Nonprofit News & Associated Press

Six months ago the Associated Press made a commitment to bring the investigative journalism being practiced by four of the leading nonprofit news organizations to its 1,500 member news sources.

After that initial period, as reported by the Nieman Journalism Lab, the kinks are still getting worked out, and though the immediate results are still not all that pleasing to the nonprofits, the concept is sound, built on great technology, and will work over time.

An excerpt.

“This summer the Associated Press made a surprise announcement at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Baltimore. As part of a six-month pilot project, the wire service was going to begin distributing content from four top nonprofit news outlets: ProPublica, Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. It looked like a win all around: Newspapers could run in-depth content from well respected outlets, and nonprofits could broaden their audience.

“This pathbreaking agreement will make an enormous difference in helping us reach the largest possible audience and maximizing the impact of our work,” Robert Rosenthal, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s executive director, said in a statement at the time. “We are deeply appreciative of AP’s commitment to public interest journalism.”

“So how did AP’s experiment go? In conversations with some of the nonprofit participants and the AP, it appears that AP members have used little if any nonprofit content.

“We wish it had gone better,” Bill Buzenberg, executive director of Center for Public Integrity, told me. “They announced it with great fanfare at the IRE conference. They haven’t done the technical backup work to really make it work…They haven’t made it a priority.”

“Buzenberg said he wanted to temper his criticism. “This is a good idea. I’d like it to work,” he said. “The potential of this remains.”