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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Jan 5, 2011 07:36 PM
Politico

The site that defined the twenty-four-hour news cycle
By Joel Meares
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — On the night of the November 2010 midterms, as election results began trickling in, team Politico held a returns-watching gala at Washington, D.C.'s Newseum. It was the kind of lavish media event usually reserved for legacy media outlets--the Washington City Paper called the party "a throwback to the days when media companies actually made money... There were lamb chops, and sushi, and little cones of raw tuna topped with caviar"--and it might have been seen...
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Jan 3, 2011 05:17 PM
PopMatters

Pop culture criticism with an academic bent
By Sean Gandert
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — Back when the Internet was still the sole purview of academics and nerds, journalist Sarah Zupko, then working in marketing at Tribune Media Services, founded a site catering to those specific audiences. That site was not in fact PopMatters, but it was a progenitor of sorts, providing web links for researchers studying pop culture. During the years that followed, Zupko's interests shifted from content aggregation to content production, and in 1999 PopMatters was born, featuring in-depth cultural...
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Jan 21, 2011 03:25 PM
Portland Afoot

Portland-based transportation advocacy
By Alex Fekula
PORTLAND, OREGON — In a culture where the car is often the primary mode of transportation, the web/print hybrid Portland Afoot has set out to inform Portland citizens about the wide world of transportation alternatives. After leaving his job as a reporter for The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., founder Michael Andersen felt that he could attract a devoted audience for a new journalism venture by providing locally focused coverage of an under-reported niche topic. In June of 2010, Andersen established...
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Dec 20, 2011 12:06 AM
Prairie Village Post

Hyperlocal news for three small Kansas City suburbs
By Tyler Jones
PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KANSAS — On November 21, 2011, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback spoke to a group of high school students on the importance of being active in their government and community. Senior Emma Sullivan wasted no time in exercising her First Amendment rights when she tweeted: "Just made mean comments at gov Brownback and told him he sucked, in person. #heblowsalot." Brownback's communication staff flagged the tweet and notified the school program; Sullivan was sent to the principal's office where...
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Mar 24, 2011 03:43 PM
Prince of Petworth

Purveyor of D.C. local news and oddities
By Alex Fekula
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — For the Prince of Petworth, a good stroll is the preferred way to travel. In his pre-blogging days, Dan Silverman would take long walks through the streets of Washington, D.C. and observe intriguing urban phenomena: a compelling bit of graffiti, a notable piece of architecture, a curious new business. Soon, however, merely observing such spectacles proved to be insufficient; so Silverman began to take the things he saw and channel them into his blog. Read...
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Oct 11, 2011 10:00 AM
Progress Illinois

A labor-backed site providing original news and analysis beyond the mainstream
By Nicolas Zimmerman
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — While the genesis of Progress Illinois dates back to 2006, the left-leaning news and commentary site officially launched in March 2008, riding a wave of national interest in Illinois politics propelled by then-senator Barack Obama's unlikely bid for the presidency. The spotlight on Illinois intensified further that year with ex-governor Rod Blagojevich's descent from up-and-coming progressive politician to perpetual punch line. It was a good time to be a fledgling Illinois-centric political news site. Read more about...
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Jan 5, 2011 06:26 PM
ProPublica

The web's best-known muckraker
By Colin Fleming
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — In the world of investigative nonprofit news organizations, ProPublica is a giant. Its staff of nineteen reporters has broken big stories on everything from the lax supervision of British Petroleum to the dangers of drilling for natural gas. Founded in 2007 by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian, ProPublica's official mandate is to produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Read...
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Recently Updated: Jul 29, 2011 01:42 AM
PubliCola

Extensive political coverage for Seattle and Washington state
By Alex Fekula
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — [UPDATE: After briefly ceasing operations in May 2012 due to "limited and inconsistent" ad revenue, Publicola was purchased in mid-June 2012 by SagaCity Media, owner of the Seattle Metropolitan magazine and other properties, for an undisclosed sum. The new web publication is called PubliCola at SeattleMet. Popular features like "Morning Fizz," "Afternoon Jolt," and and "ThinkTank" continue to be published, and Josh Feit, the site's founder and co-editor, and Erica Barnett, the site's co-editor and reporter, remain...
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May 23, 2011 11:12 AM
Quorum Report

A pioneer in niche online coverage, reporting on Texas politics since 1998
By Connor Boals
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Harvey Kronberg and his team at the Quorum Report are true Internet news frontiersmen. Kronberg, who has been covering Texas politics since 1989, purchased The Quorum Report, then a print-only political newsletter, in 1998, and within a year had turned the Report into an all-web news operation. Although he admits that he had to be convinced to go to the web ("Back in '98, the only people who had Internet connections were teenagers," he says. "My clientele...
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Jan 23, 2012 12:21 PM
redbankgreen

Hyperlocal news for Red Bank, New Jersey
By Erik Shilling
RED BANK, NEW JERSEY — On June 1, 2006, when John T. Ward and his wife Trish Russoniello launched redbankgreen, a hyperlocal news site for Red Bank, New Jersey, Ward says that he had little idea what to expect. With the help of Russoniello, a graphic artist, Ward had designed a bare-bones website on Typepad, and, the morning of the launch, e-mailed a few friends about his new venture. By day's end there had been a modest 300 hits, but...
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May 20, 2011 12:13 PM
Remapping Debate

An NYC-based site that seeks to throw a wrench in conventional wisdom on public policy
By Isaac Olson
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Armed with flexible hypotheses rather than fill-in-the-blank assumptions, the public policy focused e-journal Remapping Debate aims to cut through the all-too-common political smokescreen to expose the true motivations behind--and the aftereffects of--top-level decision making, political or otherwise. Be it digging into the true cost of social security or taking a well-rounded look at proposed healthcare reform, Remapping Debate, launched in October 2010, asks and answers both "why" and "why not" questions in meaty, unflinching articles....
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Aug 17, 2011 10:39 AM
Republic Tiger Sports

Extensive sports coverage for a school district in Missouri
By Erik Shilling
REPUBLIC, MISSOURI — For David Brazeal, the owner, writer, videographer, sole advertising salesman, and occasional play-by-play man for Republic Tiger Sports, his website, which is devoted to the athletic pursuits of the Republic R-III School District, has been a labor of love--but it's also quickly evolved into a fledgling business enterprise. As an alumnus of Republic High School, Brazeal, forty-one, has long had the Tigers in his blood, but the idea for the site didn't start until he had moved...
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Aug 23, 2012 02:45 PM
Richmond BizSense

An online-only business journal for Virginia's capital
By Brian Patrick Eha
RICHMOND, VA — Not long ago, Richmond, VA was one of the largest US cities without a business journal. That changed on January 1, 2008, the day that local online startup Richmond BizSense ran its first story. The site, which subsists almost entirely on local advertising and claims to have enjoyed three straight years of profitability, combines a web editorial strategy with a fairly traditional local news ad model--a hybrid which, in Richmond at least, is showing promise in its...
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Mar 25, 2011 02:41 PM
Rio Grande Guardian

An online-only news source for South Texas
By Justin Yang
MCALLEN, TEXAS — In July of 2005, Steve Taylor and his partner Melinda Barerra sold their Isuzu Rodeo for seed money and launched the first online-only news site in the Texas border region. The site, called the Rio Grande Guardian, bills itself as "the internet newspaper of south Texas," and covers the Rio Grande Valley, which consists of the four counties that make up the southernmost tip of the nation's second most populous state. With relatively few Internet users and...
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Jan 9, 2012 12:15 PM
RiverheadLocal

Local news and web advertising for Riverhead, Long Island
By Maura R. O'Connor
RIVERHEAD, NEW YORK — In 2009 Denise Civiletti tried to switch careers, but in the end she came back to journalism. She had taken a job in public relations with a local hospital after working as a publisher and editor for a decade in her hometown of Riverhead in Long Island, New York. Health care, she thought, was a growth industry that would offer better job security. With two teenage daughters in college, that seemed important. Read more about RiverheadLocal...
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