Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation
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 Fourth Estate | |
| Abbreviation | Fourth Estate or 4E |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2011 |
| Founder | W. Jeffrey Brown |
| Type | Cooperative public-benefit corporation[1] |
| Legal status | Cooperative Public-benefit corporation |
| Focus | Freedom of the press Media Ownership Media ethics Journalism News Deserts Local News |
| Headquarters | 600 14th Street NW, 5th Floor Washington DC, 20005 |
| Location |
|
Area served | Global |
| Method | Advocacy lobbying publications outreach education entrepreneurship |
Membership | Public Benefit Cooperative |
Executive Director | W. Jeffrey Brown[2][3] |
Budget | undisclosed |
Staff | 20–50 |
| Website | www |
| Journalism |
|---|
| Areas |
| Genres |
| Social impact |
| News media |
| Roles |
The Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation (or Fourth Estate PBC) states that it is an international, non-partisan, human rights, membership organization dedicated to a strong free press.
Aims[edit]
Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation describes its name as referring to the Fourth Estate, which it sees as politically significant.[4]
Its national office is located in Washington, DC. Its membership is global. Individual members may be: news consumers, or working journalists; organizational members are news organizations, corporations and educational institutions.
The organization provides news and journalism content, and technology services to customers that pay a fee to use the services.
Structure[edit]
The corporation states that it is organized as a public benefit cooperative, a type of member social cooperative,[5]
Key initiatives[edit]
The organization's initiatives include: advocacy, publicity efforts, investments, and strategic litigation strategies.
Journalism ethics and standards[edit]
In November 2019, the Fourth Estate revealed a new Journalism Code of Practice designed to reflect the key standards and principles of modern journalism.[6] The new Code of Practice is particularly notable for officially recognizing that journalism is no longer solely the preserve of the professional journalist.[7]
In April 2019, the organization announced the creation of the announces the "Office of the Journalism Advocate[8]" and the appointment of Alan Sunderland to the newly created role. According to the organization's Executive Director "the Journalism Advocate serves as the independent and authoritative voice for journalism in the Fourth Estate, free of any particular news company influence or affiliation."[9]
First amendment and freedom of press advocacy[edit]
The Fourth Estate advocates for the First Amendment and Freedom of Press and works cooperatively[10] with other civil-society organizations[11] on Freedom of speech programming and initiatives.
Journalism entrepreneurship[edit]
The Fourth Estate Angels provide seed and early stage funding in the range of $5K-$25K for news and journalism startups.[12] The Fourth Estate Angels is not a fund and does not invest as a LLC. Members collaborate in the due diligence process, but make individual investment decisions.
NewsFoundry was a prototype program that sought to apply proven lean and startup tools and techniques to build successful journalism businesses over 54 exciting and inspiring hours.
JournSpark is an incubation program that provides free web hosting and support for startup digital news organizations, press clubs, or student news publications.
Virtual private network (VPN)[edit]
In March 2019, the organization announced that it was launching a global virtual private network service for members of the organization. In 2021 the organization spun the project off into a stand-alone service called SupraVPN.
Journalism awards and grants[edit]
The Fourth Estate runs various contests open to professional, collegiate and high school journalists and news organizations in all forms of media.[13]
Awesome Journalism was a program that provided a monthly $1,000 micro-grant to a journalism project that commits a crazy, brilliant, positive act of journalism in the public interest. The initiative was originally launched as a cause-oriented chapter of the Awesome Foundation before becoming a more formal standalone program. It operated independently.
Media law network[edit]
The Journalism and Media Law Project connects members of the Fourth Estate with access to reduced fee or pro-bono legal representation and assistance with First Amendment issues.[14]
Social media[edit]
The Fourth Estate runs the Newsie.social instance on the Mastodon social network. Newsie is aimed at journalists, newspeople, journalism educators and comms professionals. Its operating costs are crowd funded.
Structure and governance[edit]
The organization is structured as a multi-stakeholder public benefit cooperative. The Fourth Estate's Constitution, organizational bylaws, and appendices outline governance and the rights and responsibilities among the organization's member-owners.[15] Membership is organized into eight categories of member-owner classes representing the major stakeholder groups, and three non-owner associate classes.
Committees and advisory board[edit]
As of 11 April 2018[update], Fourth Estate PBC's Advisory Board[16] includes[who?].
Strategic litigation[edit]
In March 2016, the Fourth Estate filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Wall-Street.com, LLC and Jerrold D. Burden alleging that the defendants infringed on its copyrights and intellectual property. The Fourth Estate argued before the court that copyright owners risk losing the right to enforce their intellectual property rights in an infringement action because of the long time period the United States Copyright Office needs to review a copyright application.[17] The court ruled that copyright registration, not application, must precede suit.[17]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation". B Lab. Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2017. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "About the Fourth Estate: fourthestate.org". Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved April 6, 2018. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "FIU looks to bring entrepreneurship to journalism with appointment". South Florida Business Journal. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
- ↑ "fourth estate". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved June 28, 2017. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Governance Documents of the Fourth Estate". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on February 8, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2017. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Journalism Code of Practice". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on January 25, 2020. Retrieved November 27, 2019. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "The Fourth Estate Code of Practice for Journalism". Fourth Esgtate. Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved November 27, 2019. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Office of the Journalism Advocate". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on April 4, 2019. Retrieved April 4, 2019. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "The Fourth Estate Announces the Creation of the Office of Journalism Advocate". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on April 4, 2019. Retrieved April 4, 2019. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Fourth Estate + Project Galileo". Project Galileo. Cloudflare. Archived from the original on April 13, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Org Spotlight: Fourth Estate". National Association for Media Literacy Education. Archived from the original on 2018-03-30. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Fourth Estate Angels". Gust.com. Gust. Archived from the original on March 11, 2018. Retrieved March 4, 2018. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Journalism Awards".
- ↑ "Media Law Network".[permanent dead link]
- ↑ "Organizational Structure and Governance". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on February 13, 2022. Retrieved February 13, 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Fourth Estate Advisory Board". Fourth Estate. Archived from the original on April 12, 2018. Retrieved April 11, 2018. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 17.0 17.1 Britain, Eakin (March 6, 2019). "Copyright Registration, not Application, Must Precede Suit". Courthouse News Service. Archived from the original on March 5, 2019. Retrieved March 6, 2019. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help)
External links[edit]
- Lua error in Module:Official_website at line 90: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Fourth Estate Newshub
- Fourth Estate Daily Newsbrief
- Fourth Estate Fact Check
- Fourth Estate Styleguide
- Fourth Estate Journalism Job Portal
- Fourth Estate Calendar
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- Human rights organizations based in the United States
- International journalism organizations
- American journalism organizations
- Journalism-related professional associations
- Online journalism
- Organizations established in 2011
- Public benefit corporations based in the United States
- Cooperatives in the United States
- Media cooperatives
- Journalism organizations
- Newspaper companies of the United States
- News agencies based in the United States
- Philanthropic organizations based in the United States
