Working Title

The Voice of San Diego was founded because of the shortcomings of The San Diego Union-Tribune, but now the U-T is getting into the non-profit investigative journalism game by funding a new investigative reporting operation, the Watchdog Institute.

Other similar bodies already exist like the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.

A top editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune is leaving the paper to start a local non-profit watchdog institute that will provide “data-driven investigative journalism” to media outlets, including the U-T.
[...]
According to Winner, the institute will be supported by donations and grants. It wasn’t immediately clear how the U-T will support the institute, although Winner wrote that the partnership between the two entities shows the paper’s “strong financial commitment to continuing to provide public service work.” Winner said the U-T will be in the institute’s “lead partner.”
— U-T Editor Starts Non-Profit Journalism Project VoS 29 Jun 2009

Reports say the newspaper is in talks with San Diego State University to house the institute. The staffers that will move to the Institute will still work with U-T reporters so, at least some of the proceeds of the investigations will go to the newspaper.

The new head of the Institute Lori Hearn denies control by U-T in quotation in the Voice, “This is not the Union-Tribune’s non-profit. . . . It is my idea for starting a nonprofit, and I approached The San Diego Union-Tribune as partners.”

Regardless of control or details of the relationship, this setup lets the for-profit Union-Tribune realize more value. The newspaper can attract grants and donations to the institute, receive information for new reports from the institute, and then make money from the stories it produces.

This is an example of where traditional operations can benefit from adopting a mixed model that includes alternative business units.

• Interviewed Voice of San Diego founder 9 Apr 2009

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.