Center for Public Integrity launches daily investigative news site

The Center for Public Integrity is launching a daily news site, iwatchnews.org, with a plan to sell 25,000 to 50,000 subscriptions in the first year for $50 a year through Center memberships, according to an executive and two journalists who spoke about their initiative at the National Press Club on April 25.

The Center is 20 years old, but iwatch news is just a few weeks old and is still in the testing phase. The goal, the speakers said, is to make money from a digital platform while doing what old media does best – investigative journalism.

Executive director Bill Buzenberg, who came to the Center after a long career with NPR, said the Center now has a staff of 50, many of them from legacy news organizations. It used to be funded entirely by foundations but now also raises money from individuals such as Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Ariana Huffington.

Iwatch news now posts three to six investigative news stories daily, with a combination of original and aggregated pieces. When the site is completed, it will have 10 to 12 daily stories.

The Center will continue to do in-depth investigative reports. Topics covered in reports so far include sexual assault on U.S. campuses, overfishing in global waters, and the murder of Danny Pearl.

One audience member asked whether staff reporters are expected to produce both daily news stories and long-term projects.

“There’s some tension about that,” Buzenberg said. “You would get different answers from different people.”

The site’s subject areas are money and politics, the environment, financial regulations, health, and national security.

Each of the subject editors is seeking freelancers. “We’re looking for investigative, significant work based on documents and data, if no one’s done it,” Buzenberg said.

Among the news site’s unusual digital features: It will resize and reformat to fit an individual’s device, eliminating the need for separate applications. And it uses Treesaver, an open source software that allows readers to scroll pages sideways instead of vertically.

Some audience members questioned the idea of a nonprofit organization selling subscriptions to make money. But, Buzenberg said, all the profit would be put back into the Center.

“For every dollar in philanthropy, we expect to earn a dollar,” he said.

The Center’s staff makes it clear to donors that there’s a firewall between funding and editorial work.

“We’re not investigators for hire,” Buzenberg said.

The event was sponsored by the Professional Development Committee and the Eric Friedheim Library.