Freedom of the Press Foundation, Supporting Government Accountability & Transparency Through Crowd Funding

Freedom of the Press Foundation is a new group that promotes and funds organizations working for government transparency and accountability. The foundation works through crowd funding—online donations are collected for a rotating list of non-profits. The inaugural list includes WikiLeaks and The National Security Archive. The foundation’s board of directors includes Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, and Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin. The New York Times Media Decoder has more on the group.

Increasingly, non-profit media and transparency organizations are emerging as a critical component of the journalism landscape. Leveraging the power of the Internet, these organizations are helping to reinvent and reimagine independent watchdog reporting.

Right now, too many of those organizations are struggling for funding, relying on a few large foundations or competing for donors. Our goal is to broaden the financial base of these types of institutions—both start-ups and established non-profit organizations — by crowd-sourcing funding and making it easy for people to support the best journalism from an array of organizations all in one place.

via Boing Boing