About Courier
At COURIER, we’re building the largest left-leaning local news network in the country. We neutralize false information by delivering good, factual information directly to those stuck in right-wing echo chambers.
Our network of local newsrooms is dedicated to providing honest, relevant news and stories to the communities we report from.
Our Mission
Courier Newsroom is a civic media company that protects and strengthens our democracy through credible, fact-based journalism that seeks to create a more informed, engaged, and representative America.
Under the direction of Courier Newsroom’s executive leadership team, our eight local newsrooms provide the communities we serve—including the people who live in information silos—with news centered on the people and policies affecting their lives. Our reporting is produced for the social media platforms and online channels our audiences spend their time on, with an emphasis on video, graphics, and skimmable newsletters to inform and engage our audiences in the ways they consume information today.
It would be good to see more news organizations producing factual news from a variety of viewpoints, including from the left. As I said, objectivity is a myth. Journalists can lead with their values and still remain faithful to facts. A few organizations are doing that, such as Courier Newsroom.Mark Jacob, former Sunday editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune
VALUES-DRIVEN JOURNALISM
At Courier Newsroom, we hold a set of values that guide our reporting on the issues most important to the communities we serve. Those values include the following:
• Our reporting will be rooted in facts, science, and the communities our newsrooms serve.
• We will strive to tell the truth and will tell you when we get it wrong, because we believe that good information is the lifeblood of democracy, and that democracy will fail when factual journalism is out of reach.
• We will be intentional about centering the voices of the people in our communities, using our platforms to amplify their experiences and opinions, especially those who are most impacted by the issues being decided in their statehouses and in Washington.
• As a civic news organization, our journalists will focus their reporting around efforts to strengthen communities, rebuild struggling economies, expand access to health care and child care, address the climate crisis, and reduce inequality in all forms—and covering the leaders championing those efforts. We will be relentless in our coverage of attempts or actions to undermine democratic institutions, especially voting rights, and ballot access, and we will make a special effort to report on public actors who are advancing those efforts.
• We will never manufacture “both sides” to our stories, giving equal weight to conspiracy theories or junk science. We will always provide proper context in our reporting to help ensure we don’t continue the spread of misinformation or disinformation.
• We will be committed to holding accountable elected officials or politicians who betray our values, cause harm, or seek to cause harm to the communities we serve.
• We will not use political jargon; instead, we will work to break down inaccessible political language for our audiences.
• We will publish our work where our audiences are: When they move to new platforms or technologies, our brands and journalists will follow.
• We will prioritize hiring and contracting reporters, editors, and producers who live in the communities we serve, and we will remain committed to staffing our teams and sourcing our stories with the people who reflect the diverse and inclusive country in which we reside.
OUR FUNDING MODEL
Courier Newsroom is a public benefit corporation owned by Good Information Inc., and supported by a variety of funding sources, including reader contributions, sponsors, and philanthropic and corporate underwriting. (A list of Good Information Inc.’s investors, underwriters, and supporters who have contributed more than $25,000 to support our journalism is available by request.)
We do not accept funding or underwriting from any national or state political party, party committee, candidate, or campaign.
Editorial independence is a core tenet of our work and we maintain an editorial firewall between our funding sources and newsrooms that ensures that our underwriters would never influence our journalism.
Our aim is to build a better information ecosystem online that values truth over clicks and democracy over profit margins and our funding model and community reflects that.