CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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Featured News Startup
Silicon Bayou News
News for (and by) the New Orleans tech scene
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — In March 2011, Zachary Kupperman, a New Orleans attorney with an interest in tech startups, attended New Orleans... More >
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Recently Updated – Originally Posted: Jan 4, 2011
I-News
Colorado investigative journalism with statewide import and local impact
DENVER, COLORADO — On December 16, 2010, Laura Frank, the executive director of I-News (formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network), delivered her commencement speech for the University of Colorado's soon-to-be-defunct journalism school. Frank was optimistic about the future of the industry: "I now recognize you actually are embarking on this adventure at one of the most exciting times - perhaps...
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Apr 3, 2012 02:28 PM
National Institute on Money in State Politics
Tracking political donations and their influence in all fifty states
HELENA, MONTANA — Edwin Bender believes that building a database is like writing a really good story. "What fascinated me about being a journalist was getting down and taking evidence and saying 'this is what I see,'" says Bender. "When I first started building databases it was like reporting a story. Standardizing names and sorting them, finding out who worked for a bank when they...
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Apr 2, 2012 03:42 PM
Missouri Journal
Government and political news for the Show Me State
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI — Corporations are people? Maybe, but Brian R. Hook is both. As owner and sole staff member of the online-only Missouri Journal, he covers Missouri politics with the Show-Me State's well-known skepticism. As a corporation, he is B. R. Hook.com, a media development and consulting firm. "I will be consulting on 'Here's how to do online media,'" Hook...
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Recently Updated – Originally Posted: Dec 29, 2010
NJ Spotlight
Trenton's statehouse startup
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY — NJSpotlight.com, which CJR profiled in September 2010, is a policy-focused news site based in the Trenton, N.J. state house. Launched in early 2010 by two former Newark Star-Ledger reporters, John Mooney and Tom Johnson, the site focuses on issues relating to the state budget, environmental and energy legislation, education policy, and health care. "We are nonpartisan, independent, policy-centered and community-minded," says...
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Mar 20, 2012 01:30 PM
Borderzine.com
Bilingual reporting by Latino college journalists
EL PASO, TEXAS — Borderzine.com director Zita Arocha founded the site at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) with two goals. "One is to tell the unreported stories of the [U.S.-Mexico] border region, which mainstream media doesn't do very well," says Arocha, a senior lecturer in journalism at UTEP. The second is to create "a pipeline" into the journalism profession...
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Mar 28, 2012 12:23 PM
Mint Press News
A privately financed international news startup in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA — The coming of Mint Press was noted all over the journalism jobs boards. Touting its independent status and dedication to honest reporting, the site seemed to advertise for a new position every day: staff reporters, California and D.C. correspondents, and associate editors. Many of these positions remain open. Mint Press currently claims five staff writers and three paid writing interns;...
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Mar 27, 2012 01:19 PM
West Philly Local
Hyperlocal news and events for 50,000 Philadelphians
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA — Just across the Schuylkill River from Center City Philadelphia, Western Philadelphia--or "West Philly," as the locals call it--is home to about 50,000 people, many of whom are students or professors at the University of Pennsylvania or Drexel University, both of which in the neighborhood. While Philadelphia media outlets run stories on West Philly as part of their broader coverage of the metro area,...
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Mar 1, 2012 10:37 AM
Patch
AOL's fast-growing hyperlocal network
NEW YORK, NEW YORK —In February 2009, South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn-Short Hills, three small but relatively affluent New Jersey communities, became the first towns to host a local Patch site, launching a network that has since grown to include more than 860 sites in twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. Because of its rapid expansion and the accompanying media scrutiny, Patch has played a central...
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Mar 15, 2012 11:41 AM
The Brooklyn Ink
Student reporting on Brooklyn and beyond
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — At about 1:30am on Nov. 15, 2011, student reporters at The Brooklyn Ink received a tip that police would soon clear protestors from New York City's Zuccotti Park, the focal point of Occupy Wall Street. Rather than get their professors out of bed, the students jumped on the story, providing live coverage throughout the...
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Recently Updated – Originally Posted: Oct 26, 2011
Village Soup (Defunct)
A small media chain blends print and digital local journalism
ROCKLAND, MAINE — [UPDATE: On Friday March 9, 2012 Village Soup president Richard M. Anderson announced the closure of all Village Soup publications. The statement did not make clear how the closure would affect the nine independent news organizations which use the Village Soup platform under licensing agreements. Anderson was not immediately available for comment. We'll post further updates to this story when...
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Mar 12, 2012 01:58 PM
The New York World
Accountability journalism from recent Columbia J-School alums
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Last October 18, the day The New York World went live with a mission to expand journalism education and hold local and state governments accountable, editor Alyssa Katz posted a story by World reporter Sasha Chavkin about a private bus line in Brooklyn that ran a city bus route under a franchise agreement. Despite being open...
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Mar 1, 2012 04:14 PM
55423.info
A community college-affiliated hyperlocal for Richfield, Minn.
RICHFIELD, MINNESOTA — Mark Plenke, a journalism and communications instructor at Normandale Community College, created 55423.info during his recent yearlong sabbatical, envisioning the site as both a news outlet for the town of Richfield and a hands-on course for his students. Before launching the site (which takes its name from Richfield's zip code), Plenke conducted a survey of 43 community members at a...
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Mar 5, 2012 11:56 AM
Homicide Watch
Reinventing the homicide beat for the digital age
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — Mico Briscoe. Black. Male. 18. Shot on November 26, 2011. Marcellus J. Darnaby, aka "Boom." Black. Male. 32. Shot on June 15, 2011. Lucki Nancy Pannell. Black. Female. 18. Shot on February 19, 2011. These are just a few of the 152 homicides currently listed on HomicideWatchDC.org. In the coming...
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Mar 2, 2012 10:00 AM
The Sanatoga Post
A one-man news network in Pennsylvania
SANATOGA, PENNSYLVANIA — When Joseph Zlomek decided to go back into the news business in August 2008 and launch The Sanatoga Post, he drew inspiration from nostalgia. Zlomek had fond, decades-old memories of the Eagle Bulletin, a small weekly based in Fayetteville, N.Y., a suburb of Syracuse, near where he was raised. The paper, Zlomek says, was regularly the hottest read among townsfolk....
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Jan 30, 2012 03:48 PM
Connecticut Watchdog
Hard-hitting consumer protection reporting
EAST LONGMEADOW, MASSACHUSETTS — The best businesses have a compelling origin story, and George Gombossy's consumer protection website, Connecticut Watchdog, started with a doozy. As of 2009, Gombossy had worked at the Hartford Courant for forty-one years: first as a reporter, then business editor, then as "The Watchdog," a consumer protection columnist. His picture hung on the side of "every bus in Hartford"...
Editor's Spotlight On...
Startups covering high school sports
- Republic Tiger Sports Extensive sports coverage for a school district in Missouri
- San Fran Preps Exhaustive high school sports reporting for San Francisco
- Yadkin Valley Sports High school sports news for eighteen schools in central North Carolina
Startups covering state politics
- The Arizona Guardian Niche political news for a state everyone's watching
- Quorum Report A pioneer in niche online coverage, reporting on Texas politics since 1998
- CTNewsJunkie Giving the good stuff to Connecticut's political insiders
Startups run by married couples
Recent CJR.org posts about the future of news
The News Frontier
- Unpublishing Requests Are on the Rise As more content shifts from print to web, journalists are seeing rising requests from sources to remove stories
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Comics journalism, drone aircraft, and a tea partier’s personal tale
- Seven Years of New West Experiments in regional reporting, the pro-am model, and a multi-pronged business plan
- What McClure Said: “The Story is the Thing” Clearing space for the agenda-setting narrative in digital journalism
- Orlando Startup Covers the Trayvon Martin Story When the national news is local
- The Trayvon Martin Case: How Has the Sentinel Handled It? Orlando’s daily gets mixed marks
- The Kickstarter Chronicles Open-source robots, David Lynch, and the “Eat More Kale” guy
- Telling the News on Cowbird Jonathan Harris’s storytelling platform has journalistic potential