Our Mission
inewsource is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom devoted to bettering lives in the San Diego area and past via impactful, data-based investigative and accountability journalism.
Our Vision
Betrayals of the general public belief are revealed and rectified, wrongdoing is deterred, and inequities are illuminated because of inewsource’s deep, dogged, fact-based reporting.
Our Values
Truth: Above all else, we worth the significance of a free and credible press. Truth is the cornerstone of democracy and the core worth for inewsource.
Transparency: We construct belief with our readers by adhering to the best requirements and ethics, and to reporting with info, precision and context.
Collaboration: Our newsroom prioritizes collaboration over competitors. We usually companion with media shops on reporting initiatives and to share content material.
Community: Our reporting serves the San Diego area, and we try to construct relationships with our viewers by getting out into the group to pay attention and interact.
Ethics Policy
inewsource will conduct its enterprise with the best requirements of decency, equity and accuracy. These requirements shall apply equally to inewsource workers, freelancers and all others engaged in gathering info on behalf of inewsource. All obtain a duplicate of those moral requirements.
In the course of our reporting, we’ll persistently:
● Identify our group and ourselves absolutely and keep away from false representations of any variety to any supply.
● Obtain consent from all events earlier than electronically recording any interview or dialog besides in extraordinary instances licensed by the Managing Editor and Editor. If a supply refuses to be taped, that should be honored; no recordings are to be made with out consent.
● Respect the person’s proper to privateness. inewsource won’t ever manipulate or barter non-public, private, well being, monetary or different extraneous info in the course of getting ready its experiences.
● Any supply we describe or write about in any important method should be contacted. The worker ought to doc all efforts to contact the supply, and if unsuccessful, ought to summarize these efforts at contact in the physique of his/her writing.
In addition, inewsource follows the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. The newest model, revised in 2014, may be discovered right here.
Editorial Independence Policy
We subscribe to requirements of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) as follows:
Our group retains full authority over editorial content material to guard the most effective journalistic and enterprise pursuits of our group. We will preserve a firewall between information protection selections and sources of all income. Acceptance of economic help doesn’t represent implied or precise endorsement of donors or their merchandise, providers or opinions.
We settle for items, grants and sponsorships from people and organizations for the final help of our actions, however our information judgments are made independently and never on the premise of donor help. Our group additionally could contemplate donations to help the protection of explicit subjects, however our group maintains editorial management of the protection. We will cede no proper of overview or affect of editorial content material, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content material.
Our group will make public all donors who give a complete of $1,000 or extra. We will settle for nameless donations for common help solely whether it is clear that enough safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our group and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.
Diversity
Diverse Voices
Inclusiveness is on the coronary heart of pondering and appearing as journalists, and it helps the academic mandate of inewsource. Race, class, technology, gender, sexual orientation, means, and geography all have an effect on standpoint. inewsource believes that reflecting societal variations in reporting results in higher, extra nuanced tales and a better-informed group.
inewsource is dedicated to employment fairness and variety.
Diverse Staffing Report
Below is a breakdown of staffing information at inewsource. We decide the composition of our employees by asking them to self-identify. It relies on a newsroom of 11 and a complete employees of 15 as of August 2020. Percentages are primarily based on 15 whole survey responses. The numbers embody full-time and part-time employees, full-time fellows and full-time and part-time interns.
All Staff Percentages are primarily based on 15 whole survey responses. The numbers embody full-time and part-time employees, full-time fellows and full-time and part-time interns. |
Newsroom Percentages are primarily based on 15 accomplished survey responses to this query. |
Business Percentages are primarily based on 15 accomplished survey responses to this query. |
|||
Gender Identity | Gender Identity | Gender Identity | |||
Women | 80% | Women | 82% | Women | 75% |
Men | 20% | Men | 18% | Men | 25% |
Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | |||
Straight | 87% | Straight | 82% | Straight | 100% |
LGBTQ-identifying | 7% | LGBTQ-identifying | 7% | ||
Not specified | 7% | Not specified | 7% | ||
Speak a language past English at residence | 33% | Speak a language past English at residence | 18% | Speak a language past English at residence | 75% |
Race/Ethnicity | Race/Ethnicity | Race/Ethnicity | |||
White | 67% | White | 73% | White | 50% |
Hispanic or Latinx | 20% | Two or extra races | 18% | Hispanic or Latinx | 50% |
Two or extra races | 13% | Hispanic or Latinx | 9% | ||
Age | Age | Age | |||
20-29 | 40% | 20-29 | 45% | 20-29 | 25% |
30-39 | 47% | 30-39 | 45% | 30-39 | 50% |
60 or older | 13% | 60 or older | 9% | 60 or older | 25% |
* The percentages in the charts have been rounded and will not add as much as 100.
Ownership Structure, Funding and Grants
inewsource is a nonprofit group, whose authorized identify is Investigative Newsource. It does enterprise as inewsource. The enterprise was integrated on Aug. 4, 2009 in the state of California. Tax-exempt standing as a 501c3 was granted by the IRS on Sept. 15, 2010. inewsource is funded primarily by particular person contributions and basis grants. We are guided by a board of administrators.
Editorial independence: Journalists employed by inewsource take no editorial course from donors whose contributions could help the group. inewsource won’t hesitate to report on its donors when occasions warrant. Our Editorial Independence Policy particulars the firewall between journalism and income.
To be clear with the general public, inewsource lists its donors on its web site. In instances the place a donor is the topic of an inewsource story, extra disclosure shall be made.
Financial Documents
We do our due diligence to earn your belief in our reporting, in addition to in our governance and monetary sustainability. All of our monetary paperwork are made accessible to view in order that our supporters can belief we’re sound stewards of your philanthropy. Review our IRS Form 990s, audited monetary statements and annual experiences:
Annual Reports
Transparency is one among our core values. Today, there’s a have to construct belief with our viewers as a result of new media and methods of speaking unfold lies and slanted information sooner than “real” information. At the identical time, this period of latest applied sciences makes it simpler than ever for information organizations to be clear. People don’t simply must imagine us, they’ll examine our investigations with our supply supplies.
Transparency is vital to constructing credibility.
inewsource reporters have major accountability for reporting, writing, and fact-checking their tales. But earlier than a narrative is revealed, the reporter evaluations all info and sources with an editor or one other reporter. Facts should be traced to a major supply.
In addition, we “transparify” sure investigative tales. This course of entails publishing a model of the online story with hyperlinks to all of the story’s info. This is proof that every one info have been documented with major proof. We do that to construct belief with our readers and to be as clear as we hope the general public figures and establishments that we maintain accountable shall be.
Unnamed Sources
Not all sources are created equal. Some sources can’t converse authoritatively, present correct evaluation or converse particularly to each inquiry positioned earlier than them. To preserve the integrity of our reporting, inewsource reporters should choose sources who can converse with validity to the subject at hand, and keep away from presenting unqualified or underqualified sources as specialists.
If an interviewed supply has a battle of curiosity, or whose {qualifications} could also be tangential or restricted, reporters will be aware that inside the context of the story.
It is incumbent upon reporters to completely background their sources to uncover conflicts of curiosity or slant previous to utilizing them in a narrative.
Unless mentioned previous to an interview, all topics speaking to inewsource journalists are on the report. Specifically, the supply is recognized by identify and title, and their precise or paraphrased phrases are attributed to them for publication. If journalists converse with sources who aren’t politicians, public figures or these not generally interviewed by journalists, employees ought to clarify clearly that info mentioned shall be on the report and for publication.
There are occasions, nonetheless, when info could also be important for a narrative however can’t be discovered or verified by different means. For instance, a supply might be able to verify particular details about a sequence of occasions they could have witnessed, however have reliable issues about utilizing their identify or title. The repercussions to the supply could possibly be authorized, job-related retribution or private security. The supply and journalist should talk about these potential risks and phrases of use must be agreed upon by each events.
If inewsource publishes info from an nameless supply, inewsource will clarify to readers, in as a lot element as attainable, why we agreed to anonymity.
Corrections and Clarifications
inewsource strives for accuracy in every thing we do, which is why we’re dedicated to reality checking our content material. But generally we make errors. When that occurs, we appropriate them. We additionally make clear tales when one thing we’ve written is complicated or could possibly be misinterpreted.
We endeavor to all the time be clear about our dedication to correcting errors and clarifying misperceptions. When staffers see, hear or examine a attainable subject with the accuracy of any inewsource content material, they’re anticipated to carry it to the eye of an editor and the online producer so it may be evaluated to find out proceed.
Including the online producer is vital as a result of inewsource is a multimedia information group and shares its content material with a number of companions on a number of platforms. The internet producer should alert these companions about corrections and clarifications.
Corrections and clarifications must be included on the backside of tales and dated.
Actionable Feedback and Newsroom Contacts
Our audiences know the area we cowl and have a stake in sustaining and bettering the standard of life in San Diego and Imperial counties. We know your data and insights will help form what we cowl and the way we cowl it. We invite your feedback and complaints on information tales, strategies for points to cowl or sources to seek the advice of. We depend on you to inform us once we get it proper and when we have to hold pushing.
Your feedback, questions and strategies may be despatched to the group as a complete at contact@inewsource.org or you’ll be able to contact a selected member of our employees.
Masthead
CEO, Editor and Founder: Lorie Hearn, loriehearn@inewsource.org
Lorie Hearn is the chief government officer, editor and founding father of inewsource. She based inewsource in the summer time of 2009, following a profitable reporting and enhancing profession in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, the place she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and at last the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to division oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog group, composed of two information specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She centered on juvenile justice and drug management coverage, a pure course to comply with her years as a courts and authorized affairs reporter on the San Diego Union after which the Union-Tribune.
Hearn grew to become Metro Editor in 1999 and oversaw regional and metropolis information protection, which included the town of San Diego’s monetary debacle and close to chapter. Reporters and editors on Metro throughout her tenure had been a part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning tales that uncovered Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and led to his imprisonment.
Hearn started her journalism profession as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, a small day by day outdoors of Philadelphia, shortly after graduating from the University of Delaware. During the many years following, she moved via numerous beats at 5 newspapers on each coasts.
High-profile protection included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices had been ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That fuel chamber execution was the primary time the demise penalty was carried out in California in 25 years.
In her 9 years as Metro Editor on the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a precedence. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations masking massive and small native governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in protection of the wildfires of 2003 after which 2007, when greater than half 1,000,000 individuals had been evacuated from their properties.
Managing Editor: Mark J. Rochester, markrochester@inewsource.org
Mark J. Rochester started as inewsource managing editor in April 2021, having served as editor in chief at Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in Manhattan. He was beforehand senior information director for investigations on the Detroit Free Press. Both newsrooms, he notes, shared a dedication to range and inclusion, and their investigative journalism usually obtained nationwide recognition for exposing issues impacting communities of coloration.
His household seems ahead to returning to California, having spent greater than seven years in San Francisco the place Rochester was a senior supervisor for the Associated Press. While with the information cooperative, he led computer-assisted reporting coaching efforts across the West, each inside and out of doors of AP, and performed a extensively used evaluation of the $74 million in marketing campaign contributions that went towards the California homosexual marriage poll initiative in 2008. The AP analyzed who gave and why after which made the info accessible to member newspapers. The ensuing sequence of tales primarily based on the info was AP’s 2009 Pulitzer nomination for Local Reporting.
Rochester, who served as a Pulitzer Prize jurist in 2017, additionally has held senior management positions on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Denver Post, Newsday and The Indianapolis Star. Rochester is vp of Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc., the 6,000+ member worldwide group devoted to bettering investigative journalism. He additionally serves on the nationwide advisory board of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University in Washington, D.C.
Byline Policy
Most of our articles carry a byline to determine the writer. In some instances, inewsource will use a model byline comparable to “Staff” or “inewsource” for inner or editorial details about the newsroom. In these situations, inewsource‘s Editor and Managing Editor are answerable for content material that makes use of a model byline.
The Trust Project
inewsource is proud to be a member of The Trust Project and help efforts to extend transparency in journalism by displaying the 8 Trust Indicators on our tales. We launched the Trust Indicators on Sep. 16, 2020.
Privacy Policy
inewsource has ready this Privacy Policy to clarify how we accumulate, use, defend, and share info while you use our inewsource.org web site (the “Site“) or while you use any of our providers (the “Services“).
By utilizing the Site or Services you consent to this Privacy Policy.
Log Data
Like many website operators, we accumulate info that your browser sends everytime you go to our website (“Log Data”).
This Log Data could embody info comparable to your pc’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) deal with, browser kind, browser model, the pages of our website that you simply go to, the time and date of your go to, the time spent on these pages and different statistics.
Cookies
Cookies are information with small quantity of knowledge, which can embody an nameless distinctive identifier. Cookies are despatched to your browser from a web page and saved in your pc or cellular system.
Like many websites, we use “cookies” to gather info. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to point when a cookie is being despatched. However, if you don’t settle for cookies, you could not be capable to use some parts of our website.
Certain pages on our website could set different third get together cookies. For instance, we could embed content material, comparable to movies, from one other website that units a cookie. While we attempt to decrease these third get together cookies, we are able to’t all the time management what cookies this third get together content material units.
Additionally, we could use third get together providers — comparable to those who present social media conveniences, measure visitors, ship newsletters and facilitate donations — which will place cookies in your pc. We don’t have any manner of realizing how such providers deal with the ensuing information internally. inewsource makes no declare, nor takes legal responsibility for the insecure submission of data by way of these functions.
Here are the providers whose cookies you could find on inewsource.org:
- Sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter. These use the usual scripts supplied by every firm.
- Google Analytics, which we use to measure website visitors. Google Analytics gathers sure non-personally figuring out info over time, comparable to your IP deal with, browser kind, web service supplier, referring and exit pages, time stamp, and related information. We additionally use Facebook Pixel to measure, optimize and construct audiences for promoting campaigns served on Facebook. In explicit it allows us to see how our customers transfer between units when accessing our web site and Facebook, to make sure that our Facebook promoting is seen by our customers almost certainly to have an interest in such promoting by analyzing which content material a person has considered and interacted with on our web site.
- Stripe, which permits us to just accept donations via our web site.
- Salesforce to handle e-newsletter subscriber, donor, and different identifiable person information.
- Mailchimp, to handle e-newsletter distributions. We accumulate your e mail deal with for those who select to subscribe to one among our e mail newsletters or e mail information alerts. Other elective info that you simply enter when subscribing – comparable to your first and final names or metropolis are merely in order that we are able to ship extra customized e mail newsletters. We DO NOT promote, hire or market your info to every other events. We retain your info solely so long as mandatory to supply your service. When we ship emails, it collects some information about which customers open the emails and which hyperlinks are clicked. We use this info to optimize our e mail newsletters and, as combination info, to clarify what share of our customers open and work together with our newsletters.
Personal Data
We solely accumulate personally identifiable info comparable to your identify and e mail deal with while you join a e-newsletter, donate to our group, or in any other case submit it to us voluntarily. We don’t share your private information with any third events apart from some frequent service suppliers, whose merchandise use your info to assist us enhance our website, ship newsletters, or enable us to supply donation alternatives.
inewsource limits entry to all person information for the needs of e-newsletter, fundraising, and customer support solely. User information will not be offered to or in any other case shared with anybody not working with or for the inewsource.
You could unsubscribe or opt-out of our e mail and mail communications at any time by hitting the “unsubscribe” button in any e mail you obtain from inewsource, or by emailing us at contact@inewsource.org or calling us at 619-594-5100.
Donor Information
The identities of all donors shall be listed on our web site. inewsource doesn’t share, commerce, promote, or in any other case launch donors’ private info to any third events.
Refunds
If you encounter errors when donating on the web site, please contact us at members@inewsource.org. For instance, for those who submit a donation for an incorrect quantity or make a reproduction transaction please e mail us instantly so we are able to reverse the fees.
Cancellation of Recurring Donations
You can cancel your month-to-month recurring donations freed from cost by notifying us at members@inewsource.org.
Links to Other Websites
Our website could comprise hyperlinks to paperwork, sources or different web sites that we predict could also be of curiosity to you. We don’t have any management over these different websites or their content material. You must be conscious while you go away our website for one more, and keep in mind that different websites are ruled by their very own person agreements and privateness insurance policies, which must be accessible to you to learn.
Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability
Although we take cheap steps to forestall the introduction of viruses, worms, “Trojan Horses” or different damaging supplies to our website, we don’t assure or warrant that our website or supplies that could be downloaded from our website are free from such damaging options. We aren’t chargeable for any damages or hurt attributable to such options. We aren’t chargeable for any declare, loss or injust primarily based on errors, omissions, interruptions or different inaccuracies on our website, nor for any declare, loss or injust that outcomes out of your use of this website or your breach of any provision of this User Agreement.
Contact Us
If there are any questions concerning this privateness coverage, please contact us at contact@inewsource.org or name us at 619-594-5100.