Norm just took the Union Leader to task:
But more importantly, the Union Leader is dying, or some would say it is already dead, based on how they actually fill their news “hole,” that is the portion of the paper supposedly devoted to real news and not ads. The Union Leader was once thought of as the most conservative newspaper in the country. Obviously no more.
I’m about to show yet another reason why Conservatives should just abandon them and think of them as just a Manchester based version of the Concord Monitor with respect to ideology as they’ve done it to themselves – willingly. The Loebs would be pitching the current management out of the corner offices. So when did they announce this stupidity? Four days ago. How? With this piece which has gotten little to no notice in the NH MSM (reformatted, emphasis mine, links added by me, you know, because the UL was too lazy to do them).
Union Leader named host newsroom for local journalism effort
The New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News has been named a host newsroom for a nationwide nonprofit organization’s emerging effort to expand local news coverage across the U.S. Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, will field 250 journalists in 164 host news organizations across 46 states in the coming year, the organization said in a statement announcing the 2020 host newsrooms.
The Union Leader plans to use the partnership to expand its solutions journalism efforts, specifically focusing on enterprise reporting from New Hampshire’s North Country and other rural areas of the Granite State.
…Report for America will cover roughly half of a reporter’s salary for a year through more than $5 million in direct support to newsrooms.
I went for a quick dive about this “partner” and came to the conclusion that the Union Leader management did little to no due diligence as to who they were letting into their bed. I’m betting their reaction was “FREE MONEY! REPORTERS FOR FREE!”. And given what they want to do, it’s like they want to turn themselves into a PATCH.COM or even one of our MicroGroks for more local reporting. But who is funding both of those organizations? Google News Lab, for one which is not known for being kind to Conservatives or conservative issues. Capital Research.org has more and it is more and more Leftism:
Over the next five years Report for America, an initiative created by the nonprofit GroundTruth Project in partnership with the Google News Lab, is preparing to subsidize the employment, training, and placement of a thousand new journalists in newsrooms across rural America.
Funded by grants from wealthy left-wing nonprofits such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, the Knight Foundation, and other elite left-wing donors, the initiative plans to bring a “new model” of journalism to local television stations and small newspapers across the country. This new model will focus on providing reporters to partnered news organizations at half the typical cost of employment and include training from the Google News Lab and Solutions Journalism Network on how to cover topics which Report for America and its donors consider “under-covered.” Report for America argues that America is currently facing a media crisis in small towns across the country and that these journalists will help Americans who are no longer able “to understand the critical issues facing their community,” all while also propping up embattled news organizations.
Until January 2018, the GroundTruth Project had been primarily focused on foreign correspondence in developing democracies. Founded in 2014, the GroundTruth Project is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It was created by Steven Waldman, a journalist and former senior advisor to the chairman of the Obama era Federal Communications Commission, and Charles Sennott, a former Boston Globe journalist.
While the GroundTruth Projects claims to be against placing Report for America journalists in newsrooms that are influenced by advertisers or donors, their own funding methods create similar questions about bias. Between 2014 and 2017, the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Galloway Foundation together contributed $1.4 million to GroundTruth’s total operating budget….
The Ford and MacArthur Foundations fund many radical organizations on the far-left, including UnidosUS, the Tides Center, and Demos, drawing questions about GroundTruth’s “objectivity.”
In addition to GroundTruth’s main funding partners, Report for America is also supported by skills training partnerships with the Google News Lab and the Solutions Journalism Network. The Solutions Journalism Network is a more recent addition to the platform and takes part in training new journalists on the organization’s “methodology for reporting on responses to problems, in addition to the problems themselves.”
The Solutions Journalism Network argues that the kind of traditional reporting that encourages readers to make their own conclusions is outdated, and instead teaches reporters to provide their own pre-digested “solutions” for readers to absorb. The Solutions Journalism Network is funded by a number of left-wing nonprofits, including the Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, Democracy Fund, Rockefeller Fund, Walton Foundation, and others.
The Google News Lab was the first partner to join the Report for America project, and has provided much of the infrastructure for training journalists in how to research and which sources to use. Unsurprisingly, Google News Lab is funded by Google, which has been accused of harboring anti-conservative biases in its company ethos. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has a particularly poor track record when it comes to free speech issues.
And more funding from more Left wing foundations:
The Tow Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies have partnered with GroundTruth to support Report for America in its efforts to place 1,000 local reporters in host newsrooms across America over the next five years. The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit news organization that supports and inspires a new generation of journalists, will receive a total of $650,000 in multi-year funding for its new initiative.
Tow Foundation reports this on their funding:
“Report for America’s goal of launching the careers of aspiring journalists, while providing essential support for quality local journalism, is directly in line with The Tow Foundation’s efforts to educate the public on social justice issues.
Ayup – Social Justice. Which can mean just about anything that the Left wants it to be. Relativity, ever morphing, changing to fit an agenda. How often does that match up with Conservative values?
And the MacArthur Foundation who has given GroundTruth Project over $1 million between 2015 and 2018.
Glassdoor reviews (only 5 but…) aren’t encouraging.
So, the UL is going to take stringers trained to report in liberal outlook. Great, just Great! I guess this from Iowahawk pretty sums up what happens to formerly Conservative organizations that refuse to codify their Conservative credos:
