Consortium News this year is celebrating its 25th Anniversary as the first independent news site on the internet.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
This year we are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Consortium News, begun in November 1995 by Robert Parry. Bob had a long and distinguished run as an investigative reporter for the Associated Press until he ran into editorial suppression of his stories. When it happened again at Newsweek, Bob quit to launch the first independent news site on the internet in the manner of his role models I.F. Stone and George Seldes.
I likewise ran into editorial suppression at the various powerful, mainstream media outlets that I worked for, and in 2011 I joined the consortium of journalists Bob had put together to report on suppressed news for this web site. I became editor-in-chief after Bob’s very untimely death in January 2018.
We’ve worked hard to keep Bob’s legacy alive: taking a strictly non-partisan, non-ideological approach to the news. It has made us enemies on both the left and the right, from those who impose purity tests, herding people into political camps. Consortium News has always stood outside all camps and will continue to do so, whatever the consequences.
The late Robert Parry.
Our mission has been the same since 1995: report on news suppressed or distorted by corporate media, and follow the facts where they lead, letting partisan hacks (and extremists) on either side of the aisle be damned.
It seems to be working. Our readership is up 21 percent over the past year. It has also grown dramatically more diverse over the past two years.
In May 2018, 78 percent of our readers were male, and 22 female. By March of this year, 58 percent were male and 42 percent female—a 20 percent difference. We’ve also got a younger audience. From 84 percent of viewers over the age of 55 (and only 2.6 percent under the age of 44), to 25 percent now younger than 44.
A good part of our growing appeal to a more diverse audience is the success of CN Live!, our current affairs webcast launched last July.
Since the pandemic broke, Consortium News has covered the Covid-19 crisis in unique ways, with country reports on Haiti, Brazil, India, North Korea and other nations; historical views of past pandemics, and a focus on frontline and essential workers. We have also examined the U.S. domestic political and geo-political dimensions of the crisis.
All the while we’ve highlighted other news being crowded out by Covid coverage. Principle among this is the ongoing imprisonment and extradition process against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
In this time of widespread misinformation regarding the pandemic and other issues you can depend on Consortium News to continue its long-standing tradition of careful, evidence-based reporting and analysis that you will find in few other places.
We rely solely on the generous support of readers. This insures our independence. So please contribute a tax-deductible donation during our Spring Fund Drive. Our survival depends on it.
Thank you.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
Please Donate to Consortium News’ 25th Anniversary Spring Fund Drive
I enjoy Consortium News, and will be happy to make a donation, my only regret is thatI don’t have more to give.
Thank you all for the truthful and fearless information. I wish there were more such people in oue world
Count me in. Your truthful journalism it the thing that keeps from going insane.
I have been reading and appreciating CH for many years and wish you all the best for the future. Julian Assange is a very important part of the coverage. Thank you.
Sorry! I wrote CH by error!! I will donate as well!
Joe, I’ll be putting my check in the mail.
Thanks for all you do. Glad to see your emails to me are back up.
Cal at 80 in the Great Sonoran Desert.
What’s left of it.
Remembering Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Charles Bowden and great reporters of the facts.
There are some jewels of journalism in this world and you are one very bright! When we look at MSM news it is an insult to our capacity of thinking. Those lackeys of corporate power are a shame. So much garbage produced by those poor wretches, they should be condemned to clean up this horrendous pollution. Thank you for your excellent work, we need it urgently. Julian Assange ist behind bars because of those pipsqueaks who are not able to stand up for their colleague. Happy “silver birthday”. There will be the golden one and that will be big because journalistic quality will be more and more necessary.
Congratulations for your “Silver Birthday” I would be happy to celebrate with you your “Golden Birthday” or better my children will do it with you. We need independent journalism much more than before, and this valuable work is attacked much more than before. Never there was so much conformity in the MSM with corporate power and that is a shame for this profession. They are all lackeys. Julian Assange is behind bars for his excellent journalistic works, Craig Murray risks prison for his outspoken critics to corporate power. We need true journalism and deep analysis as you deliver, thank you for that. Everything else is miserable propaganda!
Donation submitted. I appreciate journalism and the “places” to get to the “heart” of things have been rapidly diminishing. Especially, of course, on the “main stream”. Even so, if you dig a bit (not hard really), the “story” is easy to find, and more and more folks are learning this – that is what I think. Good. Let the news flow freely to all willing to get to the bottom of the story. We need unbiased objective news please, and God in heaven, let it be that no future journalist just practicing their trade be put in jail for telling the truth.
Happy to send in a Grant’s worth of funds. Will keep on contributing if the quality remains.
Thanks,
Buffalo_Ken
Still the best. THANK YOU.