FIRE Guide rates liability practices by color
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 FIRE helped freelancer Lucy Provan
report for the Post and others.

 FIRE helped freelancer Zach Dorfman

 FIRE helped freelancer Lucy Provan
report for the Post and others.

 Janelle O'Dea salvaged a story from her
job at the Center for Public Integrity

On December 22 2023, the New York Times briefing “The Morning” highlighted the Top 25 stories of the year produced by local newsrooms. 

One of the stories it cited—a FIRE-supported investigation on the Baton Rouge Police Department, for Verite News—was not recognized as a freelancer contribution.  

But it might never have reached the public any other way—or without FIRE’s help. 

Reporters Daryl Khan and Clarissa Sosin secured extensive public records to document flaws in the internal review of brutality complaints against the Baton Rouge Police Department. 

They produced the story with the full complement of FIRE services: a grant, expenses, full Virtual Newsroom reporting services, and our Contract Template for indemnification. 

"As freelancers we were tackling a vital and sensitive story that needed the strength of a newsroom behind it. FIRE provided that life line," wrote Sosin and Khan. "It's really hard to overstate their importance to this story."

Theirs is not the only such testimonial. In just under a decade, FIRE has altered the journalism landscape with a sharp focus on freelance investigative reporters.

FIRE adds experienced FOIA litigator Samahon

FIRE can now help freelancers pursue public-interest stories more effectively via a critical and elusive capacity—the ability to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests backed by a lawsuit. 

It's part of augmented reporting services at FIRE, which now also includes high-level research expertise.

For decades, journalists have struggled to act on the legally protected right to secure documents and intelligence from government. 

Increasingly, federal agencies won’t adequately respond to public-records requests unless faced with litigation.  

Such litigation is the province of Tuan Samahon, a tenured law professor at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law and a constitutional and FOIA transparency advocate for journalists, academics, and authors. 

Having successfully sued agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Internal Revenue Service for public records, Samahon advises FIRE-supported reporters how to file and manage FOIA requests with litigation in mind—and then coordinates any necessary lawsuits.

FIRE is honored to offer Samahon’s expertise and we are pleased that he has already begun working with FIRE-supported reporters.  

To learn more about Samahon, visit the Leadership page.

To apply for FIRE's help with FOIA requests, visit Reporting Consultancy.

For general information on FIRE services, visit Guidelines and Application. 

Latest release comes amid service
upgrades, $150,000 contribution

FIRE is pleased to announce a $150,000 gift by one of our longtime donors, which will provide a critical boost for FIRE's general operating expenses.

The gift affirms our groundbreaking success in legal protection with the support of Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

FIRE’s new legal tools include our Contract Template, Tip Sheets on liability, and Legal Consultancy, which has helped freelancers negotiate protections in 15 of 17 cases.

FIRE's template has been requested by more than 100 freelancers and outlets. This month a publisher with 100 million monthly page-views quietly adopted it as a boilerplate for its hundreds of freelancers.

Next up: a pilot tool to evaluate which publishers and broadcasters are protecting freelancers from liability—featuring nearly 20 outlets FIRE has already engaged. 

Beyond legal assistance, the $150,000 gift will also augment FIRE’s full-service Virtual Newsroom, including grants up to $12,500. We are pleased to announce that the latest Virtual Newsroom release—a multipart investigation of the Baton Rouge Police Department—is appearing this week in Verite. 

Lastly, a thank you to Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) for including FIRE in an informative April 11 webinar on freelance investigative reporting.

(Correction: Due to an inadvertent double-count, FIRE’s April 20 e-newsletter erroneously reported that requests for the FIRE Contract Template totaled “nearly 200.” The correct representation, as above, should have been “more than 100.” The actual number is 111—84 freelancers, 27 outlets.) 

Two major investigations supported

As reported elsewhere, FIRE has begun fostering the conditions in which freelance investigative reporters can best serve the public, including stronger liability protections via a range of tools. 

But we are also pleased to report that our individual Virtual Newsroom services, including story grants and hands-on reporting services, continue to bear fruits. 

Of several grant-funded stories advancing toward release, two already appeared this year: one on the maintenance of immigrant-detention centers with detainee labor; the other on a nursing-home chain's response to neglect complaints—profiled respectively here and here.

The stories, while also benefiting from Legal Consultancies for liability protections, received thousands of dollars in precisely leveraged support from multiple types of FIRE grants, along with the Virtual Newsroom's customized reporting tools and guidance.

The stories advance acountability in the public interest. Congratulations to the reporters, Tom Ferraro and Jared Whitlock, and their respective outlets, In These Times and Boston Globe Stat News!

A peak at liability

For more than a year FIRE has worked with media attorneys and insurance experts to help publishers and broadcasters protect freelance reporters.

Now we've turned their expertise into a series of educational guides, or tip sheets.

The tip sheets take a bedrock of accountability journalism—the poorly understood and often-arcane world of media law and insurance—and reveal it in plain language.

The bottom line: the liability model often used for freelance investigative journalism does not work well for the public interest.

Our tip sheets inform a viable alternative, providing immediate guidance for current stories.

Even the most seasoned journalist will find some surprises.

Thanks to Craig Newmark Philanthropies, we are pleased to announce the FIRE Tip Sheets.

Let us know your thoughts, as always.

Thank you!

Laird Townsend, FIRE Director

Recent FIRE releases, contract successes

We are pleased to announce that four FIRE-supported investigative stories have appeared in the past several months:

• By Helen Santoro: investigates the role of the pet-food industry in Food and Drug Administration research, for 100Reporters and the Associated Press 
• By Anonymous: investigates allegations of misconduct, for an outlet unnamed for safety concerns. 
• By Jared Whitlock: lifts the veil on a nursing-home chain using corporate ownership and bankruptcy to painful effect for families, for Boston Globe’s Stat News 
• By Tom Ferraro: documents the extent to which private prison companies use taxpayer funding to extract profits from labor practices that have triggered class-action lawsuits, for In These Times. 

More stories are on the way, several having undergone recent contract interventions, in which FIRE attorneys help publishers protect freelance reporters from liability.

Using the FIRE Contract Template and direct legal assistance, FIRE has helped reporters and outlets arrange this kind protection in 15 of 17 contract negotiations since 2021—eleven of which have led to story releases. 

One investigation resurrected, another defended

This summer marked FIRE’s 15th anniversary and coincided with a celebration over the release of three FIRE-supported stories in two months. 

To mark the occasion, I would like to dedicate this announcement to two FIRE-assisted journalists—one who is no longer with us, another who must remain anonymous. 

The first journalist, Wallace Roberts, a veteran social-justice reporter and researcher in his 70s, was nearing completion of a data-driven investigation of nursing-home care when he became ill and died in 2018. 

Two years later, on a promise to the deceased's family, FIRE found another reporter, the talented young Jared Whitlock, to pick up the threads of Roberts' story. Whitlock reported it out with a new angle, gained FIRE's help to secure indemnification, and published the story this year in Boston Globe’s Stat News.   

The second journalist, whose identity is being protected at the request of the legal team of a sensitive investigation, came to FIRE for liability protections, which the outlet cooperatively adopted—just in time. 

The subject of the story threatened to sue even before the story appeared. After the story appeared, the subject filed a defamation suit presenting no evidence to disprove any allegations in the story. The journalist, now fully protected, is fearlessly helping the outlet fend off the lawsuit—and to continue reporting the story.  

Contractual interventions like these, made possible by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, have broadened FIRE's ability to support marginalized freelance reporters, contributing to the recent releases. 

We are pleased to announce that this capacity has just expanded: A series of liability Tip Sheets will now extend expert guidance to the field at large, far beyond the journalists we can serve individually. Look for an announcement next week. 

Freelance investigative reporting is unquestionably the least supported sector of public-interest journalism. But FIRE has always fought for these agents of accountability. Along with their newsrooms and editors, they are the cornerstone of democracy. 

We look forward to announcing the Tip Sheets next week. 
 

Thank you! 

Laird Townsend, FIRE Director 

A resurrected story succeeds

FIRE's full array of services—from reporting guidance and research tools, to story grants and a Legal Consultancy—facilitated this investigation of the veiled practices of a nursing-home chain.

The story revealed evidence that the chain's use of bankruptcy, enabled by an opaque corporate structure, reduced its liability for alleged corruption and neglect, with painful results for vulnerable families.

It took five years and two reporters to publish the story. 

In 2017, FIRE awarded a Virtual Newsroom to a freelancer named Wallace Roberts, a longtime social-justice research and reporter in his 70s.

Roberts used FIRE's guidance and financial support to piece together two revealing data sets—one showing the ownership of dizzying network of nursing homes, the other showing their neglect record. 

Roberts was cleaning up the two data sets toward story release when he became ill and died, in 2018. 

FIRE promised his family that it would find a reporter to carry on the story.

Two years later, a reporter specializing in health-care coverage, Jared Whitlock, emerged to take the baton. 

With FIRE’s help, Whitlock built on Roberts’ reporting and took it in a new direction.

Roberts had identified a complicated ownership structure linking multiple chains and their facilities. On closer inspection, Whitlock discovered something interesting about the structure: It was facilitating bankruptcy by an affiliated nursing-home chain, Consulate Health Care, that stymied recourse for the chain's alleged neglect. 

Whitlock had the story, he brought it to the Miami Herald, the Herald commissioned the piece, his editor agreed on a fee and, with FIRE’s help, on an informal pledge to indemnify the reporter. Under its new owners, the McClatchy newspaper chain reversed the editor's offer and vetoed indemnification. 

“I felt betrayed, it was totally unworkable, we're talking about a litigious nursing-home chain,” Whitlock said. “It was heartbreaking to do all this reporting, and then have the rug pulled out from under it." 

With a FIRE Indemnification Grant, Whitlock searched for a new outlet; and with the help of a FIRE attorney, Boston Globe Stat News agreed to protect Whitlock. Whitlock had his story. Stat had its story—four years, two reporters, and two FIRE programs later, the public had theirs.

Protection secured in time for lawsuit

This story of bravery has to remain anonymous for now—because the protected journalist is not out of the woods yet. 

In the throes of closing a sensitive story on alleged misconduct earlier this year, an outlet agreed to field the request of a freelance journalist working on the story:

Can you make indemnification arrangements so that I'm firmly on the outlet’s media insurance?  

The story was scheduled to appear in a matter of days.

"FIRE jumped into action quickly to help ensure that my contract would protect me,” the journalist recalled about the waning days of story's close. “[The subject] has a history of acting litigiously. FIRE's access to excellent media lawyers and its doggedness in advocating for me were essential.”

The outlet cooperated with equivalent speed.

It acted just in time.

No sooner had it honored the journalist's request, than the subject of the story, when contacted for comment before publication, threatened to sue over the story.  

The outlet held its ground and ran the story. Soon after publication, there were physical threats against journalists working on the story, though no evidence has yet been found linking the incidents to the subject of the reporting.  

Since then, the subject did file a defamation suit, which presented no evidence to disprove the allegations in the story—and took other aggressive steps to quash additional reporting.  

On request of the journalist and the defense team involved, FIRE is withholding the identity of the outlet and the journalist. But the story has run, the word is out, and, with FIRE’s help and the outlet's full cooperation, the journalist is continuing to follow up on the story without fear.

FIRE will report more when it is safe to do so.

AP, 100Reporters, freelancer—the mutual benefit

With new educational guides like the FIRE Tip Sheets linked below, freelancers can better educate themselves to gain liability protections from publishers or broadcasters.

The goal, as always, is to help the reporters realize their potential in the public interest—in this case by gaining full legal protection to confidently pursue investigative stories to everyone's benefit.

FIRE is also stepping up our hands-on program to help the parties accomplish that goal—the Legal Consultancy. We are pleased to announced that the program has brought on a new lawyer and has recently experience another succesful story release.

In the spring, freelancer Helen Santoro approached FIRE with concerns that a contract offered for a sensitive investigation "was not up to snuff." FIRE responded with precise suggestions to shore up her liability provisions.   

Santoro's publisher, our friends at the nonprofit 100Reporters, quickly approved the revised contract.  

As a result, Santoro avoided the anxieties of mortgaging her assets for a story—and 100Reporters was able to publish her in-depth investigation of the pet-food industry last week, and via its Associated Press co-publishing arrangement, bring it to more than 100 publications and broadcasts nationwide. 

"Having FIRE's support was a complete game-changer. It was a huge relief having [FIRE’s suggestions on] the contract,” she said. "Without that... I might not have proceeded at all. There’s a good chance story would not be published yet.” 

By doing the right thing, she said, a responsible publisher like 100Reporters “gets the story, as opposed to losing it [to a competitor]."  

The publisher also gains after the story: “The outlet also gets to keep those good freelancers around," Santoro said. "Good freelancers want good contracts.”  

For the kind of contract changes that made such a difference for Santoro, view this FIRE Tip Sheet. For a better understanding of a smart publisher’s strategy on freelancer liability, see this Tip Sheet co-authored with Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein.  

And for Santoro’s investigation, visit here.  

As always, thank you to Craig Newmark Philanthropies for supporting FIRE's legal assistance to reporters and outlets.

More next time on two other recent releases! 

$50,000 Newmark renewal tops $115,000 in gifts

FIRE’s popular new legal-services program received a significant boost this month in the form of a generous $50,000 grant-renewal by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and an additional $65,000 from longtime FIRE supporters.

The support, $115,000 in total, will further develop a series of tools made possible by last year's $75,000 Newmark grant.

With the tools, including the FIRE Contract Template and direct legal assistance, FIRE successfully intervened to help outlets protect reporters in 12 of 13 contract negotiations over the past year—seven of which have already resulted in story releases.

Thanks to the grant and supporters like you, the first generation of broadcasters and publishers now has the tools to systemically protect freelancers in the public interest, at just the right time—as commercial investigative newsrooms seek to compensate for layoffs, and nonprofit outlets look to expand their capacity.

“This work is important for the entire journalism field,” Newmark said in announcing the grant. "Freelancers are poised to play such a major public-interest role in the future. It’s time to advance this successful pilot and secure its long-term diversified support.”  

Newmark’s gift has been matched by more than $50,000 from an anonymous former national political reporter who helped launch FIRE; and $10,000 from the Joshua Mailman Foundation, another longtime supporter, among others.

Please consider making a donation to FIRE, on our easy-to-use new fundraising page.

And look for more stories soon.

Thank you!

Laird Townsend, FIRE Director

PS In the spirit of protecting public-interest reporters, FIRE also encourages any investigative freelancer to visit our friends at PEN America for their critical defenses against online harassment.