| Description: | The Chicago Innocence Project ("ChIP") is a nonprofit organization devoted to investigative reporting of wrongful convictions. ChIP engages college students, community residents, private investigators and journalists in reporting, exposing and remedying mistakes by the criminal justice system. The Chicago Innnocence Project investigates cases in which prisoners may have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, with priority to murder cases that resulted in sentences of death or life without parole. We involve college students, community residents, private investigators and journalists in the reporting process. Volunteer lawyers later bring new evidence of innocence to court. Our fundamental goal is to expose and remedy wrongdoing by the criminal justice system. |
| Begun: | 2011 |
| Website: | http://chicagoinnocenceproject.org |
| Office Location: | 205 West Monroe St., Suite 315 Chicago, IL |
| Structure: | 501 (c)(3) organization status pending |
| Founder: | David Protess |
| Executive Director: | David Protess (president) |
| Approximate number of full-time staff: | 3 |
| Number with prior professional journalism experience: | 1 |
| Annual operating budget: | Not Available |
| Annual salaries posted, or accessible via 990 form: | Not Applicable |
| Editorial/ethics policy statement: | "We adhere to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists" |
| Diversity statement: | Yes |
| IRS 990 form posted on website: | Not Applicable |
| Major donors disclosed: | No |
| INN Member: | No |
| Awards: | Protess's work has been recognized by ABC Network News, which named him "Person of the Week," and by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who proclaimed a day in his honor. He also has recieved awards fom Amnesty Internation, the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Clarence Darrow Commemorative Committee, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Court TV, the Newspaper of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Natonal Education Association; In 2003, Protess recieved the prestigious Puffin/Nation Institute Prize for Creative Citizenship, and in 2009 he was named among the 30 "most notable" investigative reporters since World War I in the six-volume Encyclopedia of Journalism. |
| Contact: | dprotess@chicagoinnocenceproject.org |
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
Citizen journalists work undercover in North Korea to show daily life
Japanese journalists have been training citizens in North Korea to take audio and video recordings of everyday life in an effort to document the hardships, including food shortages, prevalent there. Meet the man behind the training, Jiro Ishimaru.
