The Markup, dedicated to investigating technology and its effect on society, will be led by two former ProPublica journalists. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark gave $20 million to help fund the operation.
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s donation to First Draft was announced Thursday. The group said it is making free training available to newsrooms and will conduct 14 “simulations” of news events to show how reporters can recognize and stop the flow of bad information.
He is funding a new initiative to monitor digital products and platforms by the nonprofit organization that warned you about cigarettes in the ’50s.
The announcement on Wednesday establishes Craig Newmark in the forefront of philanthropists focused on journalism, a cause he’s supported with some $85 million in the past few years. Some in the industry see irony in that, since the online classified advertising site that made him rich took away a lucrative revenue source for many newspapers.
The tech mogul, whose Craigslist site helped replace newspaper classifieds, has given $50 million to revitalize local reporting in New York — including a new gift on Wednesday.
The nonprofit, called the News Integrity Initiative, will be based at the City University of New York. It will run as an independent project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Contributors to the fund include Facebook, Mozilla, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and the Ford Foundation.
Exclusives
Craig Newmark, the entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded Craigslist, announced on Wednesday a $1 million gift to ProPublica. The gift will “allow ProPublica to deploy resources and address opportunities, including adding staff, where they are most needed over a wide range of issues in the public interest,” according to an announcement from the investigative nonprofit.
The Craigslist founder has given to Wikipedia and Poynter, with more to come: “I do think a trustworthy press is mission critical for any democracy,” he says. Nieman Lab’s Ken Doctor talks to him about his passion for philanthropy, its roots in Anton Schulski’s high school history class in Morristown, N.J., Conan the Barbarian, and spending like a drunken sailor.
