Last week, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) released a new report – Covering Corruption: The Difficulties of Trying to Make a Difference.

“Covering corruption is more dangerous than covering war,” writes the report’s author, Rosemary Armao.

Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), says exposes of corruption are “the kind of journalism that has a lot of martyrs.”  Knight Foundation supports CPJ in its mission to reduce impunity and seek justice for slain journalists. Knight helped the Inter American Press Association significantly reduce impunity rates in Latin America.

Recommendations from the report focus on measures for the safety of reporters, a critical need for a rethink of investigative journalism training, and the growing use of digital technology to empower journalists and communities – three areas in which Knight Foundation actively awards grants.

As in-depth investigative reporting from daily newspapers has fallen, not-for-profit news models providing that coverage are rising.

This week on The Diane Rehm Show, “Not-for-profit Journalism” looked at how non-traditional news creators are becoming the new news providers. Rehm’s guests were Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity; Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor of ProPublica; Evan Smith, CEO and Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune; and Ken Doctor, author of 'Newsonomics' who spent 21 years with Knight Ridder.

All three news organizations are supported by Knight Foundation. The Texas Tribune is rapidly gaining audience for its statewide model. The Center for Public Integrity is transforming digitally to better serve new audiences. And Pro Publica is the winner of a 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

Knight Foundation’s $15 million Investigative Reporting Initiative demonstrates the foundation’s commitment to developing new economic models for investigative reporting. See the grants from the initiative here.  In 2009, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities highlighted the need to maximize “the availability of relevant and credible information. Its second recommendation is to “Increase support for public service media aimed at meeting community information needs.

The Knight Foundation’s Journalism Program funds a range of projects and ideas to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression worldwide.

For two decades, the Center for Public Integrity has, as one political commentator put it, shown it's “probing flashlight into so many Washington dirty-laundry baskets.” The result has been best-selling books, dozens of major awards, and changes in public policy and practice.

Yet like all other major media organizations at the dawn of the digital age, the center has faced its share of challenges. How do you keep the flow of investigative journalism both useful and engaging?

Two years ago, Knight Foundation awarded the Washington D.C.-based center a grant to begin to transform itself into a nonprofit investigative leader in the digital age. As part of its evaluation process, Knight Foundation hired a seasoned team - including a leading evaluator, an award- winning investigative editor and a social media analyst – to probe the center’s efforts. The resulting report is now up on our website.

Part of being a digital age investigator is being confident about the idea of transparency – and the center’s leadership agreed the report could be released to the public as an example of “open evaluation” done in a timely manner to support organizational improvement and learning.

Its findings:
• The Center for Public Integrity is producing hard-hitting investigations even as it transforms its digital presence.
• It can better pick stories by thinking about their potential to shape the public policy agenda. (Recent work on the Gulf oil spill is an example of this).
• A continuous flow of new digital techniques will give the center not just more reporting power but even greater distribution and new ways to engage people.

The report notes the center was able to raise its donations from individual donors by 23 percent, despite the recent economic downturn.

The Center for Public Integrity’s story holds lessons for all nonprofit news sites.

Mayur Patel
Director of Strategic Assessment
and Assistant to the President

Eric Newton
Vice President,
Journalism Program

Stop the Presses: The American Newspaper in Peril, a documentary that traces the early history of the American newspaper, outlines what’s at stake in the current crisis and peeks into the future of in-depth and investigative reporting.

The documentary includes several interviews from people from the news industry, including Eric Newton, vice president of journalism at the Knight Foundation.

The documentary recently aired on PBS and is available on DVD .

            --Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

Knight Chair Brant Houston posted "The Future of Investigative Journalism" on his web site, a comprehensive look at this important form of reporting.

In it, he explains the rise of investigative nonprofits and the Knight Foundation's leadership role.

Last summer, we announced our Investigative Reporting Initiative, a $15 million effort to create and grow these nonprofit projects.

As the economics of the digital age have caused cutbacks in investigative reporting in traditional media, these groups are taking on an important role.

Here's the "future of investigative journalism" article, including Knight's role.

Here's a sidebar listing Knight grantees.

--Eric Newton, Vice President of journalism program at the Knight Foundation

As new nonprofit investigative reporting startups like ProPublica and Voice of San Diego are working towards sustainability, Boston University's New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) is working to create a model that will work nationally.

With the help of a two-year, $400,000 grant, NECIR will be testing the ability of a university-based investigative reporting collaborative to sustain itself long term through funds generated through a series of multimedia journalism projects, including student workshops, paid content delivery, newsroom training and client research services.

“Investigative reporting is one of democracy's most important tools for providing citizens with the information they need to hold the powerful accountable and make informed decisions,” said NECIR Director Joe Bergantino. “Our goal is to create a national model for ensuring the long-term survival of this important type of journalism.”

Read the full press release.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation celebrate the receipt of two boxes full of government documents. Courtesy of hughelectronic on Flickr.

Last summer, the National Freedom of Information Coalition conducted an online survey to test whether the economic crisis and changes in the media industry had affected efforts to push for more open government. The results were conclusive: 60 percent of the respondents said that traditional media support for open government lawsuits in their states had fallen dramatically. Eighty-five percent of the respondents said they expected these lawsuits to become even rarer in the next three years.

Meanwhile, more than half of the respondents to a follow-up study said that open government violations had gone up in the past few years. And the NFOIC found that many media organizations were too under-resourced to even get their lawyers to contact government officials in protest.

Today, Knight Foundation announced a $2 million grant to the NFOIC to create the Knight FOI Fund:

The Knight FOI Fund will provide up-front costs such as court costs, filing and deposition fees, if attorneys are willing to take on a pro-bono basis cases that otherwise would go unfiled.

“Media companies have for generations taken on the lion’s share of the legal work surrounding freedom of information,” said Eric Newton, Knight Foundation Vice President for Journalism Programs. “But as media economics restructure, new approaches are needed. The National Freedom of Information Coalition is in a position to seed and lead new approaches.”

The Knight FOI Fund will be one of several NFOIC initiatives to address the fall-off in open government litigation, including a round of challenge grants to raise more local money for state Freedom of Information coalitions and a new website to help support the state FOI movement. You can read more about the Knight grant in our press release, and learn more about the NFOIC at the organization's website.