Truthout

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Truthout

Formation	2001; 23 years ago (2001)
Type	501(c)3 organization
Tax ID no.	20-0031641
Legal status	Non-profit
Headquarters	Sacramento, California
Employees	25
Website	truthout.org

Truthout is an American non-profit progressive news organization which describes itself as "dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues".^[1] Truthout reports news from a left-wing perspective,^[2] with its main areas of focus including mass incarceration and prison abolition advocacy, social justice, climate change, militarism, economics and labor, U.S. LGBTQIA rights and reproductive justice.^{[citation needed]}

Truthout's senior leadership team is composed of Executive Director Ziggy West Jeffery; Editor-in-Chief Negin Owliaei; and Publisher Saima Desai.^[3] The organization’s annual operating budget is approximately $2.2 million as of 2021.^[4]

On May 13, 2006, after Jason Leopold posted on Truthout that Karl Rove had been indicted by the grand jury investigating the Plame affair, Rove spokesman Mark Corallo denied the story, calling it "a complete fabrication".^[5] Truthout defended the story, saying on May 15 they had two sources "who were explicit about the information" published,^[6] and confirmed on May 25 that they had "three independent sources confirming that attorneys for Karl Rove were handed an indictment" on the night of May 12.^[6] The grand jury concluded without returning an indictment of Rove.^[7]

In his memoir, Courage and Consequence, Rove addressed the Leopold article, writing that Leopold is a "nut with Internet access" and that "thirty-five reporters called [Rove's defense attorney] Luskin or Corallo to ask about the Truthout report." According to Rove, "[Special Counsel] Fitzgerald got a kick out of the fictitious account and e-mailed Luskin to see how he felt after such a long day."^[8]

Jason Leopold continued to write investigative pieces for Truthout through 2014;^[9] he joined Vice News that year.^[10]

In 2009, Truthout became the first online-only news website to unionize.^[11] Truthout staff have worked remotely since the organization’s founding in 2001^[12] – a fact that stymied traditional union organizing and certification processes that take place in a physical workplace.

Truthout held the first virtual card check in the U.S. on August 27, 2009, using faxed images of each employee’s signature to verify their signed union cards.^[13] Truthout’s board of directors recognized the union on the same day.

About a dozen Truthout employees became members of the NewsGuild-CWA Local 36047,^[14] and Truthout remains a unionized workplace today.^[15]

60 Minutes cited a report published on Truthout as a source for its May 16, 2010 episode about the BP oil spill and the whistleblower who warned about a possible blowout at another BP deepwater drilling site.^[16] Digital Journal wrote up the story.^[17] CNN's Randi Kaye in an article cited a report by Truthout as the first article on BP Alaska employee Mark Kovac's inside knowledge about the safety concerns at the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska BP oil field.^[18] On July 14, 2010, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing in the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials. The hearing^[19] titled "The Safety of Hazardous Liquid Pipelines (Part 2): Integrity Management", cited an investigative report by Truthout as a document for the committee's investigation.^[20]

In 2011, Truthout suffered a hacking breach in which ten days of articles were deleted.^[21]

In 2013, Truthout journalist Mike Ludwig unearthed with a Freedom of Information Act request with the Interior Department information that revealed that fracking technology was being used on offshore oil rigs in the ecologically sensitive Santa Barbara Channel.^[22] Coastal conservationists were alarmed, and environmental groups sprang into action, generating protests and broad public discussion^[23] about offshore fracking. At one point, lawsuits filed by environmental groups forced federal officials to place a moratorium^[24] on offshore fracking in the channel while regulators reviewed the practice and their rules for making it safe. In 2014, the EPA issued a new rules requiring offshore drillers to disclose fracking chemicals they dump into the ocean off the California coast.^[25]

In 2016, Dahr Jamail and Truthout released^[26] Navy documents outlining plans for combat training exercises along vast non-military areas of Washington state coastline. The documents showed the areas the Navy was prepared to utilize, without the mandatory risk assessments, medical plans, surveys of training areas and coordinating their activities with local, state and federal law enforcement officials. The release of these documents forced the Navy to postpone this training for at least 2 years.^[27] It caused commotion within the Washington state government, as they were not aware of the Navy's plans.^[28]

Freelancer and Truthout writer Aaron Miguel Cantú was one of six journalists faced with felony rioting charges after covering the inauguration of Donald Trump.^[29][30] In July 2018, all charges against Cantu and many of the other protestors were dismissed.^[31]

In 2023 Truthout launched the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism, a program that offers assistance to small and emerging progressive news organizations in order to “help grow the critical media ecosystem necessary to build grassroots power.”^[32] Truthout provides these organizations with guidance on growth and sustainability, consults on editorial and business strategy, and provides access to resources such as development databases. Maya Schenwar, Truthout’s editor-at-large and former editor-in-chief, serves as the Center’s director.

Explaining why Truthout founded the Center, Schenwar explains, “[W]e want to exist as a publication, but we can’t do it alone. We don’t want to be anyone’s sole news source. We want to have this vibrant ecosystem of different publications that are helping enrich people’s understanding of the world, and propel them toward action on all these different fronts.”^[33]

Through the Center, Truthout also collaborates on editorial projects with other progressive news organizations, including Zealous, Teen Vogue, Inquest, and Deceleration.^[32] A 2023 series created in collaboration between Truthout, Zealous, and Teen Vogue about alternatives to incarceration won a 2024 Anthem Award.^[34]

In March 2024, through its Center for Grassroots Journalism, Truthout co-founded Media Against Apartheid and Displacement (MAAD), a website that serves as a hub for articles published by progressive media organizations about the Israel-Hamas war and about Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.^[35] Reporting and analysis is from an anti-Zionist perspective.

The project includes articles published by Prism, Truthout, In These Times, Mondoweiss, Institute for Palestine Studies, Haymarket Books, The Real News Network, The Forge, Waging Nonviolence, The Dig, The Kansas City Defender, Briarpatch, Baltimore Beat, Hammer & Hope, Scalawag, Convergence Magazine, and Analyst News.^[36]

The Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism coordinates the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize for personal essays by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors.^[37] The prize is named after Truthout’s editor-at-large and former editor-in-chief Maya Schenwar’s sister, who was incarcerated on and off over the course of 14 years before she died of an overdose in 2020.^[38][39] Keeley Schenwar wrote for Truthout about her incarceration, including about giving birth while in prison.^[40]

Each year, two winners are awarded prizes of $3,000 each, and the essays are published on Truthout’s website. The prize was first awarded in 2021.^[37]

A 2024 Anthem Award in the category of News & Journalism was awarded to “Remaking the Exceptional”, a series of explainer videos made through a collaboration between Truthout, Zealous, and Teen Vogue about myths about and alternatives to policing and incarceration.^[34]

In 2022, the Crossroads Fund presented The Donald F. Erickson Synapses Award to Truthout, for independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues.^[41]

The thirteenth annual Izzy Award was awarded to nonprofit news outlet Truthout, journalist Liliana Segura, senior reporter at The Intercept and journalist Tim Schwab, writing in The Nation.^[42]

Dahr Jamail was awarded the 2018 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for his reporting on climate change and other environmental issues. The judges wrote: "There is an urgency and passion in Dahr Jamail's reporting that is justified by the literally earth-changing subject matter. And it's supported by science and on-the-scene sources, whether covering ocean pollution, sea level rise, deafening noise pollution or Fukushima radiation."^[43]

Jamail produces a monthly wrap-up of the latest climate research and trends – "Climate Disruption Dispatches".^[44]

A joint Truthout and Earth Island Journal investigation "America's Toxic Prisons"^[45] by Candice Bernd, Zoe Loftus-Farren, and Maureen Nandini Mitra won awards in two categories of the 2018 San Francisco Press Club Journalism Awards.^[46] The investigation won second place in the Magazines category for environment/nature reporting and investigative reporting.

In 2012, Truthout journalist Gareth Porter was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism^[47] for his work uncovering the Obama administration's military strategy in Afghanistan. "In a series of extraordinary articles, Gareth Porter has torn away the facades of the Obama administration and disclosed a military strategy that amounts to a war against civilians." Amongst Porter's award-winning stories were 'How McChrystal and Petraeus Built an Indiscriminate "Killing Machine,^[48]"' and 'The Lies That Sold Obama's Escalation in Afghanistan.^[49]'

Maya Schenwar, currently the editor in chief of Truthout, was awarded in the 2013 Online Column Writing category by the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Awards^[50] for her columns on mass incarceration,^[51] the death penalty,^[52] and solitary confinement.^[53]

Truthout's executive director is Ziggy West Jeffery and the editor-in-chief is Negin Owliaei.^[3]

Truthout's Board of Directors comprises Maya Schenwar, McMaster University professor and educational theorist Henry A. Giroux, policy director Robert Naiman, and Lewis R. Gordon.^[54]

Truthout's Board of Advisors includes Mark Ruffalo, Dean Baker, Richard D. Wolff, William Ayers, Mark Weisbrot.^[55] The late Howard Zinn was a member of the advisory board.

The late William Rivers Pitt was Truthout's senior editor and lead columnist.^[56]

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