Watchdog.org

Watchdog.org
Type Non Profit
Founded September 2009
Headquarters Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
Website www.watchdog.org
Alexa rank positive decrease 52,689 (April 2014)[1]
Type of site News & blogging
Available in English
Current status Active

Watchdog.org is a network of American news websites that feature reporting on state and local government from a conservative perspective.[2] It is a project of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.[3]

According to the Watchdog.org website, the organization exists to “(enhance) communication between reporters and (provide) a forum for published journalism, Watchdog.org promotes a vibrant, well-informed electorate and a more transparent government. Watchdog.org utilizes a state-specific approach, in order to provide readers with information that is of proximate and practical interest.”[4]

Organization

According to the website, “Watchdog.org is a collection of independent journalists covering state-specific and local government activity. The program began in September 2009, a project of Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting new media journalism. Watchdog.org’s investigative journalists and capitol news reporters across the country are doing what legacy journalism outlets prove unable to do: share information, dive deep into investigations, and provide the fourth estate that has begun to fade in recent decades.”[5]

In July 2011, the Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism was reported to have found that, among other non-profit news outlets, "the conservative Watchdog.org sites ... don't reveal much about who’s paying their bills, and their work skews clearly in one direction, both in the topics they cover and the content of individual stories".[2]

In response to such criticism, Vice President for Journalism Steven Greenhut wrote in the Huffington Post: “Like many non-profits, we don't publicize our donors."[6]

Watchdog News Bureaus

Watchdog.org consists of 23 state news bureaus with journalists reporting on state and local government.[7][8] The network includes news outlets such as Hawaii Reporter, Illinois Watchdog, Wisconsin Reporter and bureaus in Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio Watchdog, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.[9][10][11][12]

New Technology

Watchdog.org's sponsoring organization, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, promotes itself as an advocacy group for “transparency in government.”[13] They support this through the use of “new media.” Watchdog.org and the Franklin Center believe[14] that journalists must master new media, and they offer[13] in-depth training and education to individuals and organizations interested in learning new media techniques and how to be citizen journalists.

On June 13, 2011, Franklin Center announced[15] that Watchdog.org news coverage would be accessible through an IPhone application.

External links

References