The Marshall Project: Non-profit journalism at its finest

I was excited to receive an email a few weeks ago titled "We're Live" from The Marshall Project, a new journalistic enterprise I've been following. Bill Keller, former editor of The New York Times, left the paper earlier this year to help spearhead the creation of "a nonprofit newsroom devoted to coverage of the American criminal justice system" — The Marshall Project, named for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. As a former newspaper reporter who covered cops and courts for almost 15 years, I am rooting for this to succeed and to make a difference in our country.

Keller, the Marshall editor-in-chief, wrote in the email:

We have assembled a diverse team of journalists, set in motion a wide range of reporting projects, built a website to serve as a worthy stage for our journalism, and forged partnerships with a range of established media organizations who will amplify our voice. 

Now it begins. On Sunday and Monday, Nov. 16 and 17, in partnership with The Washington Post, we are publishing a Marshall Project investigation of a legal quirk that can be a matter of life and death. We aim to offer something original every day — sometimes an investigative project, sometimes a sharp insight into the news, sometimes an argument, sometimes a quirky sidelight.

The Marshall Project was founded by Neil Barsky, a former New York Daily News and Wall Street Journal reporter who amassed a fortune as a hedge fund manager. An Inside Philanthropy story earlier this year detailed Barsky's reasonings behind the project, one of which is that he's never lost his interest in journalism (I'm not sure any of us former reporters ever do). He also believes that nonprofit journalism has better long-term prospects for sustainability than traditional for-profit journalism.

"A nonprofit organization has to sustain itself by being excellent and having an impact," he said in the article. "So does for-profit, frankly. But the difference is there are people of good will out there who are willing to support us if we do good work."

In our second book, Out of Print, George Brock says philanthropy "looks as if it will only be enough to protect specialized journalism — and then in societies where rich, disinterested donors are thick on the ground." I'm not sure about the "disinterested" part, but so far nonprofit news organizations primarily are specialized, either with their focus, such as investigative reporting or politics, or with the geographic area they cover, like the example we mentioned in class, the Voice of San Diego.

As we have discussed all semester, the current business model for newspapers, and really for all legacy news organizations to varying degrees, is not working. The only way to find a model or models that do work is to be innovative and be willing to fail. Unwillingness to change cannot be an option.