CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

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Jan 5, 2011 05:30 PM
voiceofsandiego.org

A nonprofit news innovator in Southern California
By David Downs
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — Exposing the darker side of a sunny beach city, the six-year-old news site Voice of San Diego is having a larger influence than its small size might suggest. With 170,000 unique visitors a month, the nationally renowned nonprofit has an annual budget of $1.2 million (mostly from grants), a slim staff of fifteen, and a content-sharing deal with NBC...
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Mar 25, 2011 03:09 AM
VTDigger.org

Deep coverage for the Green Mountain State
By Daniel Luzer
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...
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Oct 26, 2011 06:13 PM
Washington Independent Review of Books

Serious-minded reviews of books across the literary spectrum
By Daniel Luzer
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...
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Jul 11, 2011 01:18 PM
Watchdog New England

A catalyst for investigative reporting in Boston and beyond
By Isaac Olson
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Watchdog New England, the website of the nonprofit Initiative for Investigative Reporting at Northeastern University, aims to revive and strengthen investigative reporting throughout New England's six states--not as a news outlet in its own right, but as an ally to the region's more than eighty daily newspapers and countless weeklies. For now, the site primarily exists as a compendium of links to...
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Jun 14, 2011 09:53 AM
Watershed Post

News and environmental reporting for the Catskills
By Brett Norman
DELHI, NEW YORK — The Watershed Post, an online news source for five counties in upstate New York, made a splash last fall with its real-time coverage of widespread flooding that swept one woman to her death in the Neversink River. Its editors call this back country in the Catskill Mountains a "news desert," mostly bereft of local media coverage,...
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Mar 23, 2011 06:19 AM
Welcome (Back)!

to the News Frontier Database, now weighing in at over 100 entries, with a lot more local news
By Michael Meyer
Editor's note: On March 1, 2012, the News Frontier Database was renamed "CJR's Guide to Online News Startups." We're pleased to announce the latest upgrade of the News Frontier Database--now with more local news. We launched in January with originally reported profiles of (and extensive data sets on) fifty prominent news startups across the country--many of them national sites, but a number of local operations as well. Fifty sites was a humble start for what we intend to build into...
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Jan 4, 2010 04:58 PM
Welcome!

to the News Frontier Database
By Admin Person
Editor's note: On March 1, 2012, the News Frontier Database was renamed "CJR's Guide to Online News Startups." The News Frontier Database is a searchable, living, and ongoing documentation of digital news outlets across the country. Featuring originally reported profiles and extensive data sets on each outlet, the NFDB is a tool for those who study or pursue online journalism, a window into that world for the uninitiated, and, like any journalistic product, a means by which to shed light...
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Feb 22, 2012 01:38 PM
Welles Park Bulldog

News and sports for Chicago's North Side
By Ian Fullerton
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...
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Oct 31, 2011 10:00 AM
West Orlando News Online

Left-of-center community news for Orlando, Fla.
By Paige Rentz
ORLANDO, FLORIDA — For Keith Longmore, it's a point of pride that the Tea Party has targeted West Orlando News Online, the left-of-center local news site he publishes in Orange County, Florida, for a service it provides to locals hit hard by the foreclosure crisis. According to Longmore, posting information and links to help readers apply for government assistance programs is all in...
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Mar 27, 2012 01:19 PM
West Philly Local

Hyperlocal news and events for 50,000 Philadelphians
By Caitlin Kasunich
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA — Just across the Schuylkill River from Center City Philadelphia, Western Philadelphia--or "West Philly," as the locals call it--is home to about 50,000 people, many of whom are students or professors at the University of Pennsylvania or Drexel University, both of which in the neighborhood. While Philadelphia media outlets run stories on West Philly as part of their broader coverage of the metro area,...
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Sep 29, 2011 11:02 AM
West Seattle Blog

Defining hyperlocal in both news and business
By Erik Shilling
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — In a city that is known for its steady rain, it's not surprising that it was the weather that put West Seattle Blog on the map as well. The blog, which now averages more than 80,000 visitors per month according to Quantcast and is routinely cited in breaking news stories by the Seattle Times, started in 2005 merely as a...
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Mar 24, 2011 03:27 PM
West Virginia Watchdog

Think tank-funded West Virginia political news and investigations
By Brendan Buhler
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA — West Virginia Watchdog is a one-man shop focusing on investigative and statehouse news in the Mountain State. The site is part of a network of sites around the country that share the Watchdog name. The Watchdog's sole editorial employee is Steven Allen Adams, who is also a stringer for Reuters and contributes to a Charleston, W.V. entertainment news website called Kanawha...
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Jan 4, 2011 03:26 PM
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Investigative reporting for the Badger State
By Colin Fleming
MADISON, WISCONSIN — In just under two years, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has broken over twenty-five major stories, ranging from the increased dependence on immigrant labor in the dairy industry to the stories behind the alarmingly high Native American suicide rates. The two-person team, led by executive director Andy Hall out of an office at the University of...
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Apr 17, 2012 12:47 PM
Worthit2u.net

Bringing online news to rural Georgia
By Tyler Jones
SYLVESTER, GEORGIA — Matt Medders was too young to be the chairman of the Worth County Commissioners, and Sherry Walls knew it. Although beating the incumbent by 208 votes, Medders was a few months short of meeting the legal requirement that the commissioner for the rural county in southwest Georgia be at least 27 years old. Before she could break the story for the weekly Sylvester Local...
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Jan 5, 2011 07:19 PM
WyoFile

Enterprise reporting for the Equality State
By Alex Fekula
CASPER, WY — [UPDATE: On September 5, 2012, the Knight Foundation announced that WyoFile was yet again a recipient of its Community Information Challenge Grant. The site received $62,000 from Knight and an equal amount from the Wyoming Community Foundation. It will hire one full-time reporter dedicated to the Wyoming Legislature and one part-time minority reporter, who will cover the Wind River Indian Reservation.]...
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