WIRE: A social network solution

World Investigative Reporting Enterprises (WIRE), conceived by Workshop executive editor Charles Lewis, is one of the new model ideas being developed by iLab. WIRE will be a global gateway to investigative journalism published on an online social-utility platform, and a new financial support system to make that possible.

For the March/April 2009 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Lewis wrote about WIRE, as imagined five years into the future.

Lewis describes WIRE as a multimedia platform for the best original stories by the some of the best journalists in the world, commissioned by, reported, written, edited, and published or produced for the news group.

WIRE stories could include video, audio, text, graphics, and searchable databases.

Read the CJR article.

New Economic Models

Investigative News Network

This group of more than 20 nonprofit news organizations was formed in July 2009 to organize the best investigative reporting sites out there. Workshop executive editor Charles Lewis, one of the original four board members, announces the group's first CEO, Kevin Davis.

World Investigative Reporting Enterprises

Inside the iLab, we are incubating WIRE, a new, online social utility platform bringing together the best investigative journalists in the world. WIRE will publish original, multimedia work. This highest quality journalism will be organized, made digitally accessible and searchable and disseminated in an entirely new way, via social networks.

iLab Projects

CONNECTED: Media and broadband ownership and influence

The CONNECTED watchdog project, supported by the Knight Foundation and the Ford Foundation, is a permanent part of the Workshop, with veteran journalist John Dunbar as its director.
In addition to creating cutting edge research on legacy and new media, the project also produces original investigative reporting on the broadband industry.