With generous endowments, including a $25,000 grant from the Arizona Community Foundation, AZCIR is poised to keep reporting for another year. Not all journalistic start-ups in the Valley have been so successful.
Written by Lauren Loftus | Phoenix Magazine
Investigative news is all over the news these days. See: Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech imploring support of the “principled press.” In a culture of fake news and spurious, self-serving accusations of fake news, the relentless pursuit of truth by dogged journalists seems more important than ever. It also seems harder to do. Layoffs have become the norm since the Great Recession, leading to 20,000 fewer newsroom jobs in 2014 than 20 years prior, according to the Pew Research Center. Factor in falling subscriptions and traditional ad revenue, and it’s no small wonder any newspapers – the traditional volume purveyors of investigative reporting – still exist, let alone produce powerful storytelling that keeps power in check.
