CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

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BUSSUM, NETHERLANDS — Two Dutch guys met at a party in Amsterdam. A month later, they had a magazine. Jochem Wijnands, who... More >

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Oct 24, 2011 11:42 AM
Noozhawk

Reporting (and financing) the news in Santa Barbara, Calif.
By Paige Rentz
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA — 2006 was a tumultuous year for news in Santa Barbara. The daily Santa Barbara News-Press was experiencing a very public conflict between the publishers and editorial staff that resulted in waves of resignations and firings--a situation which ultimately led the National Labor Relations Board to find that management committed unfair labor practices after the staff voted to unionize. Four years later, the local news site Noozhawk believes it has helped fill the void left by the...
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Jan 27, 2012 11:55 AM
NOWCastSA

Multimedia community news for San Antonio, Texas
By Maura R. O'Connor
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — This spring, San Antonio residents will vote on a five-year, $596 million bond package intended to upgrade the city's infrastructure. The package includes 140 projects across the city, such as improvements to parks, sidewalks, and drainage facilities. Until they go to the polls on May 12, citizens who want to learn details about these projects can visit NOWCastSA.com, an online community news outlet serving the San Antonio area. The site features an interactive Google map that...
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Jan 5, 2011 06:00 PM
Oakland Local

Susan Mernit & co. cover their corner of the Bay
By David Downs
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — Born from the community outrage that followed a local police-on-civilian killing caught on cell phone and spread across the Internet, one-year-old Oakland Local hopes to grow its professional reporting in 2011, while keeping its street-level perspective on the sometimes dangerous California port city it covers. Founder Susan Mernit edits and publishes the Local with an editorial staff of eight--none of whom are paid as full-time employees--serving the gritty city of 447,000. Read more about Oakland Local A...
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May 23, 2011 02:55 PM
Obit Magazine

Making the most of the dead beat
By Lauren Kirchner
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY — Obit, an online magazine launched in 2007 to examine life, death, and the transitions in between, isn't as dark as you might initially think. "What death can mean to the living and what living may have meant to the dead," reads a tagline on its masthead. "Death is only half the story. Obit is about life..." reads another. Far more than just an outlet for obituaries--although it has many of those as well--the site is an...
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Oct 24, 2011 04:44 PM
Ocean Beach Bulletin

Hyperlocal news for San Francisco's western edge
By Alex Fekula
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — San Francisco is home to one of the largest urban beaches in the country, Ocean Beach. The surrounding neighborhoods, the Sunset and the Richmond District, resemble suburban sprawl more than a city, and are comprised mostly of families, surfers, and those seeking a quieter, less urban-intensive lifestyle. The Ocean Beach Bulletin provides hyperlocal coverage for this part of town, a section of San Francisco that often falls below the radar of larger, city-wide outlets. Read more...
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Mar 24, 2011 12:49 PM
Oklahoma Watch

An investigative nonprofit for the Sooner State
By Brendan Buhler
NORMAN, OKLAHOMA — Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit investigative reporting website launched in December 2010 under editor Tom Lindley, a veteran of the state's two major daily papers, the Oklahoman and the Tulsa World--credentials that Lindley says got him the job, as the two papers share resources with Oklahoma Watch and the editors of both papers sit on its executive board. Lindley says Oklahoma Watch's mission is to expose that which is broken in the public sphere and get the...
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Sep 20, 2011 02:23 PM
Open Media Boston

Boston news and progressive commentary
By Evan MacDonald
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — About five years ago, Jason Pramas identified what he calls a "metropolitan news vacuum" in Boston. He noticed that local news outlets were focusing more on beats like entertainment and sports than on local issues like labor strikes, social injustice, and community news. At the time, Pramas was a Ph.D candidate in public policy at the University of Massachusetts-Boston with an acute interest in activism and social media. He decided to fill the void. "It seemed like...
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May 20, 2011 01:35 PM
OpenSecrets.org

Exhaustive reporting on money in politics
By Daniel Luzer
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — In 1983, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Hugh Scott (R-Pa.) founded the Center for Responsive Politics in order to "track money in politics and its effect on elections and public policy." This government watchdog eventually gave birth to OpenSecrets.org, a searchable database of campaign contributions and a center for investigative journalism about money in politics. Read more about OpenSecrets.org The name comes from one of the organization's original publications. Throughout the 1980s, the Center for...
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Sep 14, 2011 02:48 PM
Oswego County Today

An early online news source by a mayor-turned-newsman
By Paige Rentz
FULTON, NEW YORK — When Mayor Don Bullard lost his bid for re-election as chief executive of the small city of Fulton, N.Y. in 1998, he and three members of his city hall team set out in search of a way to continue working for their community. In the waning years of the last millennium, online news was still a young industry, but the former mayor (who has since died) decided to venture into this new territory along with his...
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Mar 24, 2011 11:45 AM
Ozarks Unbound

One man (and three contributors) in the wide world of northwest Arkansas
By Sam Eifling
FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS — The challenges have been twofold for Christopher Spencer, the veteran reporter who founded Ozarks Unbound after he was laid off from his gig at the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas. The first, simply, is revenue. The second is establishing a journalistic brand when there's only one of him (with three contributors) cranking out news about northwest Arkansas, a metro region of nearly a half-million people that is home to the University of Arkansas, Tyson Foods, and Walmart....
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Jul 18, 2011 11:55 AM
paidContent

Covering the business of digital media since 2002
By Joel Meares
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — In 2008, when Guardian News & Media bought Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media, Ali wrote that the acquisition marked the "2.0 phase" of his company. It was an aptly webby phrase from the man who six years earlier founded ContentNext's flagship site, paidContent.org, with the aim of obsessively covering the economics of the then just-emerging world of digital content. And the phrase aptly conveyed just how different Rafat Ali's company was in 2008 than it was...
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Mar 1, 2012 10:37 AM
Patch

AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
By Lauren Kirchner
NEW YORK, NEW YORK —In February 2009, South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn-Short Hills, three small but relatively affluent New Jersey communities, became the first towns to host a local Patch site, launching a network that has since grown to include more than 860 sites in twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. Because of its rapid expansion and the accompanying media scrutiny, Patch has played a central role in the conversation about the potential and the pitfalls of "hyperlocal" journalism. Read more...
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Feb 24, 2012 11:29 AM
Patch (California)

AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
By AJ Hudson
California is a place for experimentation for Patch, as it extends its coverage to two large communities there: the military and their families, and the Latino population. The network's first attempt at a "Patch Military" site is Camp Pendleton Patch; while it is not sponsored by the Marine Corps base, it is run by a former US Marine. Meanwhile, the first three "Patch Latino" sites--in the southern California communities of Baldwin Park, South Gate, and Lynwood--are up and running as...
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Feb 24, 2012 11:50 AM
Patch (Connecticut)

AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
By Annie Wu
Connecticut was the second state to host a Patch site. The network came to the state just after launching in New Jersey and just before expansion into New York. The state's first Patch launched in the summer of 2009 in the southern town of New Canaan. It has since expanded to include 62 sites covering towns across the state. CTWatchdog.com, a consumer protection website, noted in a 2010 story that Patch had hired many veteran journalists in the area, including...
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Feb 24, 2012 12:04 PM
Patch (District of Columbia)

AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
By AJ Hudson
The nation's capital is home to just one Patch. The site covers the ritzy neighborhood of Georgetown, which is home to the university of the same name. The site includes coverage of university news and events, developments on the ever-pressing issues of real estate and traffic, and an ongoing "Best-of" debate about Georgetown's most desirable cocktails. Though Georgetown Patch is alone inside the Beltway, there are a number of Patch sites serving the D.C. suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. Read...
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