CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

1. Results

   Organizations filtered by Subscriptions.

1. Jul 27, 2011 02:53 PM

   A2Politico

   Accountability journalism in Ann Arbor, Mich.

   By Erik Shilling

   ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — [UPDATED September 16, 2011] When the daily Ann Arbor News announced in July 2009 that it would cease publication and be replaced by a two day a week print product with a website, the college town of Ann Arbor, Mich. suddenly became, after 174 years, a city without a daily newspaper. That's when Patricia Lesko, a higher-education book publisher and thirty-year...

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2. Jun 8, 2011 12:17 PM

   Ars Technica

   The old guard of tech news, mixing context, the long view, and a sense of humor

   By Isaac Olson

   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...

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3. Jun 20, 2012 12:52 PM

   Chicago Phoenix

   Chicago LGBT media goes digital (and grows up)

   By Ian Fullerton

   CHICAGO, IL — Gay media in Chicago has struggled in its search for identity. In recent years, two of the city's most prominent LGBT publications, Gay Chicago Magazine and the Chicago Free Press, shut down after transitioning from the traditional "bar rag" format, with content centered on entertainment and sex culture, to a more issue-related news and features focus. Some observers speculated that revenue problems...

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4. Jul 21, 2011 05:46 PM

   Common Language Project

   In-depth human rights reporting and multimedia storytelling

   By Connor Boals

   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...

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5. Dec 8, 2011 04:11 PM

   CountyNewsLIVE.com

   A fast-growing news network for rural Missouri

   By Caitlin Kasunich

   HERMANN, MISSOURI — Although the homepage of Gasconade County's CountyNewsLIVE.com has the look and feel of a simple, straightforward blog, it is actually the first of three frequently updated Missouri-based hyperlocal news websites founded by writer and publisher Jeff Noedel. Launched in March 2008, the Gasconade County site primarily covers rural Hermann, Missouri, a small agricultural town that attracts tourists with its nearby...

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6. Jul 18, 2011 04:18 PM

   E&E Publishing

   High-cost subscription coverage of environment and energy policy and markets

   By Maura R. O'Connor

   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...

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7. Mar 24, 2011 04:00 PM

   Front Porch Forum

   Social networking and citizen journalism in northern Vermont

   By Armin Rosen

   BURLINGTON, VERMONT — Vermont-based social networking site Front Porch Forum has earned an intense regional following, partly thanks to its success as a venue for hyperlocal citizen journalism. FPF users within 120 small, geographically specific networks write daily and weekly newsletters covering the most quotidian neighborhood news, from church talent shows to snow removal reports. (Since FPF newsletters aren't archived online, we can't provide...

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8. Jan 3, 2011 04:31 PM

   GigaOM

   The site offers predictive technology coverage, and has itself been a leader in earning web revenue

   By Sean Gandert

   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....

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9. Jan 5, 2011 01:35 PM

   GlobalPost

   A new news agency helping to fill the gaps in foreign reporting

   By Dohini Patel

   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...

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10. Feb 23, 2011 06:32 PM

    Honolulu Civil Beat

    A journalistic "civic square"

    By Alex Fekula

    HONOLULU, HAWAII — Honolulu Civil Beat is the brainchild of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and former eBay exec Randy Ching, both of whom attended high school in the Aloha State. The pair shared a common goal, in Omidyar's words, of "empowering citizens and encouraging greater civic participation through media." In keeping with this mission, they envisioned a site that considered audience participation to...

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11. Jul 11, 2011 03:48 PM

    Inside Facebook

    Data-heavy news and analysis of the Internet's hottest property

    By Arvin Temkar

    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...

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12. Oct 6, 2011 05:15 PM

    MediaStorm

    Multimedia outlet meets production house

    By Lauren Kirchner

    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...

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13. May 9, 2012 02:13 PM

    Missouri Scout

    Subscription-based niche political news from a stockbroker turned political junkie

    By Jason Rosenbaum

    ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI — Dave Drebes didn't take the most conventional path into journalism. Originally a stockbroker, the St. Louis native decided to jump into newspaper publishing in 2001. Drebes and a friend wrote several articles and opinion pieces about the flaws in the St. Louis Board of Aldermen's contentious, racially charged redistricting plans. They printed the articles on a broadsheet and sent the publication...

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14. Oct 31, 2011 01:52 PM

    MyVeronaNJ.com

    Wide-ranging hyperlocal news for a New York City suburb

    By Caitlin Kasunich

    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...

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15. Sep 26, 2011 11:27 AM

    New America Media

    A news wire (and much more) for America's ethnic press

    By Lauren Kirchner

    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...

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16. 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,...

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17. 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...

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18. 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...

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19. 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...

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20. 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...

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21. Jan 30, 2012 03:07 PM

    The Arizona Guardian

    Niche political news for a state everyone's watching

    By Tom Marcinko

    PHOENIX, ARIZONA — Arizona exports political news like other states produce oranges or cheese. When Democratic media consultant Bob Grossfeld and a handful of veteran journalists launched the Arizona Guardian web-based news service in January 2009, they were well aware they were setting up shop in a state with a lively political scene. And that was before Arizona's headline-making "show-me-your-papers" immigration bill, the...

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22. Oct 26, 2011 11:36 PM

    The Florida Current

    Exhaustive statehouse reporting and research in the Sunshine State

    By Paige Rentz

    TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Florida statehouse politics has found a new home in The Florida Current, a news site that aims to provide concise, neutral, and accurate reporting on politics and policy in the Sunshine State. Originally billed as The Florida Tribune, the site began as an arm of LobbyTools, a Tallahasse-based legislation tracking and data curation service for...

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23. Oct 31, 2011 02:50 PM

    The Natomas Buzz

    Hyperlocal news for a Sacramento, Calif. community

    By Maura R. O'Connor

    SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA — In June of 2008, journalist Brandy Tuzon Boyd was scrolling through daily crime reports in Natomas, a community in northwest Sacramento, when she noticed something alarming--a spate of home invasions in which residents were being robbed in their garages. Tuzon Boyd reported the trend on her then-fledgling website The Natomas Buzz. "Is anyone else noticing this happening almost every other...

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24. May 6, 2011 11:27 AM

    ThePortlander

    Portland-centric news with a casual flair

    By Alex Fekula

    PORTLAND, OREGON — When the news broke that the former model and millionaire's widow Anna Nicole Smith had died, the story seemed to capture the interest of virtually every local TV station, major news network, and newspaper. But all Jeff Martens of Portland, Ore. wanted to know was the score of the previous night's high school basketball game. Frustrated by Smith's death dominating the seeming entirety...

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25. Mar 21, 2011 05:20 PM

    This Land Press

    Place-based literary journalism in and about Oklahoma

    By Michael Meyer

    TULSA, OKLAHOMA — Earlier this month, This Land Press published the latest installment in its ongoing coverage of Bradley Manning, the army private accused of providing thousands of pages of classified documents to WikiLeaks. The story, by newly minted This Land staff reporter Denver Nicks, looks at a formative period of Manning's life through the eyes of Jordan Davis, Manning's best friend...

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26. Mar 24, 2011 03:16 PM

    UtahPolicy.com

    Political news for Beehive State political insiders

    By Chris Benz

    SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — For an example of how to deliver a massive amount of information with minimal manpower, look no further than UtahPolicy.com. Founded in 2004, the site is a news aggregator, but it also aggregates politicians' press releases, pdfs of proposed legislation, and other original materials. All of this is leavened with a dash of original reporting and analysis. <!-- OPEN...

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27. Oct 26, 2011 05:27 PM

    Village Soup

    A small media chain blends print and digital local journalism

    By Lauren Kirchner

    ROCKLAND, MAINE — [UPDATE: On Friday March 9, 2012 Village Soup president Richard M. Anderson announced the closure of all Village Soup publications. In a story announcing that the company's properties would be sold at auction, the Bangor Daily News reported that Village Net Media, the Village Soup parent company, faced two outstanding loans from the First National Bank of Damariscotta. The initial...

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