Charles Lewis opened the New Journalism, New Ethics? conference at UW Madison with a census. Lewis, who founded the Center for Public Integrity and was founding executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, had surveyed around 30 US non-profit journalism groups, and the figures he read out were about disclosure rather than output: 350 full-time staff between them, 330 of those with prior journalism experience; 25 of the 30 disclosed their donors; only five posted their IRS filings, with operating budget and salaries, online; and only six or seven published their editorial policies on their websites. The university-based operations were the exception, releasing detailed financials almost across the board.
The context was the familiar one of falling circulation and shrinking newsroom staff, and the growth that followed it: start-ups such as Voice of San Diego and MinnPost, entrants like ProPublica, and journalism schools running investigative work on external funding. “The new model today is collaboration,” Lewis said, with the trade blunt on both sides — shrunken newsrooms need content and online start-ups need readers.
His recommended practice followed from the gaps in his own survey: disclose the financials including salaries, disclose donors rather than only the large ones, publish the biographies of staff, and list awards, which he treated as a credibility signal. Transparency, on his argument, is what lets a reader tell a credible non-profit outlet from an interested one.
He expected the field to reach 50 to 100 organisations, with closer collaboration between investigative centres, and noted that it was forming internationally, from Japan to Jordan.