Pretty much every week, Andrew Donohue, editor of
VoiceofSanDiego.org,
gets a call from a journalist seeking advice on starting up a nonprofit news site like his, which covers investigative stories in San Diego and has an annual budget of just over $1 million.
The questions, he said, are most often from journalists who are looking to start their own site, and are occasionally from philanthropists and community groups.
I asked Donohue to share the questions he is most asked and to provide his responses. The questions and his responses, some of which I edited and selected here, are part of an updated FAQ that he is putting together for VoiceofSanDiego.org.
You'll have an opportunity to ask Donohue your own questions in a Poynter live chat
today at 1 p.m. EDT. During the chat, Donohue will talk about the work he does and answer related questions about what he's learned from four years of editing the site.
Twitterers can tweet their questions in advance using the hashtag #poynterchats. You can revisit this link at any time to replay the chat after it has ended.
What was your staff and budget size when you started, and what is it now?We started in 2005 with a budget of $350,000, mostly in seed money from philanthropist and retired venture capital Buzz Woolley. We employed a staff of four -- an editor, two reporters and an office manager.
Our staff is at 14 (11 journalists) and our budget is over $1 million.
Do you have problems with donors or sponsors interfering with the content?No -- because we've been very clear about the lines. Not everyone knows the rules of journalism, but if you're very clear and open with funders about your rules, you should be all right.
In nonprofit funds, foundations enjoy funding specific projects or themes (science or environmental reporting in general), or a project on community successes. However, funders don't have special access to reporters, don't control what stories get written and don't say how the stories are written.
What are the advantages of being online-only and nonprofit?Efficiency: The Internet is simply more efficient and cost-effective than any other medium available to a local entity. While print still provides newspapers with a lion's share of their revenue, that share is continually declining.
Mission: Reporters step into the VoiceofSanDiego.org's newsroom with a very clear mission: Produce in-depth and investigative reporting. They don't have to worry about being a paper of record, covering a celebrity trial, rushing to a harmless house fire or figuring out what direction their general-interest publication is going in.
More revenue streams: Taking the very long view, we have more revenue streams available to us than do most media operations. We have the nonprofit streams long used by public broadcasting: foundation grants, corporate sponsors and membership drives.
Correction: The original version of a response in the Q&A misstated the number of staff members who work for VoiceofSanDiego.org.
Slate has recently written about the downside of non-profits. It...
