To open up today’s Poynter Report, I turn it over to Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s media business analyst. Here’s Rick’s report on the Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity, one of the earliest nonprofits built to tackle big investigative projects, is shutting down. The grim details of trouble with finances and management over the last two years were detailed in an article Tuesday by Sewell Chan, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.

I’m interested in a different perspective — what founder and driving force Chuck Lewis created in 1989, then how it flourished and eventually stumbled. The rise and fall, pardon the cliché, seems to mirror the vastly expanded nonprofit sector’s current sustainability challenges.

Chan reported that Lewis has Alzheimer’s, so I did not reach out to him for comment. But I did speak with Bill Buzenberg, a top lieutenant and one of his successors. “Chuck did a fantastic job starting and running the center,” Buzenberg said. “He was my mentor and is a hero in the investigative field. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Specifically, Buzenberg continued, Lewis had two essential skills to lead the work. He knew how to spot the most ambitious investigative projects and how to pull them off. Plus, he could raise money. Those different talents are hard to find in one body; some of Lewis’s successors had both, others not.

I got to know Lewis a dozen years ago. By then, he had retired as executive director of the CPI, though still highly involved as board chair. We talked about academic work he took on with collaborators, wrestling with the issue (still a lively one) of how best to measure the impact of an organization’s journalism. I wondered whether there might be a way to work together. He was receptive, but we couldn’t figure out what that might be.

An example of how Lewis was forward-looking: He emailed in 2013 that an issue fascinating to him was “the evolving relationship between for profit news organizations and nonprofit news organizations. Now we have seen the joint hiring of a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter by the Washington Post and American U/The Investigative Reporting Workshop. What is the future of such collaborations and partnerships that also involve joint publication? That’s relevant vis-a-vis nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, etc.”

Before that, I had heard Lewis tell the center’s origin story at conferences several times. After five years at “60 Minutes” as a producer for Mike Wallace, he quit, certain that executive producer Don Hewitt had edited the name of a friend out of a script. If that was happening at the pinnacle of commercial investigative news, he reasoned, he ought to be running his own operation as a nonprofit immune from advertising pressure.

To get the center started, he mortgaged his house and dipped into savings. Soon after, he proved adept at raising a lot of foundation money. In 1998, he was awarded one of the MacArthur Foundation’s Fellowships (colloquially known as “genius grants”).

CPI scored many scoops through the years. Some were heavy: the denial of health benefits to coal miners with black lung disease (a Pulitzer winner). Others skewed a bit lighter: the Clintons’ practice of hosting sleepovers in the White House for big donors.

Lewis and Buzenberg had also been nurturing what Buzenberg called “our foreign bureau,” the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism. In 2016, ICIJ produced the massive “Panama Papers” report and database on banking abuses, drawing on leaked documents and involving investigative reporters from all over the world.

Buzenberg maintains that through the years, executive directors could have come to Lewis (or him) for advice when funding shortfalls occurred — potentially avoiding periods of extreme belt-tightening and turnover at the top.

Others, like columnist Richard Tofel, a founding executive of ProPublica, trace the problem in part to Lewis and more to the passivity of the CPI’s board. One of those executive directors who I happened to speak with as they began the job said the difficulty was not so much Lewis himself as the operation’s attachment to an inflexible version of how things had always been done.

I look at the demise of CPI with three takeaways:

• Lewis triumphed at attracting foundation attention to the civic power of great journalism, long before that came into fashion. That probably also proved problematic over time. Reliance on philanthropy can sting when priorities at a foundation change or champions of the organization move on.
• Philanthropy often gravitates to the exciting new thing over the long-established thing. The center seeded the creation of a host of competitors for donor dollars. Foundations often choose to make grants to organizations with a track record of delivering; they have little interest, though, in funding turnarounds.
• Nonprofits (and Fortune 500 companies, too) are not forever. Thirty-six years, with many successes, constitutes a very good run.

My thanks to Rick Edmonds for today’s lead item. Now onto the rest of the newsletter …

Choosing a side

MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. (Courtesy: MSNBC)

When you think of Steve Kornacki, you probably think of a few things: his white dress shirt with the sleeves bunched up to the elbows, khaki pants, rolled up notes in his hand and, of course, the big map behind him. Kornacki has been breaking down election results on TV since the 2014 midterms.

And, oh, you probably think of NBC News and MSNBC.

But with MSNBC now being spun off by Comcast, MSNBC and NBC will become separate entities with separate news divisions. Kornacki can’t work for both, so he has chosen to work exclusively with NBC News, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Stephen Battaglio.

Kornacki has mostly been seen on MSNBC in recent times. But even though he is now going with NBC News, his work remains essentially the same. He will continue to lead the network’s coverage of polling and election results and keep his gig chipping in on NBC Sports’ coverage of the NFL (breaking down playoff odds) and horse racing (giving the latest odds).

Battaglio reports Kornacki will appear on the streaming NBC News NOW, as well as NBC programs such as “NBC Nightly News,” “Meet the Press” and the “Today” show.

Kornacki was a guest on last season’s “The Poynter Report Podcast,” and I asked him what’s more fun: election night, Kentucky Derby day or “Sunday Night Football.”

Kornacki laughed and said, “Kentucky Derby day, no question. I still can’t believe I get to do that one.”

And now he will keep getting to do that, as well as his other NBC News duties.

Losing Kornacki might be seen as a bit of a blow for MSNBC, considering he is one of the network’s more recognizable (and well-respected and likable) journalists. Aside from his solid work, the guy was one of People’s “Sexiest Men Alive” in 2020, for goodness’ sake.

As Battaglio wrote, “Kornacki’s deep dives into polling numbers and voting results became a signature ingredient in the network’s political coverage, especially after he put in marathon hours in front of his touchscreen electoral college map when it took four days to call the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden.”

And he might not be the last to leave. Others might be faced with the same choice as Kornacki — either to stay at MSNBC or go to NBC News — and make the same decision.

However, MSNBC has said all along that it will continue to hire more than 100 journalists to get ready for its split from NBC.

Speaking of which, MSNBC has filled the two remaining open slots for co-hosts on “The Weekend: Primetime.” It has chosen political analyst Elise Jordan and veteran political correspondent Antonia Hylton.

They will join MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin and Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell as co-hosts of the show, which will start in May and air Saturdays and Sundays from 6 to 9 p.m. Eastern.

Not giving up

When the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad came crashing down in Syria last December, there was renewed hope that missing American journalist and Marine Corps veteran Austin Tice would be found alive. Tice was kidnapped while reporting from Syria in 2012.

Despite being missing for that long, the U.S. government, as well as Tice’s family, believed that Tice was still alive. The U.S. has tried negotiating for Tice’s release, although the Syrian government, under al-Assad, had always denied having him. As recently as last Dec. 9, then-President Joe Biden said that even though the U.S. had “no direct evidence” of Tice’s status, he added, “We think we can get him back.”

Just days earlier, Tice’s mother, Debra, said at a news conference that the family had information from a “significant source” that her son was alive, adding, “He is being cared for and he is well — we do know that.”

This week, President Donald Trump told reporters there has been “virtually no sign” of Tice. However, Trump said the U.S. won’t stop looking for him.

Trump said, “Until we find out something definitive, one way or the other, we’ll never stop looking. But we have been, and the response — it’s just a lot of dead ends. It’s been done for a long time. The problem is, there’s never been a sighting.”

International Fact-Checking Day

Today is International Fact-Checking Day. And has fact-checking ever been more important, especially at a time when political leaders — including the president of the United States and his followers — label everything they don’t like as “fake news?”

It’s also a precarious time as social media giants such as X and, now, Meta lean away from fact-checkers in favor of letting users determine what is true via community notes.

In an op-ed, my colleague Angie Drobnic Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, wrote, “I see a community under intense pressure. Not everyone loves fact-checking, and there are powerful political forces that would simply like it to go away.”

Holan adds, “This is indeed a crisis for fact-checkers, but it’s even worse for the general public. Disinformation hurts people. It has real-world consequences. Without fact-checking, more grandparents will fall victim to financial scams. Adults will refuse to vaccinate children against proven killers like measles. Teens will read faked reports of current events with no way to tell them apart from the real thing.”

Yet, Holan describes fact-checking as resilient, writing, “Politicians have led the charge that fact-checking is ‘censorship,’ but that self-serving argument is fundamentally a mischaracterization of what fact-checkers do. We’re more like nutrition labels for online content. Nobody thinks a nutrition label on a can of potato chips or a gallon of milk is censorship. Similarly, fact-checking adds information to the public debate and public action.”

So what can we — the general public, news consumers, citizens — do to help the cause of fact-checking?

Holan writes, “I’m asking the public to join us in whatever way they can. Subscribe to the newsletter of a fact-checking organization. (You can find a list of fact-checkers who adhere to the high standards of the International Fact-Checking Network here.) Share their work when it helps clarify confusing claims. Challenge misinformation wherever you encounter it. Support educational programs that teach students how to verify what they see online. And yes, if you can, donate to fact-checkers — they provide a public service that benefits everyone.”

Holan concludes by writing, “Whether fact-checking flourishes or founders in the coming years depends on whether enough of us are willing to fight back against those who claim the truth is whatever they say it is. We have to insist on evidence, on facts, on integrity. If we want a society that respects truth, now is our time to fight for it.”

Disturbing story

Katie Strang’s latest story for The Athletic is a tough read: “ESPN’s Pat McAfee and others amplified a false rumor. A teenager’s life was ‘destroyed.’”

Strang tells the story of an 18-year-old University of Mississippi freshman woman who was the victim of an awful, untrue rumor — that she had slept with her boyfriend’s father. The story went viral on the internet and beyond earlier this year. Among those who amplified the story was Pat McAfee, whose daily show is aired (but not owned) by ESPN.

McAfee never said the woman’s name, but he shoehorned the rumor into a conversation with ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter about the NFL draft prospects of Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart. Now, mind you, this story had nothing to do with Dart, the draft, or even sports. The only connection was that this woman went to the same school as an NFL prospect. That part of the conversation lasted about two minutes, according to the story. Strang added, “McAfee worked an unsubstantiated internet rumor into his show.”

The rumor was already starting to gain a bit of traction on social media before McAfee’s mention. But, Strang wrote, “McAfee became the most influential sports personality to address the rumor when he shared it with his ESPN viewers. (His show also has 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube.) But he was not alone. Former NFL receiver Antonio Brown posted a meme about (the woman) on X. Two Barstool personalities — KFC Barstool and Jack Mac — referenced the rumor on their personal social media accounts (the former posted a video that was later deleted, and Mac promoted a memecoin with [the woman’s] name on X). ESPN radio hosts in St. Louis eagerly dissected the ‘saga’ on their morning show, with Doug Vaughn, a longtime local sportscaster-turned-host, doing a dramatic reading of a purported Snapchat message that accompanied one of the original posts. The station then promoted the clip on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as part of an ‘Infidelity Alley’ segment.”

The woman, who is identified by name in Strang’s story, told The Athletic, “When the more popular people started posting, that’s when it really, really changed.” The woman added that they brought legitimacy to “something completely false.”

Among those was McAfee.

Strang wrote that the woman “engaged legal representation and said she intends to take action against McAfee and ESPN, which airs his show, and potentially others involved in spreading the rumor. ‘I would like people to be held accountable for what they’ve done,’ she said. ‘You’re ruining my life by talking about it on your show for nothing but attention, but here I am staying up until 5 in the morning, every night, throwing up, not eating because I’m so anxious about what’s going to happen for the rest of my life.’”

Strang details the issues the woman has dealt with since this rumor spread. The woman told Strang she couldn’t “even walk on campus without people taking pictures of me or screaming my name or saying super vulgar, disgusting things to me.”

Again, it’s a tough read, but it deserves your attention.

Ruffin’s reaction

Amber Ruffin, the comedian who was dropped from the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, addressed her being canceled for the first time during an appearance on Seth Meyers’ “Late Night” NBC show on Monday. (Ruffin has been a writer on “Late Night.”) Well, she addressed it in a comedic style, with help from Meyers.

In case you missed it, the WHCA decided to remove Ruffin from the dinner program less than two months after hiring her. The official reason, given by WHCA president Eugene Daniels, was that the WHCA has been thinking about “re-imagining” the format of the dinner for a couple of weeks. He added, “At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists.”

But some point to comments Ruffin made on a “Daily Beast” podcast last week as a big reason why her appearance was canceled. Aside from those comments, which drew criticism from the Trump administration, Ruffin said on the podcast that organizers wanted her to roast both sides of the political aisle. She said, “They were like, ‘You need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides,’ And I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be freaking doing that, dude. Under no circumstances.’”

So then came Monday night’s appearance on “Late Night.” In a comedic, scripted bit, Meyers made a joke about a man robbing a bodega. Ruffin sarcastically said that Meyers making a joke about the robber would be divisive. She said, “Take it from me. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides.”

She then said, “There are very fine people on both sides” — a reference to Donald Trump’s comments after a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Meyers said that “when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point it out on television.”

Ruffin said, “I thought that, too — on Friday. But today is Monday, and Monday’s Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully.”

Ruffin also said in the sketch, “When you watch ‘The Sound of Music,’ you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”

The other people in that film? The Nazis.

At another point, Ruffin said. “We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. … I thought when people take away your rights, erase your history and deport your friends, you’re supposed to call it out, but I was wrong. Glad to find that out now because if they had let me give that speech, oh baby, I would have been so terrifically mean!”

Check out the whole bit. It’s good, and smart. And sadly accurate.

‘World News Tonight’ continues to lead the way

ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, shown here in 2024. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

It certainly has been a newsy first quarter of 2025, and TV ratings for America’s most popular evening newscast reflect that. ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 8.1 million viewers in the first quarter of the year — its largest audience in two years.

“World News Tonight” outperformed “NBC Nightly News” (6.598 million viewers) and the “CBS Evening News” (4.586 million).

Remembering John Thornton

John Thornton — founder of The Texas Tribune, co-founder of the American Journalism Project, and one the key figures in nonprofit journalism — died Saturday. He was 59.

Ross Ramsey, co-founder of the Tribune, told the Tribune, “He was the principal author of the business plan that made us successful, and that has become a model for news startups around the country. He was smart, funny, intense, and dedicated to the idea that news is a public good that is critical to a functioning democracy. All of us continue to benefit from his work.”

Here is more on this journalism pioneer:

• This from The Texas Tribune’s Matthew Watkins and Natalie Choate
• This from the American Journalism Project
• And this from Columbia Journalism Review’s Sewell Chan

Media tidbits

Hot type

More resources for journalists

• Develop responsible AI practices for newsrooms. Start here.
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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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