CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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Results
Organizations filtered by National.
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May 13, 2013 03:26 PM
ACEsConnection.com
A niche social network for professionals working in science, education, and policy related to childhood trauma
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WINTERS, CA —ACEsConnection.com (ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences) is a niche social network primarily for professionals in education, criminal justice, public health, and government that work on ACEs related issues. As of May 2013, the network has over 950 members. It is run by journalist Jane Stevens, who founded the network alongside news site ACEsTooHigh.com. To read the Guide to Online News Startups profile... -
May 13, 2013 03:27 PM
ACEsTooHigh.com
Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
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WINTERS, CA — In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of one of the largest studies ever conducted to assess the relationship between childhood trauma and adult well-being. Over the course of two years, 17,000 individuals underwent physical examinations and answered a multitude of questions about their family history. Was a biological parent ever lost through divorce or abandonment? Did... -
Jun 8, 2011 12:17 PM
Ars Technica
The old guard of tech news, mixing context, the long view, and a sense of humor
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Since its founding in 1998, Ars Technica has grown to become a trusted, go-to source for news, reviews, and information about scientific advancements, technological breakthroughs, video gaming, tech policy, gadgetry, software, hardware, and everything in between. However, Ken Fisher, the site's Massachusetts-based founder and editor-in-chief, claims Ars Technica's success as one of the oldest and largest tech-focused websites isn't... -
Jun 6, 2012 01:47 PM
Big World Magazine
A travel webzine that pays its contributors
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NEW YORK, NY — Brooklyn-based editor and publisher Mary D'Ambrosio has taught a graduate level summer travel writing course at New York University for the past decade. A couple of years ago, she noticed something about her students' work: she liked it better than the usual travel magazine fare. "They weren't going to write 'Ten Hot Hotels in Rome,'" she says. "They were going to... -
Jan 4, 2011 10:35 PM
Bleacher Report
A sports news behemoth where fans do the writing, reporting, and search engine optimization
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Since its launch in 2008 after two years of development and beta testing, Bleacher Report has become a major player in online sports media. A unique combination of social networking and sports reporting, the Web site attracts a rapidly growing audience of about sixteen million unique visitors a month, according to the company. It provides Web content to partners like The Los... -
Aug 1, 2011 11:53 AM
ClearHealthCosts.com
Guiding consumers through the health care marketplace
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PELHAM, NEW YORK — Jeanne Pinder had a storied career in print journalism: she was born into a newspaper family and spent twenty-three years at The New York Times. But today Pinder is venturing into new territory by founding a start-up website that aims to bring transparency and accountability to the health care marketplace. ClearHealthCosts.com was launched in beta form by Pinder in... -
Jul 21, 2011 05:46 PM
Common Language Project
In-depth human rights reporting and multimedia storytelling
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON —In 2005, three friends on their way to becoming freshly anointed college grads had an idea. They were budding journalists with global ambitions who didn't want to sit on their hands while foreign coverage in American newspapers continued to fade. The three, Sarah Stuteville, Alex Stonehill, and Jessica Partnow, decided to take a trip to about a dozen countries in Southeast Asia and... -
Aug 8, 2011 11:49 AM
Deadspin
Gawker Media's sports news success story
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — For Deadspin, the impish sports wing of the Gawker empire, the presence of a pink gorilla at a hotel meeting between Tommy Craggs, a Deadspin senior editor, and John Walsh, ESPN's executive vice president for content, must have felt like a crowning achievement. The site made its name most recently by publishing pictures of... -
Jan 5, 2011 08:47 PM
DoD Buzz
A (mostly) one-man show reporting on the Pentagon
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — Structurally speaking, DoD Buzz is little more than a personal blog dressed up as a full-on news publication. The remarkable thing is that, were it not for more than three-quarters of the stories on the site having the same byline, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. That's true in terms of volume and quality of content, anyway.... -
Jul 18, 2011 04:18 PM
E&E Publishing
High-cost subscription coverage of environment and energy policy and markets
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — Launched in 1998, E&E Publishing started with six employees producing high-priced subscription energy policy coverage out of Washington D.C. and has grown into an award-winning online news outlet with an editorial staff of forty-five and bureaus in San Francisco and New York City. Over the years, the company's readership has grown from roughly 1,000 to 40,000, and includes... -
Sep 28, 2011 11:48 AM
Engadget
Tech news the AOL way
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Engadget is a one-stop hub for enthusiastic tech consumers, featuring breaking news updates, product reviews, podcasts, multimedia, and more. Light in tone, just edgy enough to amuse but not offend, and often genuinely informative, it's tempting to compare the site to a tech version of Gawker--and, in fact, Engadget was founded in 2004 by Peter Rojas, the tech... -
Dec 8, 2010 03:40 PM
FactCheck.org
A "consumer advocate" for voters
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PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA — In a world of 140-character tweets and political attack ads posted on YouTube, information has become easier to access and easier to release. It's also become more difficult to discern between what information is true and what is false. FactCheck.org rose to the challenge of making those calls in political discourse leading up to the 2004 election and has continued to... -
May 26, 2011 11:04 AM
FailedMessiah.com
News and investigations from within ultra-orthodox Judaism
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ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — A few days after a team of Navy SEALS killed Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden, Shmarya Rosenberg, whose website FailedMessiah.com is perhaps the Internet's only English-language news source devoted to news from the insular world of ultra-orthodox Judaism, received a tip from one of his readers in Brooklyn. The reader had e-mailed him a scanned picture from a Yiddish-language... -
Jan 5, 2011 04:17 PM
FairWarning
Consumer-oriented investigative journalism
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — As the Los Angeles Times newsroom braced itself for another round of buyouts in 2008, Myron Levin, an investigative reporter who had tracked corporate misconduct and lax government regulation for the paper for years, thought hard about what he wanted to do with his career. He took a few walks around the block, talked it over with some colleagues, and then finally... -
Jan 3, 2011 01:35 PM
Gawker
Pioneers of Internet snark branch out toward general interest news
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK— The rise of Gawker has been well-documented. Founded by Nick Denton in 2003 as "the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip," the site's urbane tone of bemusement in line with the old Spy, coupled with the Internet's ability to feature near-instant commentary on events, turned the site into a quick, widely imitated success. But the current version of... -
Jan 3, 2011 04:31 PM
GigaOM
The site offers predictive technology coverage, and has itself been a leader in earning web revenue
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — What started out as a personal blog that combined former Forbes and Business 2.0 reporter Om Malik's mutual interests in technology and opinionated blogging has become a full-fledged business. Despite running an editorial staff of twelve and working as a "jack of all trades" for the site's business and technology sides, Malik still personally writes on GigaOm nearly every day.... -
Jan 5, 2011 01:35 PM
GlobalPost
A new news agency helping to fill the gaps in foreign reporting
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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — GlobalPost has breathed life back into the foreign news agency business. Philip Balboni and Charles Sennott, two ambitious and entrepreneurial international news journalists, founded the for-profit site in 2009. They say the site sets out to have a distinctive American voice and American style of storytelling while reporting on news from every corner of the world. GlobalPost has complete editorial... -
Jan 4, 2011 05:17 PM
Grist
Irreverent online environmental magazine offers in-depth reporting with "secret sauce"
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Grist is an irreverent online environmental magazine that aggressively courts young readers, ad dollars, and philanthropic backers. Launched in 1999, the publication could be considered an octogenarian in web years, but maintains the tenor of a cheerful young rebel. To celebrate the nonprofit's tenth anniversary, Grist founder and CEO Chip Giller announced a "Screw Earth Day!" campaign, saying "too many people... -
Jul 15, 2011 11:39 AM
HealthNewsReview.org
A watchdog for health care journalism
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ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — The job of a health care reporter is to provide accurate, objective coverage of the health care industry. Yet in Gary Schwitzer's opinion, that rarely happens in the American media. "The marketing forces in health care are so overwhelming even good journalists may not realize they're being sold a bill of goods when they are," says Schwitzer, a former news reporter for... -
Jun 30, 2011 12:51 PM
Hollywood Elsewhere
One man channeling a "daily stream-of-Hollywood-consciousness"
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WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA — The summer of 2011 is shaping up to be a pretty grim one for curmudgeonly film blogger Jeffrey Wells. Wells, who opines daily on film and the movie industry on his website Hollywood Elsewhere, hates the special effects-packed event flicks that Joe Popcorns, as he calls them, seem to love. And this summer has offered Joe P. more... -
Jan 5, 2011 04:06 PM
IGN
The web's definitive video game press
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — IGN, which began in 1996 as just another video game site in a flood of similar sites with a similar voice, has become one of the behemoths of Internet journalism, with over 13 million unique visitors a month and a staff size rivaling that of many newspapers. Its success is a model for how a Web site can tap a... -
Jan 3, 2011 04:54 PM
indieWIRE
Independent film news for fans, filmmakers, and insiders
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — IndieWIRE is a daily news site and online resource that covers all aspects of specialty and independent film. Founded in 1996, the site is known for its dogged coverage of film festivals around the world and its efforts to support the independent filmmaking community itself. The site's multifaceted approach to film coverage has earned it a following among fans... -
Mar 11, 2011 11:11 AM
Inner City Press
A one-man show reporting on the United Nations
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Every weekday at noon, a spokesperson for the United Nations briefs the media in the auditorium at the Dag Hammarskjold library, just adjacent to the world body's towering Secretariat building in New York. And every weekday, Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press is there, asking about topics that no other member of the press corps will touch. His... -
Jul 11, 2011 03:48 PM
Inside Facebook
Data-heavy news and analysis of the Internet's hottest property
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PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA — As the social networking behemoth Facebook shapes the way people think about everything from privacy to public relations, and as rumors continue to circulate about a possible 2012 IPO that could value Facebook at over $100 billion, the site Inside Facebook, which analyzes the company's growth, has become increasingly relevant. Internet media entrepreneur Justin Smith started Inside Facebook in... -
Oct 24, 2011 07:04 PM
InsideClimate News
Environment news and investigations
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — After experimenting with a variety of quick-hit approaches to environmental coverage, a four-year-old online news startup focused on climate change is moving in a slower, more involved reportorial direction. Originally launched in 2007 as SolveClimate News, the site announced on September 6, 2011 that it had hired an executive editor, Susan White, and changed its name to InsideClimate...
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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... -
Jan 5, 2011 04:38 PM
iWatch News (The Center for Public Integrity)
Twenty years' worth of investigative journalism for the public welfare
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — The Center for Public Integrity celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2010 with a YouTube video detailing its many accomplishments. The organization has won more than forty national journalism awards, pursued more than seventy major investigative projects, published sixteen books, and, perhaps most significantly, has been cited in print and electronic media more than 15,000 times. Now, the... -
Jan 5, 2011 07:50 PM
LiveScience
Science news at light speed
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — LiveScience cranks out a high-volume mix of newsy and fun science curios in its efforts to chase after the fickle attentions of Internet wayfarers. Readers are voting approval with their clicks--an impressive three million-plus uniques per month--and the site, with a full-time editorial staff of five, has the relatively rare distinction of being profitable. As part of a... -
Nov 7, 2011 03:26 PM
LocallyGrownNews.com
A network of news sites devoted to local food coverage
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ELON, NORTH CAROLINA — Journalist Michelle Ferrier has been involved in creating online communities for over ten years, and was the editor of MytopiaCafe.com, a now-defunct hyperlocal news offering by the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Although MytopiaCafe gained a devoted following of 3,000 users, Ferrier argued in a 2009 piece for Poynter that the site was doomed from the beginning. In retrospect, Ferrier felt... -
Oct 6, 2011 05:15 PM
MediaStorm
Multimedia outlet meets production house
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BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Above the cobblestone streets of Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood, the producers, engineers, and cinematographers of MediaStorm are producing some of the most arresting and moving stories online today. While side-stepping the news cycle in favor of more timeless features, their particular brand of multimedia narrative is attracting online viewers from 170 countries around the globe. It has also helped the... -
Mar 28, 2012 12:23 PM
Mint Press News
A privately financed international news startup in Minnesota
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MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA — The coming of Mint Press was noted all over the journalism jobs boards. Touting its independent status and dedication to honest reporting, the site seemed to advertise for a new position every day: staff reporters, California and D.C. correspondents, and associate editors. Many of these positions remain open. Mint Press currently claims five staff writers and three paid writing interns;... -
Apr 3, 2012 02:28 PM
National Institute on Money in State Politics
Tracking political donations and their influence in all fifty states
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HELENA, MONTANA — Edwin Bender believes that building a database is like writing a really good story. "What fascinated me about being a journalist was getting down and taking evidence and saying 'this is what I see,'" says Bender. "When I first started building databases it was like reporting a story. Standardizing names and sorting them, finding out who worked for a bank when they... -
Sep 26, 2011 11:27 AM
New America Media
A news wire (and much more) for America's ethnic press
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — In 1969, historian Franz Schurmann and journalist Orville Schell founded Pacific News Service to provide an alternative news source about U.S. military actions abroad. Four decades later, a descendant of that project continues the mission of supplementing the American mainstream press with news it wouldn't get otherwise--but this initiative seeks to inform by crossing linguistic, rather than geographic, borders. <!-- OPEN... -
Oct 5, 2011 08:03 PM
NewsOne
Original and aggregated national news for black America
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK— In July 2011, New York City's beaches and rivers were closed to recreational use for five days, after a fire at a major sewage treatment plant led to millions of gallons of untreated sewage being dumped into the Hudson and Harlem rivers. Most New York news outlets focused on the immediate fallout from the leak at the North River Wastewater Treatment... -
May 23, 2011 02:55 PM
Obit Magazine
Making the most of the dead beat
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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... -
May 20, 2011 01:35 PM
OpenSecrets.org
Exhaustive reporting on money in politics
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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. <!-- OPEN CLOSE top... -
Jul 18, 2011 11:55 AM
paidContent
Covering the business of digital media since 2002
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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... -
Mar 1, 2012 10:37 AM
Patch
AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
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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... -
Dec 29, 2010 04:40 PM
Pitchfork
The prolific online music reviewer/kingmaker
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CHICAGO, IL — Founded in 1995 as an Internet alternative to traditional music fanzines, Pitchfork has become a force within the music industry every bit as vital as Rolling Stone or Spin. While somewhat controversial due to its highly opinionated reviews, Pitchfork has a reputation for being able to spot new talent and bring them to a much wider audience. Bands such... -
Jan 5, 2011 07:36 PM
Politico
The site that defined the twenty-four-hour news cycle
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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... -
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... -
Jan 5, 2011 06:26 PM
ProPublica
The web's best-known muckraker
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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... -
May 20, 2011 12:13 PM
Remapping Debate
An NYC-based site that seeks to throw a wrench in conventional wisdom on public policy
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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... -
Jul 28, 2011 03:16 PM
Rust Wire
Reporting on urban and social issues in the Rust Belt
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CLEVELAND, OHIO — Rust Wire, a collaborative media project which bills itself as "a voice for change in the Industrial Midwest," was founded in 2009 by Angie Schmitt and Kate Giammarise in order to challenge the notion that some economically enfeebled towns in the Midwestern United States "weren't worth saving." The site, which features original reporting and photography, first-person essays, and opinion... -
Jan 3, 2011 05:34 PM
Salon
The general interest online magazine has learned to get specific
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Just because Salon is the oldest general interest publication on the Internet doesn't mean that it's been standing still. Founded in 1995 as a web journalism alternative, producing articles as intelligent and well-written as its peers in print, the website's path has been bumpy, but it is still recognizably the same outlet that first appeared over fifteen years ago. The... -
Jan 3, 2011 06:03 PM
Slant
Omnivorous pop culture criticism
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WEEHAWKEN, NEW JERSEY — Founded in 2001 as an outlet for its editors' frustrations with their day jobs, Slant Magazine began humbly as a two-man online reviewing operation, with Ed Gonzalez writing about film and Sal Cinquemani writing about music. The two covered only a smattering of the biggest releases in each field, but as other writers began volunteering to work for the site,... -
Dec 31, 2010 12:24 AM
Slate
The Internet's old guard general interest publication has never slowed down
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — "Slate's overall mission is to create really intelligent, witty, durable web journalism; [that mission] has been more or less the same since 1996," says David Plotz, the site's editor. Slate is perhaps best known as one of the first publications to prove that a high-quality editorial product could exist and thrive online, but it didn't earn that reputation... -
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... -
May 31, 2011 11:48 AM
Street Fight
A news source for the burgeoning hyperlocal industry
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BOULDER, COLORADO — A site named "Street Fight" has to deliver action, and the brand new site dedicated to covering the hyperlocal industry expects to do just that-- though it's probably not the kind of action a teenager who stumbles onto the site after a Google search would expect. Hyperlocal is becoming big business. While the term usually refers to local news, Street Fight... -
Jan 5, 2011 06:08 PM
Streetsblog
Public transportation reporters/advocates in NYC, DC, LA, and SF
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Transport-obsessed site Streetsblog--which focuses on everything from bike lines to subway fare hikes--was born, appropriately, in transport-obsessed New York City. Originally launched in 2006 by Aaron Naparstek, it has since branched out to cover transportation in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Streetsblog has its origins in the advocacy movement, focusing on local... -
Jan 5, 2011 08:10 PM
Talking Points Memo
The pioneer of web-based political journalism
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — What began as Josh Marshall's personal blog during the Florida vote recount of November 2000 has since expanded into a profitable multimedia brand of fast-paced political news coverage. The TalkingPointsMemo.com homepage now acts as a conduit to several different frequently-updated news sites and blogs, a poll tracker, and a video channel.... -
Dec 30, 2010 02:23 PM
TechCrunch
The tech startup news news startup
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — From the very beginning, TechCrunch was part and parcel with Web 2.0. Founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, the site began as a personal technology blog but rapidly transitioned into a full-scale publication, drawing in millions of page views a month by the end of 2007. Unlike most of his peers, Arrington didn't come from a journalistic background, instead studying... -
Apr 27, 2012 01:03 PM
The American Independent News Network
A nonprofit news network refocusing in a bid for national relevance
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — When the American Independent News Network launched nearly six years ago as the Center for Independent Media, its goals were small. The nonprofit news organization was one of several that launched around the same time, including ProPublica, MinnPost.com, and Voice of San Diego, mostly in response to the ebbing fortunes of newspapers and a... -
Jan 4, 2011 04:37 PM
The Awl
NYC-based cultural witticism from two Gawker alumni
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The team at New York City-based The Awl has some advice for anybody waiting on some seed funding to launch their dream startup: don't wait. The Awl launched in early 2009 when founders Choire Sicha, Alex Balk, and David Cho set out to start their own site with little-to-no financing beyond their personal savings. It wasn't much, but "there... -
Aug 9, 2011 10:58 AM
The Big Lead
From independent sports blog to corporate flagship
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The Big Lead first entered the consciousness of the sports media world around 2006, when then-Kansas City Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock trashed a series of colleagues in a flame-throwing interview that, for a few days at least, lit up the Internet. Less than a year after that the site received a bigger, if more unlikely,... -
Jan 17, 2011 11:46 AM
The Daily Caller
Tucker Carlson and co.'s political reporting startup
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — "My politics are relatively well known," conservative media personality Tucker Carlson told CJR in February of 2010, not long after he and former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel launched political news site The Daily Caller. "But this site is not a pure distillation of my politics. My views are not interesting enough to sustain the company we're... -
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... -
Oct 24, 2011 11:24 AM
The Faster Times
Creative revenue earning from an online publication/writers' collective
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — For a twenty-eight dollar "membership" in The Faster Times, you can get a critique of your dating profile by the publication's sex and dating expert, Meghan Pleticha. For $500, you can get a one-hour fencing lesson from Ken Mondschein, a research scholar at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, who writes about the politics... -
Jul 5, 2012 03:13 PM
The Hechinger Report
Strengthening education reporting nationwide
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NEW YORK, NY — In September 2011, reporter Jon Marcus wrote a story for The Washington Post which showed that, despite increased enrollment thanks to an expanded G.I. Bill, colleges weren't doing enough to support the unique needs of veterans pursuing higher education. Shortly after the story was published, colleges in the DC area added coordinators to help veterans with services. Over eight... -
Jan 5, 2011 08:23 PM
The Huffington Post
The online news behemoth grows up
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — As of the writing of this profile, the "BIG NEWS" header at the top of The Huffington Post's homepage reads: "Unemployment, Katie Holmes, Natalie Portman, Health, Lindsay Lohan, Smarter Ideas, More..." It's the mix of topics that might be floating around the head of a conscientious, politically astute fifteen year old--but given that HuffPost only recently entered the second... -
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... -
Dec 31, 2010 01:06 AM
The Root
A strong online presence for the African American press
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT of COLUMBIA — Founded in 2008, The Root continues a long tradition of black-perspective journalism in America, reporting on social, cultural, and political issues through an African American lens. With the Quincy Jones-founded Vibe folding in 2009 before its rebirth as a quarterly, and Essence and others toughing it out in a shrinking magazine market, there's been a... -
Jun 1, 2011 12:33 PM
Theme Park Insider
News and reviews for theme park enthusiasts
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PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — Since Disneyland opened in 1955, Americans and pleasure-seekers the world over have flocked to the variety of theme parks that now occupy mega-park epicenters like Orlando, Florida. and Anaheim, California. With options ranging from Universal Studios to Disney World to Busch Gardens, the vacation planning process can at times seem daunting. Pasadena-based Theme Park Insider aims to take the edge off... -
Oct 26, 2011 06:13 PM
Washington Independent Review of Books
Serious-minded reviews of books across the literary spectrum
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WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — When newspapers across the country have to cut costs, their book sections inevitably end up on the chopping block. David O. Stewart, president of the Freedom to Write Fund, which is dedicated to education and public advocacy on behalf of writers, says that he and the other members of the Fund became concerned about shrinking book review sections and the... -
Jan 4, 2011 03:45 PM
Yale Environment 360
In-depth environmental news, commentary, and analysis
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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT — Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine that publishes long-form environmental journalism by prominent reporters, academics, and policymakers. A nonprofit backed primarily by two heavyweight philanthropic foundations, e360, as it's known, isn't subject to the market pressures squeezing many outlets. That leaves its full-time staff of three to focus on producing in-depth news, commentary, and analysis--and, more recently, extended video...
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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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
