Episode description

Dan and Ellen talk with David Greising, the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, a century-old civic nonprofit organization that is also home to a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom as part of a new collaboration with the Illinois Solution Partnership.

The new partnership is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. The BGA separates its investigations team and policy team, in order to wall off its journalism from its advocacy work. In May of 2022, Madison Hopkins of the BGA and Cecilia Reyes of the Chicago Tribune won the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for an investigation of the city's history of failed building and fire-safety code enforcement, which proved lethal many times over. 

Dan has a Quick Take on a new development at the Provincetown Independent. Co-founder and editor Ed Miller was a guest on the What Works podcast earlier this year. The Indie is trying something really interesting: A direct public offering, or DPO. 

Ellen has a Quick Take on the INNY's -- the Institute of Nonprofit News Awards. A reporter named Sally Kestin won for best investigative journalism in a small newsroom. We're talking really small: She works for the Asheville Watchdog, a nonprofit news outlet in North Carolina with only one paid employee. The rest are retired journalists, many of them quite well-known. Kestin won the 2013 Pulitzer for Public Service at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.