ABSTRACT
Most nonprofit investigative and public interest news organizations in the United States employed fewer staff and had far smaller budgets than the sector’s better-known national players, ProPublica, Mother Jones, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Center for Public Integrity. When newspaper reporter Myron Levin left the Los Angeles Times after 23 years, he was frustrated by his editors’ story choices and dismayed at the newspaper’s demise under billionaire owner Sam Zell. He took a buyout in 2008 without having a job to go to. Aged 59, he wanted to work fewer hours and enjoy semiretirement. The opportunity and challenge of creating a nonprofit accountability organization was too tempting for Bill Keller to resist. Keller had a job that most journalists would envy. As a columnist at the New York Times, his audience was assured and he could write about anything he wanted.
