As traditional newsrooms have declined in recent years, a new kind of news-gathering organization has emerged: non-profit operations that report on the state or national levels, most of them primarily on-line. Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined 39 such organizations–including The Connecticut Mirror–and found they vary widely in terms of transparency and ideological leaning.
(The study also looked at seven for-profit news organizations with similar missions, including CTNewsJunkie.)
In general, the study’s authors found, non-profit news organizations with the broadest funding base and the most transparency about their mission, funding sources and staff tended to provide the most ideologically neutral coverage. This group, including The Mirror, consisted of independent organizations operating on their own.
The study also includes detailed data on each organization or group of organizations and a consumer guide.