The Center Square

The Center Square

Type	State and local government reporting
Owner(s)	Franklin News Foundation
Founded	September 2009
Political alignment	Conservative
Language	English
Readership	700,000 subscribers[1]
Website	www.thecentersquare.com

The Center Square, formerly Watchdog.org, is a conservative American news website that features reporting on state and local governments.^[2][3] It is a project of the Franklin News Foundation, a conservative online news organization.^[2][4] The Center Square distributes its content through a newswire service.

As Watchdog.org, it broke a story about website data inaccuracies for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that appeared to show "phantom congressional districts".^[5][6]

Background

The Center Square is a project of the Franklin News Foundation (formerly called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity).^[7] Columbia Journalism Review in 2012 called the Franklin Center "perhaps the most ambitious conservative news organization you’ve never heard of", said its productivity was "impressive," and noted the original news reporting produced by websites it funded in 18 states at the time.^[2]

The Franklin Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, received 95% of its 2011 revenue from mostly anonymous benefactors via the donor-advised fund Donors Trust, which is a major source of funding for conservative groups.^[4]

Watchdog.org

In 2012, Watchdog.org had sites in 18 states.^[8] In 2014, the Franklin Center said it had one reporter in each of 14 state capitols and two in Nebraska and Virginia. In 2015, most of the Watchdog sites had one staff reporter in addition to accepting contributions from citizen journalists via a platform called Watchdog Wire.^[8][9]

The Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research Center surveyed and analyzed nonprofit news organizations active on the state or national level in 2011 and again in 2013.^[10][11] The studies found that the most consistently ideological of the news outlets were those that were organized in networks, specifically the conservative Watchdog network and the liberal American Independent News Network.^[12][10]

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Watchdog.org sites scrutinized the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for evidence that it had misreported or overpaid for the number of jobs saved.^[13][14][15] According to the Washington Monthly, such reports by Watchdog.org could be factual but also "thin and missing important context".^[13]

Watchdog.org became known for stories about "phantom congressional districts" based on data entry errors on the stimulus website Recovery.gov.^[5][13][6] In November 2009, Jim Scarantino of Watchdog New Mexico wrote that data he found on the stimulus website showed millions of federal stimulus dollars marked for congressional districts that did not exist.^[5][13][16] The national Watchdog.org site said that nationally more than $6.4 billion had gone to such "phantom" districts.^[5][13][17] The reports were publicized by Republicans and conservative news outlets and think tanks,^[5] and ABC News claimed the story as a "network exclusive".^[13] According to the Associated Press, "Soon, the 'phantom' congressional district story became shorthand for government waste."^[5] Reporting by the Associated Press concluded that mistyping of ZIP Codes on the stimulus website had caused the discrepancies; it found examples of funds that had been delivered to real districts but had been misreported on the website.^[5][13] It credited Scarantino with uncovering the inaccuracies, calling it "the latest discovery of problems in the massive database of stimulus spending", while noting that "anyone with a computer can still easily find out the name of the business or agency that received the money".^[5]

References

1. "Annual Report 2022 for Web" (PDF). Franklin News Foundation. 2023.^{[dead link‍]}
2. Peters, Justin (September 13, 2012). "'Serious, point-of-view journalism'? A look at the most ambitious conservative news organization you've never heard of". Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
3. "About Us". The Center Square. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
4. Abowd, Paul (February 14, 2013). "Donors use charity to push free-market policies in states". Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved December 3, 2015.
5. "Did "Phantom" Districts Get Stimulus Cash?". Associated Press. November 18, 2009. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
6. Abowd, Paul (February 14, 2013). "Koch-funded charity passes money to free-market think tanks in states". Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved August 5, 2023 – via NBC News.
7. Roberts, Andrea Suozzo, Ken Schwencke, Mike Tigas, Sisi Wei, Alec Glassford, Brandon (May 9, 2013). "Franklin News Foundation, Full Filing - Nonprofit Explorer". ProPublica. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
8. "Franklin Center". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
9. Stverak, Jason (March 12, 2010). "The pros and pros of 'citizen journalism'". Online Journalism Review. University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
10. Holcomb, Jesse; Rosenstiel, Tom; Mitchell, Amy; Caldwell, Kevin; Sartor, Tricia; Vogt, Nancy (July 18, 2011). "Assessing a New Landscape in Journalism". Project for Excellence in Journalism. Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
11. Mitchell, Amy; Jurkowitz, Mark; Holcomb, Jesse; Enda, Jodi; Anderson, Monica (June 10, 2013). "Nonprofit Journalism: A Growing but Fragile Part of the U.S. News System". Project for Excellence in Journalism. Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
12. Benton, Joshua (July 18, 2011). "Pew: Nonprofit journalism doesn't mean ideology-free". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
13. McGann, Laura (May 1, 2010). "Partisan Hacks". Washington Monthly. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
14. Jim Scarantino (November 15, 2009). "More Than 4,800 New Jobs Created in New Mexico in Less than a Month from Stimulus, According to Obama Administration Data". Watchdog New Mexico. Retrieved December 3, 2015.
15. Michael Noyes (November 16, 2009). "Stimulus Adds 13 Congressional Districts to Montana". Watchdog Montana. Archived from the original on December 3, 2015. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
16. Scarantino, Jim (November 16, 2009). "Updated: Obama Stimulus Creates New Congressional Districts and Promotes New Mexico from Banana Republic to Coconut Republic". Watchdog New Mexico. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
17. "$6.4 Billion Stimulus Goes to Phantom Districts". Watchdog National. November 17, 2009. Retrieved December 3, 2015. A reporter from the Montana Policy Institute confronted the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees the site, about these non-existent congressional districts on Monday afternoon. Ed Pound, Director of Communications for the board, said that the faulty information came from recipients of stimulus funds.

External links

• Official website