Programs/Content

Political news from Michigan’s WKAR goes mobile with new app

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WKAR-TV in East Lansing, Mich., will make content from a weekly state politics and public affairs show available via a mobile app funded by a grant from the Investigative News Network. The scope of WKAR’s proposed app helped it stand out among a pool of 48 applicants, said Kevin Davis, c.e.o. and executive director of INN. “What made it unique was that the app was focused more on a program rather than on general content,” Davis said. “It was quite niche.” (Disclosure: Current is contracting with INN for web development services.)

The weekly show, Off the Record, has provided coverage of Michigan affairs for 43 years, aided in part by WKAR’s location near the state capital. The half-hour broadcast is supplemented by OTR Extra, a live webcast featuring additional discussions among the show’s guests.

Quick Takes

Center for Investigative Reporting launches “I Files” YouTube channel

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The Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting unveiled its new YouTube channel, The I Files, today. The channel, funded by the Knight Foundation, will be curated by CIR and will repost investigative-reporting videos from a wide assortment of content partners. Among the partners is the Investigative News Network, a consortium of 60 nonprofit news organizations that includes American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Among CIR’s for-profit partners: The BBC, ABC News, The New York Times and Al Jazeera. The channel will include videos from freelance journalists as well.

Development

Delays by IRS put chills on news startups

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Nonprofit news outfits that have sprung up across the country to fill gaps left by commercial media have hit an unexpected barrier in establishing themselves as providers of local news and information: the Internal Revenue Service. As many as a dozen journalism startups, most of them run largely by volunteers and accepting no advertising, have had their requests to be recognized as tax-exempt organizations delayed for many months and, in some cases, years.