories and how the funder felt about it would be much harder to pinpoint” (L. Freedberg, personal communication, September 18, 2012).

The Hewlett case study and Freedberg’s responses demonstrate that the nature of non- profit journalism invites ethical questions due to the broader interests of foundations and other donors. The issues associated with California Watch’s stories could have been resolved with more disclosure of Hewlett’s funding of its education reporters and its agenda of education reform. As it was, the standards code developed by the Institute for Nonprofit News was adhered to because California Watch’s parent, the Center for Investigative Reporting, declared on its website that Hewlett was a funder (Institute for Nonprofit News, 2014a). This disclosure in my view did not adequately capture the nature of the relationship. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s executive director Robert Rosenthal referred to Hewlett’s interest in education reporting when writing about the founding of the centre, but most other public references said only that Hewlett had funded the centre and omitted any reference to its education program (Rosenthal, 2011). The case study highlights a reality that in the United States only a handful of foundations are interested funding investigative journalism as such.

It was not just the gifts of foundations that have provoked questions about the impartiality of non-profit journalism. Donations by businesses and lobbyists have also been criticised. In an analysis of the Texas Tribune’s acceptance of sponsorship and

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donations, former journalist James Moore listed numerous examples where significant amounts were donated by corporations and lobbyists that also donated to politicians and other office holders to influence legislation related to their interests (J. Moore, 2014). Moore found that between 2011 and the first half of 2013, 50 individuals donated a total of $1 million to the Texas Tribune while also giving $18.8 million to candidates for the 208 elected offices that the Texas Tribune reported on. The Texas Tribune raised a further $1.4 million from corporate sponsors that gave $20.3 million to candidates in 2012. “… there is no conclusion to reach other than the Texas Tribune has to be considered corrupted by its sources of funding” (J. Moore, 2014, para. 9). Two-thirds of the Texas Tribune’s corporate sponsors were groups that lobbied the legislature or hired lobbyists, or were public relations firms hired to influence public opinion on legislation or government entities. One-third of all the money raised in 2011 and 2012 was donated by special interests, and one out of every five dollars raised by candidates in the 2012 state elections came from donors who also had sponsored the Texas Tribune. Moore argued that these donations transformed donors into partners with common goals, unlike advertisers and broadcasters in the mainstream media: “to assert … that donors will somehow not act to have their money promote their interests in a similar manner is disingenuous in the extreme” (J. Moore, 2014, para. 18). He said the Texas Tribune did not reveal how much money came from its corporate sponsors and often did not disclose in its stories that the people or interests being quoted were donors. After Moore’s story was published, the Texas Tribune decided that corporate sponsors would be listed by name and amount and that disclosures would be appended to each story (Batsell, 2015). The Texas Tribune’s editor used the firewall concept when defending the organisation. “We have a wall – like any other independent newsroom in the world. Sponsors don’t interact with reporting staff” (Robin, 2014, para. 7).

Partisan funding and claims of bias

This chapter turns now to the accusations of political bias levelled at both foundations and non-profit reporting centres. It is unsurprising that in the highly politicised United States suspicion and conspiracy theories would encompass the funding of non-profit media ventures. One target was the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, which says it funds investigative reporters in more than 40 states (Watchdog.org, 2015). Another was George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. While there were many

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accusations of bias and hidden agendas, often accompanied by inflammatory language, hard evidence of outright interference in non-profit centre stories was hard to find. Accusations sparked defences and counter-claims. I could not find blatant incidents that proved such interference occurred, though there were many inferences of such. Philanthropic funding, as opposed to that of advertisers, was an issue because of the political advocacy and well-known politics of funders such as George Soros and ProPublica’s founders, Herbert and Marion Sandler. It was beyond the scope of this thesis to evaluate the public spats and accusations of ethical breaches made in regard to the funding of non-profit investigative journalism. What appeared to be true and largely overlooked was that the Franklin Centre-funded Watchdog.org organisations and those funded by Open Society Foundations and other foundations provided valuable accountability journalism at a time when the for-profit model was struggling, especially at local and state levels.

The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity was created in 2009 with the aim of training and supporting investigative journalists to report on local governments and to “spotlight free-market, pro-liberty solutions to difficult public policy challenges” (Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, n.d., para. 1). The goal of its Watchdog.org project was to provide oversight of state governments, hold politicians and bureaucrats to account for their handling of taxpayers’ dollars and promote innovative solutions to public policy challenges (Watchdog.org, n.d.). The centre’s Form 990 return to the IRS shows the centre had total revenue of more than $10 million in 2014. Associated documents show that between 2010 and 2014, it had received $40.1 million in funding (Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, 2014b). Jason Stverak, a former president of the centre, was a senior executive of the Sam Adams Alliance and former executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party (Gibbons, 2010a).

Stverak refused to identify the centre’s sources of the funding but the Columbia Journalism Review reported that 95 per cent of it came from Donors Trust whose key contributors were the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers (Chavkin, 2013). Another funder was identified as the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance, an organisation devoted to the promotion of free-market ideals (SourceWatch, 2012). A report by the Center for Public Integrity found that the Franklin Center had “ numerous ties to Koch-

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connected Americans for Prosperity” and that recurring themes on its websites included union bosses, Marxian senators and the perils of renewable energy (Abowd, 2013, para. 11). PR Watch said that numerous Franklin staff had ties to conservative activist groups and the Republican Party. It cited several stories written by Franklin-funded sites under the heading “Sloppy reporting, or manufacturing news?”(Jerving, 2011). The same article noted the publication by legacy media of stories written by Franklin Center- funded outlets. The Franklin Center was accused of “capturing the moment” (Jerving, 2011, para. 30) by providing content to newspapers at a time when they were vulnerable. Others said Franklin stories were “thin and missing important context” which occasionally led to gross distortions (Wilce, 2013, para. 17). Even newspaper editors who reprinted Franklin Center-affiliated stories “speak warily of the group’s ideological bent” (Strupp, 2012, para. 4). The Capitol Correspondents Association had rejected membership for a Franklin affiliate, denying them access rights to the legislature that “legitimate news outlets” enjoyed (Strupp, 2012, para. 10).

The conservative goals of the Franklin Center were openly stated, but evidence of overt manipulation of the journalism undertaken by its state-based Watchdog.org reporters was rather thin. A Columbia Journalism Review article said that the centre’s focus on government waste offered a “clear vision” and that there was a tendency to “occasionally blur reporting and opinion and to go beyond the facts of its findings” (Chavkin, 2013, para. 20, 21). The implication in the use of the words “clear vision” appeared to be that government waste, and by extension government spending, was an obvious target for libertarians and that the funders were promulgating this vision through their funded media. However, exposure of wasteful public programs is common in investigative reporting; a tendency to blur opinion and reporting would not be unique to Watchdog.org journalism. Newspaper editors who used statehouse stories written by Watchdog.org reporters said they scrutinised the stories closely for balance and fairness (Strupp, 2012).

Established non-profit players like Brant Houston, the Knight chair of investigative reporting at the University of Illinois and a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, said State Parliamentary bureaus had refused to allow Franklin- funded reporters access to bureaus. “Long-time statehouse reporters question the motives of the Center and point to the leadership of Franklin being an active Republican

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who managed a Republican presidential campaign in North Dakota. They also note the Center’s close ties to the Sam Adams Alliance, a Chicago-based foundation run by conservatives’’ (Houston, 2010b, p. 18). Houston said that veteran reporters hired by the Franklin Center said they had not experienced editorial interference “but the lack of transparency allows the debate and questions to continue” (Houston, 2010b, p. 18).

The Franklin Center’s vice president of journalism Steven Greenhut, accused left-wing non-profit enterprises of trying to portray the centre as “right-wing-funded shills for the Republican agenda” without bothering to check its journalism (Greenhut, 2013, para. 3). Its stories had been published in mainstream outlets, and included stories taking aim at Republicans, corporate welfare and promoting civil liberties and proposals to legalise marijuana. No-one outside of the editorial board decided which stories would be covered or how they would be covered. Despite this, critics asserted that the “people in charge of these would-be watchdog operations are political hacks out to subvert journalism” (Gibbons, 2010b, para. 13). Greenhut said a separation existed between the Franklin Center’s conservative slant and the work of the news sites (Strupp, 2012). The critics of the Franklin’s Watchdog.org reporting said little about the close ties the Sandlers and other supporters of non-profit centres had with the Democratic side of politics. That was left to conservative critics.

Political targeting of non-profit funders

Billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros is one of the most controversial public figures of the modern world: at various times he was admired and despised in the United States, Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe and Lithuania (McLaughlin & Trilupaityte, 2012). Known in the United States as the renegade Democrat, he was the “kind of wealthy, culturally elite and socially liberal Democrat that populist and conservative Christian Republicans loved to hate” (McLaughlin & Trilupaityte, 2012, p. 435). Fox News hosts accused him of being part of a conspiracy with President Barack Obama to ruin the American economy; they labelled him a sleazoid and suggested his philanthropy was funded by drug money (McLaughlin & Trilupaityte, 2012). Conservative commentators including politicians were particularly hostile to the funding of news organisations by foundations associated with Soros. Conservative bloggers accused Soros of manipulating the media to create a “one-world socialist

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government” and of being a “communist felon” (Commieblaster, 2014). They listed ties to more than 30 mainstream media organisations, as well as ProPublica – “almost laughably left-wing” – and the Center for Public Integrity – “mostly liberal” (Gainor, 2011, para. 5, 19). A conservative contributor writing in Forbes reported that Soros had spent more than $48 million50 funding media since 2003, often through foundations, which made outside accounting “nearly impossible” (Bell, 2013, para. 7). His Open Society Foundations had funded the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative News Network, the Columbia Journalism Review, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Organisation of News Ombudsmen (Bell, 2013). The NewsBusters website, with a mission of “exposing and combating liberal media bias”, ran a story headlined “Soros-funded ProPublica also has secret Snowden documents” (Ciandella, 2013). These were a fraction of the online attacks on Soros’s funding of journalism and websites such as Media Matters for America. Several years earlier, Open Society donated $1 million to Media Matters, a liberal activist group that waged a rhetorical war on Fox News and others in the conservative press (Shear, 2010). A statement by Soros at the time accused Fox News hosts of incendiary rhetoric and stated that he hoped the money would be used to publicise the challenge Fox News posed to civil and informed discourse. Opponents noted that Media Matters was “deeply embedded within the Democrat establishment” (Nimmo, 2014, para. 3).

In 2010, Open Society Foundations gave NPR $1.8 million to fund two political reporters in each state. The NPR grant triggered a firestorm assault from conservatives. Fuel was added to the fire because the announcement of the grant coincided with the firing from NPR of Juan Williams, a commentator on media who also was a regular on the Fox News Channel. His dismissal came after he told the host, Bill O’Reilly, that he got worried and nervous when he saw people in Muslim garb getting on a plane. Conservative commentators immediately drew links between Soros’s donation and Williams’ dismissal (Markay, 2010; Meyers, 2010; Rudman, 2010). Republican and Tea Party supporter Sarah Palin tweeted: “NPR defends First Amendment Right, but will

50 Also reported as $52 million by same author in http://newsbusters.org/blogs/iris-somberg/2011/08/17/ george-soros-media-mogul-executive-summary

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fire u if u exercise it. Juan Williams: u got taste of Left’s hypocrisy, they screwed up firing you” (Kurtz, 2010b, para. 6).

Despite these accusations, established non-profit players like Brant Houston and Kevin Davis maintained that no evidence existed that Soros had manipulated or influenced editorial content (K. Davis, personal communication, January 31, 2012; B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2010). Open Society Foundation’s former media program director also rejected any influence on content by the billionaire (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012). The volume and vehemence of the attacks demonstrated how the polarised political climate of the United States had extended to the philanthropic funding of non-profit media. The political atmosphere had made the Open Society’s program director wary of the “limits of what we can do” as opposed to what other foundations with a less polarising impact might be able to fund (L. McGlinchey, personal communication, February 14, 2012).

The Sandlers’ support of Democratic Party-related groups such as Human Rights Watch, MoveOn.org, the Center for Responsive Politics and Citizens for a Strong Senate also attracted sustained criticism of the family and ProPublica (Nocera, 2008; Shafer, 2009a). ProPublica was accused of “left-wing hit pieces” (Chumley, 2009, para. 1); being “as independent as a lapdog on a leash with allegiances sworn in advance to left- wing causes” (Arnold, n.d., para. 2) and was part of a “financially and politically active elite” (Browne, 2010, p. 894). Slate’s media commentator asked: “What do the Sandlers want for their millions? Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press” (Shafer, 2009a, para. 6). A former mainstream editor noted the question mark over ProPublica due to Sandler’s support of liberal causes (Cransberg, 2008). The claims of bias were not borne out in a content analysis by the Pew Foundation that found ProPublica to be among the most mixed or balanced organisations in the focus of its coverage and the targets of its exposés (Holcomb et al., 2011). ProPublica’s stories proved to be one of the least ideological of all the non-profit organisations examined by Pew. The survey found that the organisation had made a substantial effort to be transparent about its operations, though “one noticeable omission is detailed information about the Sandler Foundation” (Holcomb et al., 2011, para. 39). The analysis calculated that 67 per cent of ProPublica’s stories reflected either a mix of ideas or no theme. Of those with partisan

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themes, 14 per cent reflected primarily conservative ideas while 19 per cent reflected primarily liberal. In most cases, neither Democrats nor Republicans were spared.

Some commentators believed that foundations with ideological agendas would increasingly fund investigative-style reporting ventures in the United States. “You’ll have investigative reports which are not your Pulitzer-prize, neutral, omniscient, third- party narrated tones, but very much with a voice, sometimes with a polemical voice” (S. Coronel, personal communication, February 13, 2012). The future even may mirror a previous era when newspapers either were clearly Republican or Democrat, according to journalism professor Brant Houston (Gibbons, 2010a, pp. 29–30) . If this were to occur, it would mirror trends in the mainstream media where the New York Times and MSNBC were seen as liberal, and the Wall Street Journal and Fox as conservative (Starr, 2010). It may be that partisan non-profit sites would find it easier to raise funding due to “networks of true believers” (Steiger, 2015, para. 31).

Countervailing forces such as professional journalistic standards and authenticated facts “can keep partisanship from controlling [the] conversation” (Starr, 2010, para. 23). Another countervailing force was exposure by a cannibalistic media that enjoyed highlighting transgressions of influence or misreporting whenever possible (B. Houston, personal communication, November 19, 2012). For now, though, most non-profit organisations continued to eschew political influence and valued independence as a cultural core that was crucial to their relationship with mainstream partners where partisanship was seen as credibility death. “For us to work with major media like the BBC and the Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald, we have to be independent”, a non-profit editor said (D. Kaplan, personal communication, November 1, 2010).

Conclusion

The relationship between foundations and non-profit centres may be more ethically fraught than that between advertisers and media, but it depends on the circumstances and the political and financial strengths of those involved. It is the case that “dispensing funds is an exercise in power” (Bogart, 1995, p. 103). In the subfield of non-profit investigative journalism, foundations were by far the most significant dispenser of

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funding for the reporting organisations. This gave them varying degrees of power that they used to launch investigative reporting centres, steer the reporting toward a particular topic area or provide general support. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s view was that the journalistic field had lost its autonomy to the economic field (Willig, 2012, p. 373). This could apply equally to the non-profit investigative field and foundations. The fact that advertisers’ intentions were plain in that they wanted to attract customers for their products, while the intentions of foundations were less obvious, might be sufficient grounds to conclude that foundation funding could be potentially more problematic ethically than advertising income. In addition, the separation of journalistic activity from the business of funding is substantially weaker than in the mainstream media because non-profit leaders also are responsible for raising money.

Having said that, I found no outstanding example in the United States of foundations directing story lines. Each investigative non-profit executive director I interviewed was resolute about their journalistic independence from foundations and donors. The foundation directors understood the relevant journalistic practice and culture. Both believed they were working for the public benefit. A limitation that may prevent this finding from applying more broadly to the non-profit subfield is the limited sample size and the fact that the non-profit sites interviewed were atypical due to their size, scope and funding. But commercial, public and non-profit journalists recognised that “credibility is at the heart of journalism” (Society of Professional Journalists, n.d., para. 2) and that anything other than journalistic standards determining the stories would quickly destroy an organisation’s credibility. Commentator and New York University academic Jay Rosen said all foundations wanted to control as much as they could, but added that that did not necessarily mean they were able to (J. Rosen, personal communication, November 17, 2010). That is an accurate summation of the state of play, as far as I could determine.

Foundation directors insisted in the interviews I had with them that they supported investigative journalism centres as a bulwark to democracy, or words to that effect. But the evidence suggests that many of the foundations also wanted coverage of the other areas to which they donated. This raised questions about how coterminous foundation grants were with the long-term sustainability of independent journalism. Foundations that want media coverage of an area to which they have donated cannot be considered to

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be long-term funders. The Hewlett Foundation’s communications director made that clear. He said the foundation’s grants to California Watch were a “content issue; it wasn’t a concern about the specific function of journalism. And a whole series of consequences flow from that, in terms of how long your commitment is” (J. Fischer, personal communication, February 3, 2012).

Despite accusations and conspiracy theories, no stand-out case of foundation interference in non-profit stories has scandalised the non-profit investigative field in the United States. If it did exist, I am convinced that activists on both sides of politics and the established media would have discovered it. A culture of independent, fact-based journalism rather than partisanship or advocacy is dominant in the non-profit investigative subfield. Difficult questions such as the extent to which foundations can discuss stories and journalistic issues with non-profit centre editors remain unanswered. The non-profit field is relatively young. In journalism ethics, practice is primary: ideas change through messy democratic debate driven by economic, technological and social factors. Attitudes and practices change through trial and error (Ward, 2010).

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CHAPTER 8: Discussion and conclusion

Introduction

The final chapter of this thesis analyses the prospects for the non-profit investigative reporting subfield in the United States. It synthesises my findings and then makes a number of judgements about the sustainability of non-profit investigative news organisations. This thesis was undertaken both to fill a research gap that exists in non- profit investigative journalism and in recognition of the fact that the subfield is a significant source of investigative reporting in the United States. Millions of Americans access non-profit stories published on commercial, public and non-profit media sites. Non-profit stories contribute to democratic processes by unearthing information that empowers readers and holds power to account. It is therefore important to understand the factors that promote growth and sustainability of the subfield, the motives of its funders and the implications for journalism and democracy.

Much has changed in US investigative journalism since the grim warnings about its future during the 2007–2009 financial crisis. In response to the legacy media’s market failures and the perceived crisis for watchdog reporting and democracy, foundations and wealthy philanthropists donated generously to new non-profit investigative reporting organisations. Based on my research on the funding of 15 investigative organisations,51 I believe it is likely that more than $350 million was donated to the investigative subfield in the six years to 2014. At least 70 non-profit organisations were created across the United States between 2007 and 2015. This is remarkable given that 10 years earlier the idea that philanthropists would donate scarce resources into media “would have been downright offensive” (Waldman, 2013, para. 5). This thesis found that half of the non-profit organisations formed between 2007 and 2015 were founded in 2009 and 2010 when concern about a crisis for journalism and democracy was at its peak. The non-profit subfield today has moved beyond a start-up phase and is seeking longer term sustainability. Non-profit organisations are trying to achieve that in several ways, as will be discussed later in this chapter.

51 See Table 4.6.

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Factors behind the growth of the non-profit subfield

This thesis found that nine factors – three primary and six secondary – facilitated the growth of the non-profit investigative journalism subfield. The financial crisis and its devastating impact on mainstream media companies and journalists provoked sufficient alarm about the future of accountability journalism and democracy for philanthropists to fund a different model of investigative journalism. The shift of senior mainstream editors to the non-profit subfield provided assurance to funders that they were donating to credible news organisations. These editors also had high capital in the journalistic field, which facilitated editorial collaborations with key for-profit and public media. The secondary factors included the involvement of wealthy business people in new non- profit organisations. These philanthropists provided significant funding as well as hard- nosed management skills and financial connections that allowed non-profit organisations to focus on journalism rather than their immediate survival. Another factor was that the IRS approved non-profit status to investigative news organisations under an education category. Other secondary factors included the donations and membership fees paid by citizens; cooperative partnerships with universities; the creation of the Institute for Nonprofit News; and the social, political and economic climate, particularly during and immediately following the financial crisis. It was the interplay and interrelatedness of these factors, particularly the primary ones, along with the subfield’s relations with the powerful fields of economics, politics and journalism that shaped the environment for the creation of non-profit investigative sites.

This thesis also found that the investigative subfield had a transformative effect on the practice of journalism. Collaborations between legacy and non-profit media organisations reflected a shift in traditional newsroom practice in which journalists once did their own investigations and viewed other media organisations as competitors rather than collaborators. This changed with the arrival in the non-profit sector of experienced and reputable journalists who had the same habitus and doxa – Pierre Bourdieu’s terms for dispositions and conventions – as their former colleagues in the mainstream field. In other words, the journalistic practice, ethics and values in the two fields were identical. The professional judgment of non-profit leaders could be trusted, even though they were involved in raising money from foundations. A second transformation involved the traditional separation of the business and journalistic activities of newsrooms. Non-

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profit executives undertook both editorial and fundraising roles, a significant change that attracted little controversy. Non-profit executive directors insisted that a firewall still existed in that foundations and non-profit board members were asked not to speak to the reporters. However, non-profit journalists now had dual responsibilities. These shifts indicate that journalistic practice can adapt quite readily to changing circumstances.

The non-profit investigative subfield consists of more than 100 organisations and is relatively weak in relation to the fields of economics (in this case, the funders), politics and mainstream media. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field – spaces where various agents struggle and compete for a field’s specific forms of capital – envisages that external factors such as changing circumstances “are brought to bear upon individual practice and institutions” (R. Jenkins, 2002, p. 86). The transformations in journalistic practice are an example of this. Another example is the impact of the economic field on the field of established journalism during the financial crisis. Bourdieu also wrote that one of the necessary steps in analysing a field was to assess its position in relation to the field of power (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 104). The non-profit investigative subfield, like all other fields, is dominated by the political field, as well as the economic and journalistic fields. The political field – the IRS and the rules governing non-profit donations – can have an immediate and profound impact on the operations of investigative non-profit organisations. Government agencies can change the rules of foundation giving and reject non-profit status; they already prevent non-profit news organisations from endorsing political candidates, accepting unlimited advertising and acting in advocacy roles.

Financial sustainability

Can philanthropically funded investigative reporting centres be sustained? That is a key question for this thesis. It is a question that the most respected and experienced players in the subfield do not know how to answer. “No-one has figured it out”, said the Center for Public Integrity’s Bill Buzenberg (B. Buzenberg, personal communication, February 8, 2012). Robert Rosenthal echoed his sentiment: “The challenges really for all of us in this sector is how to sustain it. No-one has figured out the business model” (MacArthur Foundation, 2012). Despite several successful examples of non-profit organisations

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developing alternate sources of income, most remain dependent on foundations. It is not an ideal situation given the imbalance of power that exists between the two fields. “Foundations are notoriously fickle. The question is to what extent will those birds fly off the wire and go somewhere else? Is this a flavour of the month? I don’t know. Guess what, no-one knows” (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010).

The investigative subfield has moved from a growth cycle to now seeking longer term sustainability. Not-for-profit investigative organisations face several threats to their future funding. One is that in the absence of a real or perceived danger to investigative journalism or democracy, a key motivation for grant giving may be lost. That motivation was behind much of the support garnered during the financial crisis. Without a similar risk, it is difficult to see foundations rallying to watchdog reporting. Second, many non-profit investigative centres have moved beyond a start-up phase, which is when foundations often depart their grantees. After several years of support, foundations naturally expect that organisations will have developed other revenue sources. Foundations do not want to be on-going funders of day-to-day operations. The majority of investigative non-profit organisations, however, rely heavily on foundation funding, even after five to seven years (Knight Foundation, 2015). A third challenge is that as the number of journalistic non-profit centres increases, so does competition for foundation funding.

Fourth, with notable exceptions, non-profit organisations have had little success in generating revenues from advertising, sponsorship, subscriptions, events and story sales. Finally, the motivations and cultures of foundations and investigative journalists differ. Foundations might support democracy, but their understanding of what that might involve in practice differs from that of watchdog reporters. For instance, “offending their friends is not in their DNA”, former editor Sandy Rowe said of foundations (Rowe, 2011, p. 30).

To digress briefly, the uncertainty of continued foundation support, I believe, has had a positive collateral impact in making non-profit organisations more creative and innovative. To attract new funding, non-profit organisations have had to develop new projects, mostly in digital, data and audience engagement areas. “They (foundations) want to make sure that we’re still doing something new,” said Robin Heller, a fundraiser

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with the Center for Public Integrity. “We should be adaptable, we should be changing, we should be leading. So there are always elements to this organisation that are new and should interest a foundation” (R. Heller, personal communication, February 8, 2012). The pressure to do something new has been an important element in promoting innovation in the subfield.

Despite the threats listed above, I believe foundation support for investigative non-profit organisations will continue. First, there are thousands of foundations in the United States, many of which have programs for strengthening democracy and the accountability of government. Foundations also support ventures that engage the public and increase knowledge about public issues. While foundations may not support a non- profit news organisation indefinitely, some will continue their support for many years. Table 4.6 in this thesis demonstrates that total donations to the 15 non-profit organisations analysed remained strong well beyond the financial crisis. Table 7.1 shows the willingness of a foundation to support the same news organisations over time. Such on-going support in the absence of a crisis, perceived or real, is encouraging news for the subfield.

Second, foundations with advocacy and reform agendas will continue to support media reporting of the issues that concern them. Foundations see journalism as a way of moving their agendas (J. Funabiki, personal communication, February 1, 2012). They are aware that non-profit stories have a good chance of appearing in prestigious media outlets and that the press gets results (J. Rosen, personal communication, November 17, 2010). Third, foundations are obliged to distribute five per cent of their investment assets each year. Non-profit founder Charles Lewis said that requirement and the United States’ “hyper-developed world of philanthropy” would ensure continued support for the non-profit subfield (C. Lewis, personal communication, November 8, 2010). Fourth, there are millionaires and billionaires in the United States who are willing to support journalistic ventures. Some, such as Jeff Bezos with the Washington Post and Warren Buffett with local newspapers, invest in existing media while others such as Pierre Omidyar and Herbert and Marion Sandler create new media organisations. Non-profit organisations are also supported by thousands of smaller donors and organisations that have contributed millions of dollars. Fifth, new media-related companies such as Google may in future support rather than just distribute the journalism of others by

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directing their philanthropic giving to non-profit reporting. Sixth, the United States’ politics suggest that both liberal and conservative foundations will invest in media because their ideological opponents do or because they want to counter right-wing or liberal bias in the established media. Finally, several large foundations such as Knight, MacArthur, McCormick, Ford, Open Society, Excellence and Ethics in Journalism have programs that support accountability journalism and innovation.

In seeking to protect their futures, non-profit organisations are likely to merge or enter into mutually beneficial partnerships with public broadcasters, many of which have established revenue streams and better infrastructure. Mergers between public broadcasters and non-profit investigative sites already are increasingly common. Recent mergers include San Diego’s inewsource with public radio KPBS, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting with WGBH, the St Louis Beacon with St Louis Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and I-News with KUSA-TV. These mergers and other partnerships can be difficult due to institutional cultural practices and a lack of familiarity by journalists of different media platforms. But they seem a natural fit. Public media have limited scope to produce the type of stories that investigative reporting organisations are expert at. Mergers provide non-profit organisations an immediate and substantially wider distribution of their stories. Common accommodation saves money and expands the number of journalists in newsrooms, creating greater scope to cover breaking and longer term stories. Mergers provide greater financial stability to non-profit organisations and greater potential for fundraising through jointly hosted events and funding drives. Finally, public broadcasters have a similar audience profile to non-profit organisations and a common public service mission.

It is also likely that a consolidation of non-profit organisations will occur in the subfield over the next few years. A number of local and niche-topic organisations will probably shut down due to funders not renewing grants and a lack of alternative revenue. Smaller non-profit organisations may become branch offices of bigger and more powerful non- profit operations. Large non-profit operations such as ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting or Reveal may become even bigger as they continue to attract foundation support, build media partnerships and extend their

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leadership roles in driving innovation and teaching other journalists data and digital methodologies.

The mainstream media have been reluctant to pay non-profit organisations for their stories. The Center for Investigative Reporting in California has developed a syndication model for customised print and video stories, but most non-profit organisations have accepted the broader distribution associated with mainstream publication as the only return for their stories. With ProPublica and the Watchdog.org organisations inviting media to steal our stories for free it is doubtful that legacy media in the near future will provide a viable source of income for most non-profit organisations.

Future research areas identified by this thesis

Further research on the model of philanthropically funded investigative journalism that takes into account the US experiences is recommended, particularly in countries where investigative journalism could be enhanced by the entry of new players. Scholars and policy analysts internationally and in the United States could use the nine growth factors identified in this thesis to determine whether the environment is optimal for the creation of investigative non-profit organisations. Does the taxation system encourage donations? Can media organisations qualify for non-profit status? What can be done to convince foundations, wealthy benefactors and citizens to support investigative reporting? Surveys of foundations, trusts, businesses and philanthropists could be conducted to ascertain whether they would donate to investigative journalism organisations and under what circumstances. Qualitative data about the reasons for or against support for independent investigative centres might be collected in focus groups.

This thesis described the creation, funding, operation and challenges of the three largest non-profit organisations in the United States. Further research would be valuable on the sustainability and contribution of smaller state, hyperlocal and niche-issue-based investigative non-profit organisations.

This thesis also raised a number of ethical questions about foundation funding of investigative news centres and concern remains among journalists and scholars about

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the intent and independence issues associated with such funding. Content analysis of the stories resulting directly from foundation funding with a focus on signs of funder influence on story selection, content and bias is warranted as it appears that such funding will continue in future. A similar analysis of the stories produced by centres that are funded by the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity could be included.

Conclusion

Non-profit investigative journalism is relatively young. Whether or not it is the solution to the question of how serious journalism might be produced in a diminished legacy media environment remains to be seen. Journalism and the way people get news has been transformed by the internet and the rapid growth of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Kindle, Instagram and mobile devices. Users generally get their news for free. The challenge in this fast-changing environment is how to preserve and fund the production of quality information, once the domain of newspapers. The financial crisis accelerated for the worse the weakening financial state of mainstream media. As the capacity of newspapers declined during the financial crisis, the United States’ civil society looked for solutions. One of those led to the creation of non-profit investigative centres. Newspapers sought to boost the quality of their content by collaborating with the new organisations for reasons stated in this thesis.

In an age of abundant news and information and concern about the dumbing down of media chasing online hits, there remains support from journalists, foundations, individual philanthropists and citizens for independent watchdog journalism. Non-profit investigative reporting centres are the most potent and organised players in a new and expanding non-market field that includes bloggers, non-government organisations and networked citizens. A key difference between non-profit centre journalism and that of bloggers and citizens is that the non-profits employ the same journalistic standards of accuracy, verification and ethics as mainstream media. This is a critical factor in their collaborations with the established media. Non-profit news organisations do not compete with legacy outlets, which despite their circulation, staff and revenue losses, still have substantial capital and the ability to set political agendas. Non-profit organisations both supplement the mainstream media’s reporting and strengthen reporting at national and local levels.

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Growth in the number of non-profit investigative outlets has invigorated a genre of reporting that many feared would be lost due to economic pressures. Non-profit sites – perhaps motivated by the need for new projects for foundations to support – moved quickly to introduce innovative digital technologies that will shape journalism in future. Reader-accessible datasets and audience engagement tools that increase the value of news and information for consumers are a small example of the type of innovation created by centres such as ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and the Center for Investigative Reporting. These organisations are more nimble, less risk averse and unburdened by the histories and technologies of old media.

The longer term financial sustainability of the non-profit model is likely to be found in a combination of foundation support, mergers and new revenue streams. Eventually, some non-profit organisations may convert into for-profit ventures. The emerging investigative ecosystem in the United States will consist of a combination of for-profit online players, legacy media, public radio and television, and non-market specialist writers, with national and local investigative non-profit organisations collaborating with all of them.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Ethics approval

Subject: SUHREC Project 2010/066 Ethics Clearance Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 10:33:14 +1000

From: Kaye Goldenberg

To: [email protected]

To: Prof Julian Thomas ISR; Mr Bill Birnbauer [BC: Mr Bill Birnbauer]

Dear Prof Thomas and Mr Birnbauer,

SUHREC Project 2010/066 The future of investigative reporting in Australia Prof Julian Thomas ISR; Mr Bill Birnbauer Approved Duration: 21/05/2010 To 21/05/2014 [Adjusted]

I refer to the ethical review of the above project protocol Subject: undertaken on behalf of Swinburne's Human Research Ethics Committee (SUHREC) by SUHREC Subcommittee (SHESC4) at a meeting held on 30 April 2010. Your response to the review, as e-mailed on 10 May 2010 was put to a nominated SHESC4 delegate for consideration.

I am pleased to advise that, as submitted to date, the project has approval to proceed in line with standard on- going ethics clearance conditions here outlined.

- All human research activity undertaken under Swinburne auspices must conform to Swinburne and external regulatory standards, including the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and with respect to secure data use, retention and disposal.

- The named Swinburne Chief Investigator/Supervisor remains responsible for any personnel appointed to or associated with the project being made aware of ethics clearance conditions, including research and consent

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procedures or instruments approved. Any change in chief investigator/supervisor requires timely notification and SUHREC endorsement.

- The above project has been approved as submitted for ethical review by or on behalf of SUHREC. Amendments to approved procedures or instruments ordinarily require prior ethical appraisal/ clearance. SUHREC must be notified immediately or as soon as possible thereafter of (a) any serious or unexpected adverse effects on participants and any redress measures; (b) proposed changes in protocols; and (c) unforeseen events which might affect continued ethical acceptability of the project.

- At a minimum, an annual report on the progress of the project is required as well as at the conclusion (or abandonment) of the project.

- A duly authorised external or internal audit of the project may be undertaken at any time.

Please contact me if you have any queries about on-going ethics clearance. The SUHREC project number should be quoted in communication. Chief Investigators/Supervisors and Student Researchers should retain a copy of this e-mail as part of project record-keeping.

Best wishes for the project.

Yours sincerely

Kaye Goldenberg Secretary, SHESC4 ******************************************* Kaye Goldenberg Administrative Officer (Research Ethics) Swinburne Research (H68) Swinburne University of Technology P O Box 218 HAWTHORN VIC 3122 Tel +61 3 9214 8468 Fax +61 3 9214 5267

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Dear Researchers

This is to advise that the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) has approved the above project.

Project Number: CF09/2517 - 2009001458

Project Title: The future of investigative reporting in Australia

Chief Investigator: Mr Bill Birnbauer

Please find attached your approval letter for this study and ensure you comply with the Terms of Approval outlined in the letter.

Please note Item 1 of the Terms of Approval - approval is granted for three of the four centres - Centre for Public Integrity, Centre for Investigative Reporting and ProPublic. Approval to conduct research with Philanthropy Australia will be given once the Committee receives a copy of the permission letter from this organisation.

To ensure speedy turnaround time, this correspondence is now being sent by email only. MUHREC will endeavour to copy all investigators on correspondence relating to this project, but it is the responsibility of the first- named investigator to ensure that their co-investigators are aware of the content of the correspondence.

Professor Ben Canny Chair, MUHREC ======Human Ethics Monash Research Office Building 3E, Room 111 Monash University, Clayton 3800 Phone: 9905 5490 email: [email protected] http://www.monash.edu.au/researchoffice/human/

Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) Research Office Postal – Monash University, Vic 3800, Australia Building 3E, Room 111, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton Telephone +61 3 9905 5490 Facsimile +61 3 9905 3831 Email [email protected] www.monash.edu/research/ethics/human/index/html ABN 12 377 614 012 CRICOS Provider #00008C

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Human Ethics Certificate of Approval Date: 29 September 2009 Project Number: CF09/2517 - 2009001458 Project Title: The future of investigative reporting in Australia Chief Investigator: Mr Bill Birnbauer Approved: From: 29 September 2009 To: 29 September 2014 Terms of approval 1. The Chief investigator is responsible for ensuring that permission letters are obtained, if relevant, and a copy forwarded to MUHREC before any data collection can occur at the specified organisation. Failure to provide permission letters to MUHREC before data collection commences is in breach of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. 2. Approval is only valid whilst you hold a position at Monash University. 3. It is the responsibility of the Chief Investigator to ensure that all investigators are aware of the terms of approval and to ensure the project is conducted as approved by MUHREC. 4. You should notify MUHREC immediately of any serious or unexpected adverse effects on participants or unforeseen events affecting the ethical acceptability of the project. 5. The Explanatory Statement must be on Monash University letterhead and the Monash University complaints clause must contain your project number. 6. Amendments to the approved project (including changes in personnel): Requires the submission of a Request for Amendment form to MUHREC and must not begin without written approval from MUHREC. Substantial variations may require a new application. 7. Future correspondence: Please quote the project number and project title above in any further correspondence. 8. Annual reports: Continued approval of this project is dependent on the submission of an Annual Report. This is determined by the date of your letter of approval. 9. Final report: A Final Report should be provided at the conclusion of the project. MUHREC should be notified if the project is discontinued before the expected date of completion. 10. Monitoring: Projects may be subject to an audit or any other form of monitoring by MUHREC at any time. 11. Retention and storage of data: The Chief Investigator is responsible for the storage and retention of original data pertaining to a project for a minimum period of five years.

Professor Ben Canny Chair, MUHREC

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Appendix 2: List of interviews

Name Location Date Bell, Clark Chicago 16/02/2012 Bracken, John Chicago 17/02/2012 Buzenberg, Bill Washington, DC 11/11/2010 Buzenberg, Bill Washington, DC 8/02/2012 Coronel, Sheila New York 13/02/2012 Davis, Kevin Encino, LA 31/01/2012 Dominguez-Arms, Amy San Francisco 1/02/2012 Farragher, Tom By phone 25/02/2014 Fischer, Jack Menlo Park 3/02/2012 Fischer, Sunny Chicago 16/02/2012 Funabiki, Jon San Francisco 1/02/2012 Goldstein, Tom Berkeley 2/02/2012 Grueskin, Bill New York 14/02/2012 Heller, Robin Washington, DC 8/02/2012 Houston, Brant Chicago 19/11/2010 Houston, Brant Chicago 16/02/2012 Iverson, Barbara Chicago 17/02/2012 Kaplan, David Washington, DC 10/11/2010 Larrubia, Evelyn Encino, LA 31/01/2012 Lewis, Charles Washington, DC 9/11/2010 Lewis, Charles Washington, DC 8/11/2010 Lewis, Charles Washington, DC 10/11/2010 Lewis, Charles Washington, DC 9/02/2012 Liao, Janet Chicago 16/02/202 McGlinchey, Lori New York 14/02/2012 Noyes, Dan Berkeley 4/11/2010 Parsons, Cherilyn Berkeley 2/11/2010 Picard, Robert Melbourne 10/07/2014 Protess, David Chicago 15/02/2012 Revere, Elspeth Chicago 17/02/2012 Rosen, Jay New York 17/11/2010 Rosenthal, Robert Berkeley 2/02/2012 Rosenthal, Robert Berkeley 3/11/2010 Rotella, Sebastian By phone 16/03/2013 Schapiro, Mark Berkeley 4/11/2010 Shute, Ben New York 13/02/2012 Thompson, A.C. New York 15/11/2010 Tofel, Richard New York 17/11/2010 Torres, Mc Nelly Miami 6/02/2012 Webb, Mike New York 16/11/2010

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Email communication Name Date Bergman, Lowell 2/09/2014 Freedberg, Louis 18/09/2012 Thompson, Marilyn 28/07/2013 Tulsky, Rick 2/05/2012 Weir, David 20/08/2014

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Appendix 3: Primary sources

Document 1: A digital strategy for expanding and monetizing CPI’s investigative reporting. Center for Public Integrity business plan. August 2010. Executive summary (Center for Public Integrity, 2010a)

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Document 2: The Centre for Public Integrity letter to Bill Birnbauer inviting him to join the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Lewis & Beelman, 1998).

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Document 3: Exploring ways and means of increasing the quality and quantity of investigative journalism. Working paper no. 2. Urban Policy Research Institute. April 17, 1975. Michael Levett, Mae Churchill & Dan Noyes (Levett, Churchill & Noyes, 1975).

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