Today is my first day as Director of Technology with the Investigative News Network.
Since many of you may not be very familiar with INN, let me shamelessly copy and paste from their website:
INN’s mission is to help nonprofit news organizations produce and distribute stories with impact; to achieve cost efficiencies by pooling resources and services, and to develop new revenue streams that will help member organizations become sustainable businesses.
INN is dedicated to actively facilitating collaborative projects, both within the membership and including external media partners.
We also offer back office support, to give members the benefits of a larger network of support; technology, to share best practices for publishing and distributing content; and a robust communication network to engage our members, our funders and our audiences. While aiding our active members, we also seek to incubate and foster new nonprofit newsrooms.
So, in short, INN is a membership organization that supports over 60 nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organizations. Many of theses organizations are small startups working to get established, grow audience and become sustainable businesses. A few are larger names that you’ve likely heard of. You can find a complete list of INN members here.
In my new role I will be working with the other INN staff and our members to design and implement a technology strategy to support all of these organizations. This includes further iterations of the project I’ve been working on with INN for the past couple of months, a WordPress starter theme for news organizations called Project Largo, as well as building and maintaining other new tools, managing digital distribution and syndication deals for member content, figuring out how to best measure and demonstrate the impact of the work these organization do and I’m sure much much more that I’m not even yet aware of.
So, not at all unlike the work I’ve done before, but this time with a larger number of organizations, some unique challenges and a tremendous opportunity to grow professionally.
I’m very excited. Excited to get to know all our members. Excited to figure out what we can do to help. And most of all excited to continue doing my part to grow and sustain nonprofit news organizations and to work with some great people and organizations to do what I think is very important work.
Now for some Q&A…
Wait…does that mean you’re moving to LA?
Nope. Staying in Columbus and working from home (at least for now).
Will you be at ONA?
Not this year unfortunately.
Didn’t you just start a new company? What’s happening to that?
Yep, Media Toybox, and it’s not going anywhere. While it won’t be my primary focus, I plan to keep the company going and take on occasional projects here and there. After I get settled in with the new gig, if you’d like to work with me, please get in touch and we’ll talk it over.
INN sounds great! How can I learn more/apply to join/etc.?
First off, learn a bit more about INN here. And then if you’re a nonprofit news organization that does a substantial amount of investigative and public interest work you can apply to join INN here.
We should work together on X/Y/Z!
(That’s not a question) but yes, we probably should. Send me an e-mail and we’ll find a time to talk.