CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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Results
Organizations filtered by 11-30 Volunteers.
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Jan 13, 2012 11:47 AM
Baltimore Brew
Hard news for Charm City
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BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — After seventeen years as a staff writer and reporter at The Washington Post, Fern Shen opted to take a buyout amid significant downsizing at the paper. But she wanted to stay in the news business, and felt that Baltimore, the city she called home throughout her time at the Post, needed "more journalistic boots on the ground," as well as "something more... -
Jan 5, 2011 08:00 PM
Baristanet
Conversational hyperlocal news for New Jersey's Essex County
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MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY — There's something about the smell of steaming coffee grinds that sets the curious journalist in everyone... percolating. Coffee-guzzlers have always used cafes as something of a casual newsroom, a place for gossiping and sharing tidbits about everything from daytime soaps to national politics. And that was the starting point for Debbie Galant and Liz George, the editors, founders, and owners of the... -
Apr 23, 2012 12:42 AM
CapitolHillSeattle.com
Hyperlocal news for the city's core of cool
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Densely populated and filled with restaurants, nightspots, and shops, Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood is one of the city's hubs of cool. Even those who don't live in the area keep tabs on the neighborhood's comings and goings to see what hot spot will arrive next. Not a bad home for a news website. Enter CapitolHillSeattle.com, a hyperlocal community news... -
Mar 25, 2011 01:38 PM
CaryCitizen
Proud proponents of upbeat hyperlocal news
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CARY, NORTH CAROLINA — Founder and publisher Hal Goodtree knew he was onto something with CaryCitizen when The New York Times referenced his coverage of the arrest of a local terrorism suspect on his site's third day of existence. Although the town had a local newspaper, The Cary News, its coverage focused on other towns in addition to Cary, and Goodtree felt that he could... -
Jan 5, 2011 06:54 PM
Center For Investigative Reporting
Old-school investigative nonprofit takes to the web
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BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — In the world of American investigative nonprofits, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the oldest and one of the best recognized. Founded in 1977 by a small group of investigative reporters, CIR has grown considerably since, amassing numerous awards. It now employs a full-time staff of twenty and works with an annual budget of over $4 million. CIR has broken stories... -
Mar 24, 2011 03:31 PM
Columbus Underground
Entertainment and events coverage with a civic bent
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COLUMBUS, OHIO — Launched in 2001, Columbus Underground was founding editor Walker Evans's answer to a lack of online resources for Columbus's nightlife scene. A devoted fan of his city, Evans grew the site from a social calendar to a resource that helps the local community stay informed on just about everything Ohio's capital city has to offer. With 2.1 million visits and 8.5... -
Mar 24, 2011 12:15 PM
CU-CitizenAccess
University-based reporting on poverty in central Illinois
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URBANA, ILLINOIS — When Brant Houston moved to the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois area from Columbia, Missouri to assume the University of Illinois's Knight Chair in Journalism, he did what he had long encouraged students to do in the classes he taught on computer assisted reporting: he trawled through census data to get a sense of his community. The poverty rate immediately stuck out as far out of... -
Sep 27, 2011 04:52 PM
Dallas South News
Making the move from blog to nonprofit news site
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DALLAS, TEXAS — Shawn Williams was in pharmaceutical sales for nine years before starting his personal blog in 2006. The blog was about South Dallas, an area of more than 500,000 people. He says he first started the blog to try to combat negative images of the African American community that he saw in the mainstream media. When he was let go from his job... -
Apr 10, 2013 02:51 PM
District
A student voice from the Savannah College of Art and Design
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SAVANNAH, GA — After beginning in 1995 as a weekly student-run print publication at the Savannah College of Art and Design, District relaunched as an online-only in 2008, becoming part of the early wave of student publications to scrap their print product. "We wanted to go digital because we felt like that was where the industry was headed, and all of our students... -
Dec 13, 2011 11:28 AM
Eugene Daily News
Sports and lifestyle news for Eugene, Oregon
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EUGENE, OREGON — When publisher Kelly Asay and his business partner Jeff Tunnell, the two co-owners of the Eugene Daily News, launched the site in February 2011, they had no journalism experience. The entrepreneurs and video game developers thought their expertise with the Internet and digital media would help them avoid the difficulties that some print, radio, and television news outlets have struggled... -
May 30, 2012 01:58 PM
Florida Voices
A digital editorial page for the Sunshine State
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TAMPA, FL — In 2008, Rosemary Goudreau was laid off as editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune. She found work in public relations, but missed the constant immersion in issues and ideas afforded her by life in a newsroom. "On the other side of the fence, I saw the need for a place that made it easy to know what people were talking about, and for... -
Apr 5, 2011 01:06 PM
Intersections South Los Angeles
USC students report on their neighboring communities
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — When conservative Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly needs a sparring partner on immigration issues, his producers occasionally turn to a totally under-the-radar nonprofit news site, Intersections South Los Angeles. The two-year-old site, a hybrid of hyperlocal reporting and user-generated news, runs on grant and university funds and operates out of the University of Southern California. Editor-in-chief Willa Seidenberg, a journalism... -
Jan 3, 2011 06:21 PM
Investigative Reporting Workshop
Multimedia reporting in a university setting
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop is one of sixteen university-based investigative journalism centers, but the only one in the nation's capital. Founded in 2008 by Charles Lewis and Wendell Cochran, both veteran journalists and professors at the university, the Workshop produces original reporting and mentors the next generation of investigative journalists. This dual mandate creates a unique newsroom; undergraduate... -
Mar 11, 2011 03:51 PM
Lexington Commons
A voice for Lexington's nonprofit organizations
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LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY — The tagline on the Lexington Commons homepage defines the site as "The Voice of Lexington," which is quite appropriate, considering it is written entirely by volunteer citizens of the city and its surrounding suburbs. Because of this, all of the stories featured have a very personal feel. Much of the site's content deals with the local nonprofit sector--"Celebrating Nonprofit Organizations and Volunteers!",... -
Sep 16, 2011 11:16 AM
MyEugene
Community news and citizen journalism for Oregon's second city
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EUGENE, OREGON — Consider MyEugene your full-service hyperlocal news site in the second largest city in Oregon. If you're new to town and want to know where to buy dog food or recycle Styrofoam, just ask Jaculynn Peterson, MyEugene's founder and editor. Like many of MyEugene's readers, Peterson is not native to Eugene or the West Coast. But when she moved there in... -
Oct 31, 2011 01:52 PM
MyVeronaNJ.com
Wide-ranging hyperlocal news for a New York City suburb
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VERONA, NEW JERSEY — Editor Virginia Citrano has worked at the intersection of journalism and technology for nearly three decades. In 1983, she was hired by the Wall Street Journal/Europe, an early innovator in the use of computers in the newsroom. She got her hands on her first news website in 1995, as an assistant managing editor at Crain's New York Business. From 2000 to... -
Dec 21, 2011 11:23 AM
NMPolitics.net
State politics from southern New Mexico
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LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO — In the spring of 2006, Heath Haussamen was working for the Las Cruces Sun-News in southern New Mexico, an ambitious young reporter covering courts, crime, and local politics amid one of the quieter media markets in the country. Las Cruces is part of New Mexico's second congressional district, which is home to just over 600,000 people living in... -
Jan 18, 2012 12:59 PM
NOLA Defender
Edgy arts and culture coverage for a cultural mecca
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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — After scraping by in New York City for several years as a freelance journalist and screenwriter, in early 2009 Ben Mintz was offered the chance to live in New Orleans for three months to work on a script. Like many before him, he was seduced by the storied city and decided to stay permanently. But Mintz still missed some of the... -
Oct 24, 2011 11:42 AM
Noozhawk
Reporting (and financing) the news in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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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,... -
Sep 20, 2011 02:23 PM
Open Media Boston
Boston news and progressive commentary
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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... -
Mar 24, 2011 03:12 PM
Peach Pundit
Conservative local political commentary from the founders of RedState
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ALPHARETTA, GEORGIA — With its simple design and lively comments section, Peach Pundit resembles many right-leaning political opinion blogs. What may set it apart is its pedigree: Clayton Wagar and Erick Erickson, both among the founders of conservative mega-site RedState, founded Peach Pundit in 2005 as a side project. The site covers Georgia state and local politics with a conversational flair, but,... -
Feb 2, 2012 11:12 AM
Plymouth Daily News
Hyperlocal news for "America's hometown"
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PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS — For almost two decades, editor and publisher Walter Brooks and his family have run online media ventures in several Massachusetts communities. Starting in the early months of 1996, Brooks helped launch the online edition of the vacation guide Best Read Guide/Cape Cod. Just a year later, he started the hyperlocal news site CapeCodToday.com--an early example of the hyperlocal... -
Jan 3, 2011 05:17 PM
PopMatters
Pop culture criticism with an academic bent
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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... -
Jun 3, 2011 11:38 AM
Seattle PostGlobe (Defunct)
Seattle-centric reporting and aggregation, and a place for former Post-Intelligencer staffers to practice their craft
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — [Editor's Note: The Seattle PostGlobe announced that it would cease publication on July 29, 2011. Sally Deneen, the site's co-founder and news curator (and the journalist interviewed for the profile below), wrote about the decision here. This profile was originally published on June 3, 2011.] When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer laid off nearly all its staff and went online-only in March of... -
Jan 25, 2012 12:56 AM
Sheepshead Bites
Hyperlocal stories by the seaside in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
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BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Nearly four years ago, the late renowned Brooklyn blogger Robert Guskind pointed out in his coverage of the 2008 Brooklyn Blogfest the pressing need for hyperlocal news sites in the borough's least-covered communities. "While some neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope are written about at length, others, such as Sunset Park and Sheepshead Bay - where... -
Mar 29, 2012 02:02 PM
Silicon Bayou News
News for (and by) the New Orleans tech scene
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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — In March 2011, Zachary Kupperman, a New Orleans attorney with an interest in tech startups, attended New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, an annual convention of business leaders and entrepreneurs. For Kupperman, co-founder of websites such as PolicyPitch.com, a site where users can submit public policy ideas and track state and local legislation, the convention was an acknowledgment of the strength... -
Dec 31, 2010 12:51 AM
Small Wars Journal
An information hub and blogging network for some of the biggest names in military thought
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT of COLUMBIA — Although it's right to call Small Wars Journal a niche publication, doing so misrepresents the site's true influence. "Small wars," as the site uses it, is a kind of catch-all term for counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, and other pervasive features of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although SWJ may have the narrow readership of a trade or academic journal,... -
Jul 21, 2011 12:18 PM
Sports Gab Network
A network of over seventy sports blogs with a special focus on the NFL
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MOUNT LAUREL, NEW JERSEY — An increasingly large player in the world of sports fan blogs, the Sports Gab Network has been one of several such news sites in the past couple of years to give many of the traditional online sports news sites a run for their money. The site was founded with just one contributor in 2006, when an NFL blog written... -
Mar 24, 2011 10:39 PM
The Daily Yonder
Local rural news on a national level. Yes, you heard right.
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WHITESBURG, KENTUCKY — The Daily Yonder strives towards a paradoxical mission: local news on a national level. The website covers rural news and rural issues, posting about one to four new articles a day. The Yonder's mission is to fill a local journalism void in rural areas, and to that end it allows small town papers to publish its content for free. The website... -
Jul 20, 2011 12:47 PM
The Forum
Local news for four small New Hampshire towns
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DEERFIELD, NEW HAMPSHIRE — When Denise Greig and some colleagues founded New Hampshire-based digital newspaper The Forum in 2005, web-based journalism hadn't really made its way to the rural communities that it served. "When we took on [this project], we were explaining the Internet to our funders," laughs Greig, the current chair of The Forum's board of directors. Six years later, with The Forum... -
Aug 10, 2011 01:05 PM
The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism
Investigative reporting for the Hawkeye State
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IOWA CITY, IOWA — Stephen Berry worked for over thirty years as an investigative journalist, a tenure that included a seven year stint as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a 1993 Pulitzer for Investigative Journalism while working at the Orlando Sentinel. In 2003, Berry opted to enter the world of academia, becoming a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa.... -
Dec 15, 2011 11:32 AM
The Lo-Down
News for New York's Lower East Side
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — When husband and wife Ed Litvak and Traven Rice started The Lo-Down, a hyperlocal news site reporting on Manhattan's Lower East Side, it wasn't with the intention of creating a business. Litvak, a television news producer, and Rice, a filmmaker, took the site live in January 2009 after two years living in the neighborhood, and thought of it... -
Jun 30, 2011 11:50 AM
The Los Angeles Review of Books
A book review section for a post-print age
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Tom Lutz, nonfiction author and creative writing professor, offers a startling statistic about the book business on his new website: "twenty times as many titles are published each year than were in 1980, and we have one twentieth of the serious book reviews." The Los Angeles Review of Books, an online magazine launched by Lutz in April 2011, is his... -
Mar 24, 2011 04:42 PM
The Post (Defunct)
Social media gurus of South Dakota
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SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA — [Editor's note: The Post ceased publication in July 2011. A note on the site in late 2011 and early 2012 promised a relaunch, but it never materialized. The site is down, but was last captured by the Internet Archive in February 2012.] The Post, a story co-op site in which a team of volunteers and staff create... -
Dec 29, 2010 02:01 PM
The St. Louis Beacon
"News that matters" for St. Louis
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St. LOUIS, MISSOURI — Margaret Freivogel's thirty-four years as a reporter and editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch came to an end when she took a buyout in 2005. "Several of us took buyouts without any intention of doing anything else at that point," Freivogel says. "We were just kind of weary." But within a year, Freivogel and a few former colleagues had begun work on... -
Mar 24, 2011 11:50 AM
TucsonSentinel.com
Continuing an underdog media legacy in Tucson
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TUCSON, ARIZONA — After a 138-year run, the Tucson Citizen, a daily that reported on such historic events as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, closed its doors in May of 2009. Dylan Smith, the Citizen's online editor, was among the many journalists displaced by the paper's disbanding. Not content to let the Arizona Daily Star claim victory in Tucson's newspaper war, Smith undertook what... -
Mar 25, 2011 03:09 AM
VTDigger.org
Deep coverage for the Green Mountain State
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MONTPELIER, VERMONT — As the name suggests, VTDigger (pronounced "V.T. Digger," not "Vermont Digger") aims to provide deep coverage of local issues in the Green Mountain State. "I wanted to follow stories in-depth," explains Anne Galloway, the publication's editor-in-chief. "Not all of our stories are investigative; but we want them all to go deep." While it's not all hard-hitting political stories--the day after Christmas, Digger... -
Feb 22, 2012 01:38 PM
Welles Park Bulldog
News and sports for Chicago's North Side
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — The Welles Park Bulldog takes its name from a picturesque public park in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood, and delivers insight and opinion on politics, culture, and sports for a dense stretch of residential and mixed-use boroughs on Chicago's North Side. The site's founder and publisher, Patrick Boylan, first had the idea that would eventually become the Bulldog in 2009. "I had...
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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Editor's Spotlight On...
Startups covering high school sports
- Republic Tiger Sports Extensive sports coverage for a school district in Missouri
- San Fran Preps Exhaustive high school sports reporting for San Francisco
- Yadkin Valley Sports High school sports news for eighteen schools in central North Carolina
Startups covering state politics
- The Arizona Guardian Niche political news for a state everyone's watching
- Quorum Report A pioneer in niche online coverage, reporting on Texas politics since 1998
- CTNewsJunkie Giving the good stuff to Connecticut's political insiders
Startups run by married couples
Recent CJR.org posts about the future of news
The News Frontier
- Hello to Symbolia New iPad-only comics journalism magazine launches today
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Fiction, in serialized and small forms
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Beauty pageants for seniors and case law books for zombies
- The Kickstarter Chronicles A few words to the wise
- ICYMI: tweet chats Building a community 140 characters at a time
- CJR Audio: investing in local news startups Talking shop with investor/ publishers Alice Rogoff (Alaska Dispatch) and Vincent LoVoi (This Land Press)
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Printing the Internet and updating an office
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Punching up community radio in Iowa and punching out Mike Tyson in 8 bits
