Profits beyond dollars
Building a business model for nonprofit journalism, where the return on investment is measured in impact.
When I became the executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) in 2008, I had never run a nonprofit, never raised a penny and had spent 38 years in corporate media. I had started as a copyboy at The New York Times and pretty much done everything you could do in a newspaper, including in late 1997 being appointed the executive editor and vice-president of The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the best and largest American newspapers.
Four years later I was fired after some major battles with the corporate owners.
That experience was brutal but it taught me a great deal. When I came to CIR in 2008, after a four-year stint as managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, I was fed up with corporate media. I realised I had to try to help build a new model for quality journalism and my focus was going to be on investigative or public service journalism.
In the new model I envisioned, there would be complete alignment on mission between the editorial or creative side, the philanthropic business side, and technology. And we would tell stories on every platform, as they evolved, so the audience could get our stories the way they wanted to.
Sounds crazy, but we did it. And we did it because foundations and individual donors believed our work was a crucial pillar of democracy, and they believed in me and the staff that we built.
In January 2008, when I started at CIR, the world was plunging into a deep recession. CIR which was 30 years old at that point, had a staff of seven and a wobbly budget. It was unclear if we would survive a year. Raising money was very difficult.
But we did survive and today CIR has a staff of close to 70 and a budget of over US$10 million a year. Since 2008 I have helped raise well over US$60 million dollars.
In the past 10 years, American foundations and philanthropists have stepped up as never before to support independent nonprofit journalism. The legacy business model for newspapers, especially, collapsed, and as newsrooms across the United States were eviscerated in response, funders began to understand that an information crisis was exploding.
Their support does not make up for all the losses in newsrooms across America, but organisations like CIR, ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and scores of others are making a difference on a national and local level. But much more must be done.
Central to the nonprofit model’s success is a commitment to public service journalism, transparency, and collaborations between news organisations — large and small — that frequently have expertise in different forms of storytelling.
This is essential because it means a text story done in partnership with a radio station leads to radio distribution and a podcast. The same information can be used as the basis for a powerful video that tells the story in another way and can lead to animations, plays and an engagement strategy that leads to awareness, outrage in some cases, and change. Data that is often the spine of this work is made available to the public with interactive maps, games or other tools that informs the public and allows them to understand issues in their own communities.
The nonprofit model is, in my opinion, a pure play. Here’s why:
Those who fund and support it, do not control or even know about the stories prior to publication and they are not looking for profit. They see themselves as investors in quality information, social justice and impact that they can assess and measure. The return on investment is not money but serving the public interest.
At CIR we have created a culture of capturing and measuring impact. Impact is not simply audience numbers or retweets or likes. Impact is the change and awareness that come from stories that are fact based, deeply reported, told well and often create empathy.
Here’s an example.
A few years ago, CIR analysed millions of opioid prescriptions given out at Veterans Administrations (VA) hospitals over a 10-year period after the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was a huge, computer-assisted reporting project that showed a tripling of prescriptions to veterans. The overdoses and suicides attributed to this policy were staggering. We told the stories of veterans and their families affected by this policy. We did it in print with newspapers around the country and on websites. On national television with partners, and with national radio and a podcast. We created interactive maps where the audience could see and use the data themselves. We localised the story for news organisations where VAs were.
In the state of Wisconsin, we focused on a VA hospital that gave out so many drugs it was called Candy Land.
As a result of those stories, some doctors lost their jobs, Candy Land was reformed and lives were saved. US Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, held hearings in Wisconsin after the stories ran and said, “We are here today because of the work of The Center for Investigative Reporting. Their work shows the value of the free press in our democracy.”
The results of those stories made a difference. When we told our funders about the results of our work, they knew and felt that their investment had been more than worthwhile.
I am a passionate proponent for this new model. In today’s world, media and journalism are confused. Much of media today is entertainment, opinion driven, or based on business models forged and founded on fostering divisive partisan political agendas.
Journalism and a free press must be supported by those who believe in democracy. The best journalism is done to make sure the people are still in charge. We are not subjects, we are citizens. Subjects are told what to do, citizens tell their government what to do.
When journalists are attacked as enemies of the people, those are the words of the autocrat that fears or can not tolerate the truth or any opposition.
Challenging the government and power is one of the key roles of a free press. It is not treason, it is patriotism, it’s democracy. There is no other institution as valuable in telling the people what the government is doing than the press.
This is a message that must be shared and spread widely.
Supporting journalists and the new and emerging nonprofit models is one way to serve both local communities and national and even international audiences. The best journalism and investigative reporting supports democracy and helps hold powerful interests to account. Return on investment? Priceless.
Robert J Rosenthal is the executive producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) in California. From January 2008 until May 2017 he was the executive director at CIR.
Robert will visit Australia this September and appear at free public talks in Melbourne (Sept. 4) and Sydney (Sept. 6).
Daniel Garcia is a Portuguese editorial illustrator focused on political, social and human issues, and has collaborated with several publications around the globe. Follow him on Instagram @daniel_garcia_art.
