If you’d like to provide a journalism resource to our members, please contact Jonathan Kealing.
Gain access to unique, comprehensive and verified campaign finance information on the state and federal levels via OpenSecrets. Sources include the Federal Election Commission, 50 state agencies and select local jurisdictions. Get personal assistance and training on how to use the tools on OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org, where OpenSecrets maintains campaign finance data on candidates and officeholders, elections, industries and interest groups, plus data on federal and foreign lobbying. FollowTheMoney.org has campaign fundraising data covering 50 states, campaign spending reports for 37 states, and lobbying spending in 20 states.
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About: Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, OpenSecrets is the nation’s premier research group tracking and reporting on money in U.S. politics and its impact on elections and public policy. Created in 2021 by the merger of the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in Politics, OpenSecrets’ mission is to track the flow of money in American politics and provide the data and analysis to strengthen democracy. Our vision is for Americans to use this knowledge to create a more vibrant, representative and accountable democracy.
Rate: Free for INN members
Use Coral’s Talk commenting platform to more easily manage the conversation in your website’s comments. Coral Talk is designed to help journalists better engage their communities and better allow community members to manage their own experience. The platform includes tools that help people mute other commenters, get updates about new comments and allows journalists to be highlighted when they join a discussion. Plus, for comment moderators, the service uses AI to make moderation less burdensome. It also integrates with Slack, so notifications come right to where your team is already working. Coral’s Talk comments can be run for free as an open source project, or as a managed and hosted solution provided by Coral at a discount to INN members.
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Coral Talk can be run in three ways:
About: Founded as a collaboration between The New York Times, The Washington Post and Mozilla, Coral has become a leading voice in online community engagement. Now part of Vox Media, Coral and its Talk platform helps millions of readers interact with journalists through better moderation tools, more focused strategy and best-in-class technology for website comments.
Rate: Rates and fees depend on whether news organizations sign up for a managed and hosted solution, just need consulting help to install and configure the open source software, or are prepared to install and run Coral’s open source software without any assistance. Coral offers INN members a 10% discount off their standard customization/installation rate ($200/hr), as well as 10% discount off of the standard fee for the managed installation. In addition, all news organizations that sign up for the hosted solution and pay for a full year of the service up-front receive one month of service free.
Access the raw data behind ProPublica’s reporting as a resource for other INN members doing the challenging, expensive work of investigative reporting.
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About: ProPublica Data Store is an ever-expanding clearinghouse for the data used in ProPublica reporting.
Rate: Free. ProPublica also provides premium data products and custom data services.
Led by engagement expert Joy Mayer and experienced journalist Lynn Walsh, the Trusting News project works with individual newsrooms on projects to build trust between newsrooms and their audiences. Trusting News is a project to “empower journalists to demonstrate credibility and actively earn trust” from their audiences.
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About: Since 2016, the Trusting News staff has been working with newsrooms to learn how people decide what news to trust and help journalists implement trust-building strategies, like how to ask for feedback and how to explain your mission to your audience. Trusting News is a collaboration between the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri and the American Press Institute.
Rate: Thanks to the generous support of Democracy Fund, Trusting News is able to offer free coaching for journalists who want help earning trust and demonstrating credibility. They are also looking for newsrooms to partner with on large-scale efforts to build trust between newsrooms and communities.
INN and its members subscribe to ethics policies offered below along with background and guidance for news nonprofits. Information about pre- or post-publication review of stories are on the Operations Resources Legal Referrals webpage.
Quickly create charts, infographics and engaging data visualizations with no coding or design skills needed with Infogram. These infographics can be used internally or instantly published online and can adapt to any screen size. View the examples here. View examples of the enterprise version as used by INN members CALmatters and Better Government Association.
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About: Infogram was built with the goal of increasing data literacy, giving anyone — and especially the fast-paced media sector — the power to visualize and share data in minutes.
Infogram was founded in 2012 by Uldis Leiterts, Raimonds Kaze (both journalists) and Alise Semjonova (a designer). Currently, Infogram has more than 4 million users and companies, including INN members and brands such as Techcrunch, Politico, UNICEF, LinkedIn and Unilever.
Rate: Free. INN members can upgrade to a Team account with their own branding at a 30% discounted rate.
*Business Team account from three to 10 user licenses for INN members costs US $1,251.60/year to US $2,368.80/year
*Enterprise level starting from 10 user licenses for INN members costs US $4,057.20/year with option to add extra seats for US $159.60/license
Nonmembers can unlock an extra referral discount — 10% off for a for-profit organization and up to 25%, depending on team size, for nonprofits.
If you’re part of — or interested in — the public media community, Current is your source for industry news. And INN members get a special discount on access to Current.
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About: Current is the nonprofit news service for and about public media in the U.S. Public broadcasting professionals, including radio and TV station and network employees, independent producers, and national policymakers, rely on Current for information, inspiration and in-depth coverage of our vibrant, evolving, mission-driven field.
LexisNexis is a powerful reporting tool that gives you access to detailed information about people and companies, as well as an extensive database of published news content. Through a partnership between INN and LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, INN members are able to access LexisNexis at a substantial discount over the published commercial rates.
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About: LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation is the not-for-profit entity established by LexisNexis Legal & Professional to further achieve its mission to advance the rule of law around the world.
LexisNexis is a leading global provider of legal research and content-enabled workflow solutions. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a leader in providing essential information that helps customers across all industries and governments predict, assess and manage risk. Combining cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics, they provide products and services that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding the highest standards of security and privacy.