Nonprofit Websites Like VoiceofSanDiego.org Offer Hope To a News Biz Beset by Money Woes

Andrew Donohue, Executive Editor, VoiceofSanDiego.org

In a time when cutbacks, shutdowns and layoffs are the norm in the news business, there are a few bright spots on an otherwise bleak horizon – nonprofit news websites.

Springing up in cities like Chicago, Seattle, San Diego and St. Louis, these sites are not blogs filled with opinionated blather, but rather havens for hard news of the old school variety.

And the reporting is not the sketchy, rough-cut stuff of citizen journalism, but polished work – including probing investigative stories - done by paid professionals.

Having shunned newsprint, these sites operate much more cheaply than newspapers, and are typically funded by a mix of ad revenue and contributions from donors and foundations.

One such site is VoiceofSanDiego.org, which has earned a rep for hard-hitting investigative projects with headlines like “Police Chief Has History of Inaccuracies” (about incorrect crime statistics) and “The School Guru Who Promised Rescue and Brought Ruin,” about a corrupt charter school official.

The site’s notoriety has even extended beyond San Diego’s city limits; it was recently profiled in The New York Times.

Andrew Donohue, 30, one of the site’s two executive editors, did his time at a variety of traditional dailies, then signed on with VoiceofSanDiego at its founding in 2005. The site’s staff of just 11 operates out of a converted military base. Donohue does double-duty both writing and editing, so the days are long.

"Our reporters are in and out at all hours of the day,” he says. “We often start early and end late, but are always having fun, caring deeply about the subjects we cover and working hard.”

Being a nonprofit, he says, “we don't measure our success by the amount of money we've made an owner or the amount of page views we can offer to advertisers. We measure our success in the impacts of our stories.”

Donohue says the site’s investigative pieces have led to “wholesale reform, forced the replacement of key officials, exposed misdeeds, told great stories and prompted criminal investigations and charges. Just in our daily stories, too, we're seeing strong results in the wake of our stories.

“This is satisfying at any publication,” he adds. “It's especially satisfying at a publication that didn't exist four years ago, one with a nontraditional model that has had to earn its credibility day by day.”

Donohue calls VoiceofSanDiego.org “a place where people feel very good about doing good, meaningful journalism and pushing innovation and new ways of doing things. And the fact that we get e-mails from journalists around the country who are excited by what we're doing and about journalism in general, and want to join us or start a similar site of their own.”

What the site proves, Donohue says, is that “investigative journalism can be done efficiently and relatively inexpensively, to great benefit of readership numbers, in contrast to the prevailing opinion that it's an incredibly expensive endeavor that doesn't necessarily reap rewards for a publication's bottom line.”

As for the future of the beleaguered news business, Donohue says he thinks “there are going to have to be many different models and variations tried in the coming years to find the best -- or the most -- ways to keep public interest journalism alive and strong."

Nonprofit sites like his will play a key role in that, “but won't be alone,” he says. “Journalism needs a little entrepreneurial spirit, one that's been sucked away by decades of monopoly.”

Journalists “are going to have to look to the future rather than spending their time wanting everything to go back to the way it was,” he adds. “I don't believe that the traditional daily metropolitan newspaper can survive if it keeps trying to be what it used to be. It needs a new personality and purpose. Some are doing that well, some aren't and are putting themselves in deep jeopardy by living in the past.”

Some of VoiceofSanDiego.org’s investigative projects can be found at: http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/voice_special_reports/