About us
Our mission
Community Info Coop’s mission is to make journalism and media more representative of BIPOC and working-class people.
Our vision
Community Info Coop envisions a world where communities are equipped with the systems, tools, and information they need to design and maintain media institutions that serve their civic information needs.
Our organization
The Jersey Bee
The Bloomfield Info Project is a public service journalism lab is an extension of the Info Districts Project and seeks to explore practical pathways to establishing community-run, publicly funded local news organizations.
Info Districts
Info Districts is a public policy program that advances media policy to establish local news as a public utility. The Info Districts program enables the development of special service districts and other public media institutions that meet the local news needs of BIPOC and working-class people by supporting participatory, public service news models like The Jersey Bee.
Just Transition
Just Transition is a special project that provides support to allied networks and organizations via training, research, and organizing to advance just and equitable journalism in the face of a changing economy and climate.
Our commitments
COOPERATION
The Community Info Coop is committed to cooperative governance. We seek to establish a multi-stakeholder governance structure to oversee our work and will strive to act in accordance with cooperative principles until we do so. This is in order to model the democratic institutional behavior we advocate and ensure our work remains responsive to the needs of our communities.
JUSTICE AND EQUITY
The Community Info Coop aims to work in alignment with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition principles and City Bureau community engagement guidelines.
INDEPENDENCE
The Community Info Coop is committed to independence and subscribes to the standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:
We retain full authority over editorial content and strategic decisions to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between editorial and programmatic decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services, or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants, and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.
Our organization may consider donations to support the development of particular programs or areas of coverage, but our organization maintains control of those programs or coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content or program decisions, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with industry standards.
TRANSPARENCY
The Community Info Coop is fiscally sponsored by the Movement Alliance Project, a movement media nonprofit based in Philadelphia. The Community Info Coop launched thanks to the generosity of 63 backers on Kickstarter. Our major donors have included Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Reynolds Journalism Institute, New Jersey Local News Lab, and the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
We are committed to transparency and subscribe to the standards of donor transparency adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:
We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.
Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services, or opinions.
We accept gifts and grants from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics, and special projects. Our news judgments and strategic decisions are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review, or edit content or program decisions.
We will make public all donors who give $5,000 or more per year. As a not-for-profit organization, we will avoid accepting donations from anonymous sources, and we will not accept donations from government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates actively seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.