Contributed by Dave Bradley

UI journalists launch independent investigative news outlet, IowaWatch.org. 

A University of Iowa professor and student journalists are launching the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that will publish investigative and explanatory reports at IowaWatch.org.

IowaWatch will be modeled after nonprofits like ProPublica or The Center for Public Integrity, but will focus on in-depth coverage of local and state issues.   With its first crew of reporters already at work, IowaWatch will start publishing this fall.

“Commercial news outlets have a tremendous and extremely valuable duty to conduct routine coverage – council meetings, crime and spot news, feature stories – and with fewer resources, that has to be their priority,” said IowaWatch Co-founder and Editor Stephen Berry. “But someone still has to carry out the watchdog function of journalism, and that’s where IowaWatch comes in.”

“Stories on IowaWatch will meet the standards a major metropolitan newspaper would require. We will mix modern multimedia journalism with traditional journalism values, and our staff will be held to the highest performance and ethical standards,” Berry said. “Our mission is to produce quality investigative and explanatory journalism for the benefit of our readers, the people of Iowa, and to train journalists by supervising and directing their efforts.”

IowaWatch also plans to collaborate with commercial news outlets across the state on an ad hoc basis. For example, a television station could request IowaWatch’s help investigating a tip, and the resulting story could be broadcast on that station and posted at IowaWatch.org. IowaWatch will also share the data it collects so commercial news outlets can develop localized stories.

“It’s no secret that newsrooms across the nation, including in Iowa, have cut the number of reporters who are out there learning and telling the public about all the things affecting daily life,” said Lyle Muller, editor of The Gazette, a Cedar Rapids-based newspaper with which the center is collaborating. “The emergence of nonprofit organizations like the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism is filling a gap, and the biggest beneficiaries in all of this should be readers and viewers.”

“Nonprofits like ours have sprouted up as a result of the financial problems of traditional news outlets, and I believe they will be a very dominant player in the media landscape from here on out,” Berry said. “ProPublica is still young, but was one of the main Pulitzer Prize winners this year. To me, that’s a transformative development, showing that nonprofit journalism is here to stay.”

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