When the American people reelected Richard Nixon in 1972, Carl Jensen, a professor at Sonoma State University, was bewildered. Less than a month before the election, Woodward and Bernstein reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of “a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.” And yet, that story wouldn’t resonate nationally until after the election, and Nixon won by a landslide.

Jensen formed Project Censored four years later to research how the American media was failing to provide all the information the people need to make informed decisions. Today, the non-profit organization is still going strong and just released its 2014 edition, a 429-page compendium that includes in-depth media analysis and a list of the top 25 stories most overlooked by the national media.

While the media landscape has changed in some ways over the past 37 years that Project Censored has been uncovering overlooked stories, many of the problems Jensen identified long ago remain a challenge today.

The United States has a free press guaranteed by its constitution; it has the world’s most sophisticated communications system; and it has more independent media outlets disseminating more information 24-hours a day than anywhere else in the world. Considering our autonomous press and the quantity of information that daily bombards us, we should be a very knowledgeable populace. Unfortunately, high technology and a free press do not guarantee a well-informed society.

While these words could have been written yesterday, they were pulled from an essay Jensen first published in 1989. Jensen continues:

The top overlooked story of the year revealed one of the underlying causes of “censorship” and issued a warning of what is to come. Media critic Ben Bagdikian revealed that just 29 corporations controlled half or more of all the media business in America in 1987. More disturbing, Wall Street analysts, specializing in the media, predicted that only half a dozen giant firms will control most of our media by the 1990s. The full potential impact of this information cartel on a free society is still ignored by our press.

As we all know, Bagdikian’s predictions have proven prescient. This is just one of many stories that Project Censored spotlighted well before it became a national story. Last year’s #1 censored story was America’s emerging police state, one that exploded onto the national airwaves following the Edward Snowden revelations. Each edition of the book includes a section that takes a look at what’s happened to the stories highlighted in previous years, and many of the stories grow legs after being memorialized in the book.

While Project Censored began as a research project at Sonoma State with students from the university contributing, the research has since expanded to universities across the country under the leadership of its current director Mickey Huff, a professor at Diablo Valley College, which is located about a 45 minute drive from San Francisco. This past year, 56 professors at 18 different colleges worked together to identify and analyze more than 200 under reported stories to create a list of the top 25.

Huff and his predecessor Peter Philips, a professor at Sonoma State who took over for Jensen in the 90s, have distilled a replicable process that anyone can use with any news story to assess its role in the media landscape and to help determine if it belongs in Project Censored’s compendium. But that process, is more than just a curation tool for generating content for the book, says Huff. Project Censored has created a curriculum for media literacy that forces critical thinking about the stories we read.

Students participating with Project Censored review stories by asking a series of questions to help determine if a particular news item is a strong candidate for the book. He or she must first decide whether the story is timely and verify that the information reported is factual and accurate. The student will then research other stories that have been published on the issue to examine how the story fits within the larger media landscape and that the story hasn’t been adequately covered elsewhere.

“The books are the process of teaching media literacy,” he said. “We’ve taught several thousand students. … The books are the fruit of the labor.”

Project Censored plans to continue to seed the model for media analysis by sharing it on their Web site and speaking to the availability of the curriculum at public events and during conversations with professors and other educators. Huff said he is hoping to see the number of participants contributing research continue to grow, and that individuals unaffiliated with any institutions are invited to help with the research as well.

Beyond the list of censored stories, each book also includes a wide range of media analysis. This year Huff invited Journalism that Matters to contribute an essay, which I wrote, for a chapter on “Media Democracy in Action: Free Press and Free Speech Advocates that Make a Difference.” That chapter also includes essays by Daniel Ellsberg, Sunsara Taylor, Ken Walden and others.

Huff and Philips also host a Project Censored radio show for the Pacifica Networks, and there is even an award-winning documentary about their work that was just released this year. But despite this organizational success, Project Censored is still struggling to remain economically sustainable.

“We are undergoing some growing pains, and we don’t get foundation money much anymore as we’ve pissed off a lot of people over the past 37 years. So we are working on getting as many $5 to $10 a month subscribers to help us operate our Web sites and outreach,” said Huff. “We would love to be in hundreds of schools and have the radio on-air in as many places as we can to spread the word, especially about critical thinking and media literacy.”

While the challenges facing journalism are widely universal, the solutions toward expanding audiences, improving engagement and bolstering financial viability are often unique and unexpected.

Many of these initiatives were designed for specific applications or particular communities, but the lessons learned along the way can frequently be applied to other environments. The Illuminations Project is built around highlighting these sorts of solutions, and today Journalism that Matters is announcing a call-out to showcase as many of these success stories as possible.

Do you know of a news site or publication that’s doing something that others should follow? You could earn up to $250 by sharing their story on the Illuminations Blog.

There are three ways to participate:

1) Complete a story about an example of a journalistic initiative or publication that’s found a formula for success, and send us your draft. If we like it, we’ll publish it and give you $100.

2) Send us a short pitch for a story you’d like to contribute for The Illuminations Project. We’ll look at your pitch and if it seems like a good fit for the site, we’ll offer you anywhere from $100 to $250 for the completed piece. If we accept your pitch but we aren’t able to develop a successful article through the editing process, we’ll give you a $50 kill fee.

3) If you’d rather let someone else do the writing, then send us ideas for stories about what’s working in journalism that you’d like to see others write. We’ll give you $25 for every detailed idea that develops into a story on the site.

For more details, or to submit a pitch or story please send us an e-mail.

Welcome to the the Weekly Illumination, a JTM newsletter offering a quick look at the week in journalism with a focus on what’s working in today’s news ecology. The Illumination is a curated collection of stories about journalism innovation, notable job opportunities, grants and updates about Journalism that Matters.

The newsletter is distributed to e-mail subscribers, through the JTM Google Group, and posted to the Illuminations blog. In this week’s Illumination we’ll look at native advertising, changes to the law governing how start-ups are allowed to raise money, and further explore how to cultivate an engaged audience committed to civility.

The engagement principle

In the latest installment of her series on the emerging news and information ecosystem, Board Member Peggy Holman looks at how journalism is more powerful as a two-way conversation and presents a list of tips that anyone can use to improve engagement on their Web site. 

New York Times repeats same mistake after 25 years

In 1988, the New York Times reported that Mario and Luigi, the beloved Nintendo characters, were employed as janitors. Somehow the Times managed to make the same mistake when it published its obituary for Hirsohi Yamauchi, the former president of Nintendo when it quoted the 1988 article. While the person responsible for the first mistake was likely unfamiliar with the Super Mario Brothers, whoever made the mistake last week probably grew up playing the games.

The search for civil comments

Online comments have become a part of almost every news site and with online comments comes trolls and other abusive behavior that can make meaningful conversation impossible. In this week’s column for The Illuminations Project, I look at how Popular Science has abandoned comments and examine research into creating a more civil space for users to participate in journalism.

Is “branded journalism” an oxymoron?

More and more ad copy is being written by working journalists employed by news organizations. It’s often referred to as native advertising or branded content, but a story on NiemanLab.org this week is using the term “branded journalism” to describe Ideas Lab, a Web site owned by GE but populated with content from Atlantic Media.

But with branded content increasingly meaning a path of survival for failing news publications, the burgeoning form is pushing to encroach further into the rest of the editorial content, as Michael Sebastian reports in Ad Age.

The newspaper business through the eyes of Google

During a presentation in Italy, Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, described the realities of the newspaper business with such clarity that Matthew Ingram headlined his story: Google’s Chief economist understands media better than some industry executives do.

“What sorts of ads can a newspaper show next to a “pure” news story on an earthquake in Haiti or a bombing in Baghdad? “Pure news” has very high social value to interested readers, but has low commercial value due to the difficulty of showing contextual relevant ads,” said Varian. “Traditionally, newspapers made money from ads in the finance section, home and garden, automotive, entertainment, travel, classified and fashion sections. Why? Because that’s where advertisers could target readers interested in those subjects.”

The more you sell the more you make

There are two ways to make a profit as a business with products to sell. You can sell a lot of the same product, or you can sell a few of many many different products. Traditionally newspapers have essentially had only one thing to sell, but the New York Times and the Washington Post are about to lead a charge of news outlets offering more things for people to buy, says Ken Doctor at Nieman Lab.

The events business has helped a number of publications to thrive. The Texas Tribune stands to bring in more than $1 million this year from events alone, reports Justin Ellis for Nieman Lab.

The new journalism site Beacon has an interesting business model that rewards writers’ entrepreneurial efforts while hopefully creating enough money to help the 23 well known writers on the site make their rent each month. To learn more check out Caroline O’Donovan’s article at Nieman Lab.

New rules allow startups to beg for change

Until now, it’s been illegal for startups to ask investors to bankroll them, and companies were limited in how they are allowed to discuss their fundraising activity. Now the rules have changed and startups can actively solicit investors through the Web or other public channels.

Job(s) of the Week

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com, which is now owned by ESPN, is looking for a managing editor.

For the past 75 years, the Nieman Foundation has offered one-year fellowships. Applications are still available.

Each week, The Illumination will include links to jobs, grants and fellowship opportunities. If you are hiring or know someone who is, send me an e-mail and I’ll gladly list it here. If you’re looking for a job, let me know what kind of work you are looking for and I’ll try to post anything I come across that could be a good fit.