David Westphal
Los Angeles, California 
After almost four decades in newspapering, I've made the jump to academia at USC's Annenberg Journalism School in Los Angeles. I hope to use my recent experience as head of McClatchy's Washington Bureau to write about the revolution that's taking place in journalism -- and in particular to study new-media business models. I'm a senior fellow at Annenberg's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and also affiliated with the Knight Digital Media Center.
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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.
June 30, 2009
The University of Virginia prepared Jason Motlagh very well for his career has a free-lance foreign correspondent.
When he applied to take a journalism elective course, he was rejected because he wasn't an English major. When he applied for a job as food columnist at the school paper, he was also rejected.
But Motlagh persisted, and eventually won a spot on the school paper as travel columnist. His specialty: Travel to fascinating world spots on very low budgets.
Voila. Today Motlagh has five years of free-lance foreign correspondence under his belt and, in many respects, he is the prototype for the journalist of the future: a free-lancing, multimedia correspondent who knows how to market his work and live on a tight budget.
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May 14, 2009
What are the two new qualities that journalists of the future must embody? They must be entrepreneurial and they must be multimedia. These are precisely the qualities that animate the
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.Almost five years ago now, my wife (Geneva Overholser) and I sat in Jon Sawyer's living room in Washington, D.C., and listened to him spin out what sounded like an improbable tale. He wanted to set up a nonprofit center on foreign reporting, and he wanted a philanthropist to bankroll it.
I will confess right here. I was supremely skeptical that this could work. And I was wrong as could be. Jon, the longtime Washington bureau chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, indeed did persuade Emily Pulitzer to establish the nonprofit center. And today, three-and-a-half years old, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is producing dozens of exclusive, multimedia reports on issues and regions of the world that otherwise wouldn't be covered. More...
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April 9, 2009
Might investigative journalism be ready to be re-born at the grassroots?
Until recently, this question wasn't even asked much. If there was worry about what would happen to watchdog reporting with the decline of newspapers and other legacy media, it was expressed at the national level. It's why the launch of ProPublica,, the investigative journalism non-profit, got such acclaim, and now why many of us will be paying close attention to the establishment of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
But look what's happening now at the community level. Last summer came the launch of Texas Watchdog, which got one-year foundation funding to play watchdog over state government and other Texas institutions. Two months ago Investigative Voice in Baltimore sprang to life. Now David McCumber of the dear-departed Seattle Intelligencer is trying to rustle up funding for an investigative journalism site focusing on issues in the West. And a gang from the RIP Rocky Mountain News is aiming to launch InDenverTimes with the idea of making investigative work one of its centerpieces.
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February 26, 2009
Mary Morgan couldn't have picked a more difficult time (the middle of a recession) and place (Michigan and double-digit unemployment) to start a new community Web site. So why is she smiling?
It's because Ann Arbor Chronicle is coming up on its six-month anniversary, it's meeting financial targets, and Morgan and husband/business partner Dave Askins are able to pay household bills out of revenue from the site. "When I was a business reporter, I used to laugh at firms that marked each anniversary," said Morgan, who acts as publisher. "Now I know how they feel."
With a deep and potentially long recession set in, I wanted to circle back with Morgan and some of the other for-profit news site owners I talked with last fall, and see how their mostly new operations were faring. The question has taken on more urgency in recent weeks. As economic conditions have worsened and newspapers have shown accelerating signs of stress, the health of these online-only news sources seems suddenly more critical.
The anecdotal answer from my small sample group is this: So far they're hanging tough. More...
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January 22, 2009
Could newspapers and local broadcasters begin seeking philanthropic support from the civic foundations and private donors that are starting to bankroll news non-profits? It appears entirely likely. With for-profit media watching their news-gathering resources dwindle, some editors say they're open to the idea of seeking help from donors.
Charlotte Hall, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, told me the idea raises multiple questions about how newspapers could solicit philanthropic support and still retain credibility. But bottom line? "I believe that a model could emerge for foundations to fund some local reporting at newspapers -- investigative reporting or an important local beat, for example," she said in an e-mail. "A new kind of firewall would be needed to assure independent reporting and unencumbered editing." More...
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January 14, 2009
Can community news non-profits persuade hometown civic foundations to help bankroll their operations? The answer looks like a resounding yes.
In the first year of the Knight Foundation's $24 million, five-year program, 100 of the nation's community foundations sought some of the action, pledging their own philanthropy in applications for matching Knight grants. That amounts to nearly 15 percent of the nation's civic foundations – and many of them submitted more than one grant proposal.
Knight officials were taken aback by the turnout. "The biggest surprise for me was how many responded in the first year," said Trabian Shorters, Knight's vice president of communities. "It's not unusual with these grant initiatives that people wait and see. So that was a big and pleasant surprise." Shorters said the response indicated there's some "pent-up demand on this front." More...
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January 8, 2009
Journalists can't resist "man-bites-dog" stories. Here's an example of one they'll find irresistible: Even as media companies shed revenue and staff in ever-growing numbers, a new company will spring to life Jan. 12 that will employ about 80 journalists with the un-modest aim of covering the world. And... it aims to make money.
Boston-based GlobalPost is a Web startup that will try to fill a void left by newspapers and network television, which collectively have pulled back sharply in deploying journalists abroad. If it's successful, GlobalPost will be one of the most spectacular against-the-grain stories since news companies began their accelerating revenue slide almost two years ago.
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December 19, 2008
Four poster children for the community online news movement plan to use new cash infusions from the
Knight Foundation to strengthen reporting resources on their hometown sites.
The Knight Foundation, journalism's biggest funder of digital innovation, announced it was giving $390,000 to the Voice of San Diego, the St. Louis Beacon, MinnPost and ChiTown Daily News. All are non-profits, and the first three represent some of the most ambitious efforts to marshal community news reporting solely on the Web.
By relying on major gifts and foundation money, the sites are trying to create large enough audiences to sustain themselves – through advertising and/or continued philanthropy – when the initial funding peels away. Other, mostly smaller, online news startups are trying to build businesses from the ground up by relying on advertising alone. More...
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