Assessing the Sustainability of Latin American Investigative Non-profit Journalism

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of Latin American investigative non-profit journalism in terms of organisational sustainability and journalistic dynamics. In so doing, it seeks to understand the role of these organisations, which have come to be described as a new type of journalistic practice for gathering, investigation and dissemination of news, which is conducted by non-profit investigative journalism projects set up between 1998 and 2011. These small groups of journalists have come to work together, creating research-based centres for investigative journalism. The essay describes and examines how these centres and their participants work, how they are funded and create a new business model in the context of their journalistic and editorial practices. By analysing the business model of eight major projects identified by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and the Nieman Lab at Harvard University, the authors aim to understand their business model from both a historical and present perspectives. In so doing, the authors have applied the CANVAS model of analysis, which identifies four categories for observation and discussion: infrastructure, product offer, relations with customers and financing. We then locate these findings in the context of a wider theoretical discussion that examines sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• business model
• CANVAS method
• investigative journalism
• Latin America
• non-profit investigative journalism
• public service

Notes

1. Data used for this article were gathered between November 2012 and January 2013 and were accurate for that time.

2. All tables used here were designed by the authors for this article.