ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the relationship between the people working within journalism and the way that journalism is actually produced. It deals with an anecdote about a younger journalist pursuing a story and eventually publishing a critical opinion column about a nonprofit advocacy organization. Journalists, in the course of news production processes, make hundreds of decisions due to numerous personal characteristics that provide individuals agency “even as they operate within larger constraints.” Longtime, veteran journalists are the ones who often start nonprofit news organizations in the United States. Implicit in that anecdote is the extent to which individual-level influences can impact news production processes at nonprofits. The vast majority of nonprofits in this country are online only, and thus label themselves as digital journalism. While journalists are often derisively considered part of the “liberal media,” at nonprofits, there is more than likely some truth to the idea that journalists tend to lean left.
