Collaboration emerges as an effective business model

 Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said just before signing the Declaration of Independence, "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

News publishers have taken this idea to heart with a trend toward collaborating as a means of survival when so many economic forces are working against them. Collaboration, rather than competition, allows small, vulnerable news organizations to spread the risk and cost of journalism that challenges the powers that be and serves the public interest. 

When they collaborate, small newsrooms get access to at least three scarce resources: time, in the form of help from other organizations; expertise, in the form of people who know how to do things they don't; and money, because the combined organizations can sometimes attract grants that none of them could by themselves.

One example: Nieman Lab reported on the Institute for Nonprofit News's collaborative investigation on the lack of hospitals and health care services in rural America. Twelve news organizations in seven states participated.

Hospitals in rural areas of the U.S. have been closing as population declines, much as local news media have been disappearing. The Institute for Nonprofit News, founded 10 years ago, has 230 members and promotes sharing of resources and expertise that support investigative journalism in the public interest. The funding comes from a variety of national and local foundations and nonprofits.

How to be more credible, from an investigative reporter

Tina Kaiser. Photo by Gisela Gürtler

News organizations have been losing credibility for years, and the reasons are many. Too often, we journalists have been arrogant and said, in effect, Trust us, we know what we're doing. But today, journalism is under attack, and we have to explain why people should trust us.
 

 There are many things publishers can do to improve credibility, said Tina Kaiser, an investigative reporter for Die Welt in Germany, during a talk with a group of journalists and communicators from the College of Europe.

In her talk, at Die Welt's Berlin headquarters, Kaiser described the publication's policies and mentioned how they were applied in specific stories, such as a series about Arab gangs in Germany.

1. Transparent corrections. Admit your mistakes quickly and fully, and be transparent about how they were made. If an organization simply says, "this information was incorrect", the public is left with doubts about why a correction was determined to be necessary. Was it an honest mistake, a careless breach of journalistic standards, or inaccurate information provided by a source? Without some explanation, readers might assume that a correction was made because of undue pressure and influence from some interested party.

2. "The making of" stories. For any kind of long-term investigative or enterprise stories, a news organization ought to also publish an explanation of how information was obtained, who the sources were, where journalists traveled to interview people and do research, how the information was double-checked and verified, and other information that demonstrates the care and professional standards used.

Investigative journalism: great return on investment

Between fines and recovered funds, journalists get results

Lately a couple of us here at the University of Navarra have been looking for models of high-quality journalism that are sustainable. As it turns out, many of the best news organizations that are thriving are doing investigative journalism.

Readers like this type of journalism, which holds the powerful accountable for their actions, makes them responsible for serving the public rather than themselves.

In a 2016 article, two leaders of global investigative journalism organizations made the case that investigative journalism actually has a great return on investment, ROI.

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"Over the years [Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)] has accepted $5 million in funding from the U.S. and other governments. The return on that funding? With $2.8 billion recovered in fines and seized assets by various governments, the payoff is over 56,000 percent (or a 560-fold return)".
The authors of that article were  David E. Kaplan, executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and Drew Sullivan, one of the founders of OCCRP.

This hub nurtures investigative journalism in LatAm

Huertas: Developing the next generation

BOGOTA, Colombia --  Independent news media in Latin America often lack the financial resources to act as a counterweight to the political powers and multinational businesses in the region.

But these media, many of them digital natives, have found that by banding together they can multiply their scarce resources and magnify their impact beyond their borders to challenge these powers.

One example is a platform for journalists interested in investigative journalism, Connectas.org, based in Bogota, which organizes training and operates a collaboration hub for investigative journalists (in Spanish, ConnectasHub), offers grants of up to $3,000, and publishes investigative projects from all over the region.

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The founder and director of Connectas, Carlos Eduardo Huertas, told me in an interview that the goal of the platform is to "pull together a new generation of journalists with training in practical methods of doing in-depth journalism and investigative journalism".

Loyal users will pay for watchdog journalism

Kinsey Wilson. Photo by Mary Kang/Knight Center

AUSTIN, Texas -- One of the dirty little secrets in digital media is that the big numbers of page views and unique users touted by publishers are misleading at best. They overstate a publication's audience size and impact.

Most visitors to a publisher's content are fly-bys: They stay for only a few seconds. And even if they stay longer than that, the vast majority come to a publisher's website only once or twice a month. These are not loyal users devoted to a brand.

What is more interesting and meaningful, especially for publishers of serious news and information, is that the smaller number of loyal users -- who come frequently, linger, and read many pages -- is willing to pay for the content and other products. They identify strongly with the brand.

Kinsey Wilson, editor of innovation and strategy at the New York Times, brought the point home last week at the International Symposium on Online Journalism when he mentioned that 90 percent of  his publication's digital revenue comes from 10 percent of its users.

Panama Papers: Lone-wolf journalists form a pack

Investigative journalists have achieved a new level of sophistication and collaboration as shown by this explosive investigation of offshore tax havens used by the wealthy and powerful. 

The investigation by 109 media organizations from 76 countries has shaken government leaders from China to Russia to Great Britain. It has led to the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland, who used a tax haven to avoid paying taxes on 3.5 million euros. 

The 376 journalists on the Panama Papers team overcame many obstacles, not the least of which was their own competitiveness. All of these journalists and news organizations agreed not to publish any of their findings until the agreed upon time on Sunday April 3. 

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These journalists, who are accustomed to work like lone wolves and jealously keep their sources and information to themselves, had to "radically share" information with each other and overcome differences in language, culture, and practice. 

ProPublica pioneers investigative journalism for the digital age

PAMPLONA, Spain -- Given all the trash, half-truths and outright lies published on digital media, people are placing a higher value on media that verify information and demonstrate high ethical standards.

Paul Steiger, taking questions at U. of Navarra event

Paul Steiger, founder and executive chairman of ProPublica, tells of a major donor to his online publication who "absolutely hated" an investigative story that they had published about a group "near and dear to the donor's heart". Steiger told the donor that the information was verified, and the story was fair. "We will just have to agree to disagree," he told the donor.

The donor, who had given $100,000 every year, stopped giving. And that would have been the end of the story, except that a year later, with no explanation, the donor's annual check arrived again. Steiger's point was that even people who disagree with you still respect journalism with high standards of accuracy and ethics.

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He made his comments to students and faculty of the University of Navarra during a series of public presentations and interviews with various media. He described some of the keys to producing effective investigative journalism even while traditional news media have been cutting back on staff and in-depth reporting. (You can see coverage of his talks, in Spanish, from El Español, El Pais, ABC, Público, ElMundo, and Infolibre, along with a Storify of Tweets in English and Spanish.)

An investigative journalist leaps from print to digital

Oscar Castilla: "You have to think about the business model"

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Oscar Castilla spent 12 years at El Comercio, Peru's most important daily newspaper, honing his reporting skills with investigations of organized crime and corruption. 

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Then in 2014, Castilla and some colleagues from the investigative unit decided to leave the paper for editorial reasons. "The editor at the time had one view of journalism and we had another," he told me in an interview. "We wanted to do some innovative things and the organization was against it."

So they decided to launch their own news publication online, Ojo Público (Public Eye). Their first investigation about conflicts of interest among the mayors in metropolitan Lima was honored in Barcelona in June with a Data Journalism Award from the Global Editors Network.

An investigative journalist who thinks like a capitalist

Martin Rodriguez Pellecer of Nomada

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- You usually don't hear an investigative journalist talk about the importance of learning business skills.

But that is the case with Martin Rodriguez Pellecer, 32, founder of two notable digital news media organizations in Guatemala, Plaza Publica and Nomada, the latter launched last year.

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"The most difficult thing for a journalist is to think like a capitalist, to realize that you have to invest and put money on the line", he told me in an interview. "You have to be flexible; you can't wed yourself to just one thing. You have to have lots of eggs in different baskets. No successful capitalist has just one line of business; all of them have lots of businesses." 

Handful of data journalists shake up Mexican Congress

The truth hurts, especially when the truth is contained in receipts from bars, hotels, spas, and luxury vehicle dealers.

Israel Piña, from Quien Compro website.

A group of five young Mexican journalists has spent the past year or so sifting through thousands of expense reports of Mexico's senators and deputies (congress) to see how they are using taxpayers' money.

Among their scoops:

• Members of the Senate bought 10 Harley-Davidson motorcycles at a cost of 2.12 million Mexican pesos, or about US$130,000, in order to serve their constituents better. 
• Senators spent 43,800 pesos on 210 bottles of wine, or US$2,700 in a four-month period.
• One senator bought a loaded Yukon Denali SUV for 890,000 pesos, or $60,000, for the use of an obscure agency whose purpose is to "do studies to help the Congress make decisions." The senator declined to respond to numerous requests for comment. 

Cartoon that accompanied the Harley-Davidson exposé.

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These journalists, led by Israel Piña, 33, were doing the investigative work in their spare time, for nothing. So they were surprised that their reports attracted enough attention that a year ago, television stations and major print media outlets -- including El Universal newspaper -- began paying them for their content.

They were providing a kind of investigative journalism that no one else was doing. Typically, political reporters in Mexico spend their time covering the pronouncements and accusations of the political class. It is very much inside baseball. They don't do much basic research using public documents.

News entrepreneur advises, 'Don't think about it - do it'

Olga Lucia Lozano, creative editor
of  La Silla Vacia

Versión en español aquí.

The cofounder of one of the most important investigative journalism sites in Colombia, La Silla Vacia (The Empty Chair), has some advice for those who are thinking about creating their own website, app or whatever:

"Don't think about it, do it. Doing things is the best way to learn. To try means to fail. To fail means to learn."

Olga Lucia Lozano, creative editor of La Silla Vacia, recently shared what she has learned in the nearly five years of working on the site during a "Journalism Hangout" (in Spanish, she comes on at the 30-minute mark).

Why investigative journalism is good business

Versión en español aquí.

I may have misled people for the last few years by saying that investigative journalism is not a business but a public service.

Other people -- namely Felix Salmon, Jeff Bezos and four journalists cited by Journalism.co.uk -- are reminding me that investigative journalism does, in fact, have commercial value.

First, Felix Salmon, the Reuters blogger. He made the case in a recent post that while investigative journalism may not produce the web traffic of popular topics, a media organization reaps intangible but valuable benefits. 

For example, advertisers will see that a site is a serious news outlet "and be that much more willing to pay premium rates to advertise on the site as a result. Readers who like having fast news during the day like having meatier stuff to read over the weekend," Salmon says. 

France: Paywall works for investigative journalism site

 

The online investigative publication that recently reported French President Nicolas Sarkozy received 50 million euros in campaign support from Libya in 2007 is an anomaly: a profitable subscription-only service that accepts no advertising.

Mediapart is showing that in the right circumstances, an investigative news organization can be a viable business.

6,000 paid subs support digital news site in Nova Scotia

At first it seems an unlikely place for an expensive paywall business model to work -- Nova Scotia. 

Nearly 6,000 subscribers are paying $360 a year for access to the AllNovaScotia.com website, according to Tim Currie's story in Nieman Lab. 

That's about $2 million and represents 80 percent of the revenue of the site. 

How are they doing it? One of the key elements is focusing on basic public-records searches and document-based reporting.

African news service thrives as cooperative

Justin Arenstein never really wanted to work for a big corporation, but that is how he started out in journalism. He was a reporter working on contract covering one of the desperately poor shantytowns of his native South Africa.

He and his colleagues ran afoul of corporate management by covering the death squads that were assassinating black activists opposed to apartheid. They quit en masse and decided to start their own news organization, which was the beginning of what is today the African Eye News Service.


African Eye functions as a cooperative, with each reporter keeping half of the revenue generated by his or her own stories and the rest going to support the enterprise. Launched 18 years ago, it has 15 full-time journalists and a network of correspondents covering six countries -- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Malawi. It has gained a reputation for editorial independence and aggressive investigative journalism.