Idea Lab

The Challenge for Non-Profit News Organizations

by Aaron Presnall
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Non-profit status is often cited as an exciting new option for struggling local news outlets. ProPublica, MinnPost, and the Voice of San Diego are inspiring examples of non-profit startups, while the Christian Science Monitor, NPR and other organizations are all long-standing examples. It's not difficult to see that old and young non-profit platforms alike are among the leaders in news innovation. I agree that there are many upsides to the non-profit path, but it also carries significant management risk. The business environment of non-profits is often deeply misunderstood, even by the managers of tax-exempt companies themselves. More worrisome, boards are...

• December 1, 2009
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Partnerships to Watch (and a Crowdsourcing Project I'm Envying)

by Amanda Hickman
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

A small local website from Brooklyn has partnered with NBC to build neighborhood pages for a handful of NBC markets. I haven't followed Outside.in for more than stoop sales (which is New Yorkerese for garage sales or yard sales since most New Yorkers have neither yards nor garages), but it looks like they've taken up EveryBlock's approach to local news aggregation as well, though they want posts explicitly geo-tagged for their maps. Speaking of EveryBlock, they recently announced that they're working with the New York Times to track Times reporting on political districts. Presumably they'll be taking advantage of the...

• January 29, 2009
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