The second session of the New Journalism, New Ethics? conference at UW-Madison dealt with the ethics of building and running non-profit investigative newsrooms, working from the report Ethics for the New Investigative Newsroom: who counts as an acceptable donor, and how editorial independence is safeguarded once a foundation is paying the bills. Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics, opened on the donor relationship — the issues had existed for years, he said, but were forming in new ways, and the take-home message was that “you have to defend the integrity of the journalism”.
Andy Hall, executive director and reporter at the start-up Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, supplied the operating detail. Most of the Center’s $350,000 in funding had come from large out-of-state groups; the harder question was local money, because a local donor can also be the subject of an investigation. The Center listed its donors, was preparing to post its fund-raising policy, and had decided to take nothing from political officials or parties, or from anyone whose reputation could damage its integrity.
Brant Houston of the University of Illinois argued transparency had to cover spending as well as income. Carol Toussaint, a foundation executive and non-profit board member in Madison, gave the funders’ side: foundations had their own own best practices and saw themselves as change agents, much as journalism non-profits did, though she cautioned against leaning too heavily on a single donor. Martin Kaiser of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel closed on credibility in a news landscape he described as increasingly fractured and politicised.