who we are
News media emerged in conjunction with the advertising and subscription revenue models in the 1600s. The citizen experience of news and the ad and subscription models’ influence on news integrity have changed little in over 400 years.
The emergence of personalized and targeted digital media in the 20th century exposed critical flaws in this model:
- News coverage cannot be funded by the vested interests which it covers
- Access to quality news cannot be limited by a citizen’s wealth or income
- News must be easily distinguishable from entertainment and other forms of content.
ReNews.us proposes to create a completely new citizen experience of the news, supported by a disruptive and sustainable business model.
ReNews Context Services is incubating this new experience by applying analytics, human-centered design, and machine learning to explore a portfolio of disruptive hypotheses for how the news can better support American democracy. These hypotheses challenge long-held conventions including:
- The news cycle
- The advertising revenue model
- Subscriptions
- The role of news in support of local communities and merchants
- The lifespan of news content
- Access to news by underserved and unserved communities
- The role of citizens in news gathering
- The definition of journalism
- The role of data in news coverage
- Bias in news gathering and publishing
- The definition of a news organization
Our Board
ReNews 'under construction' Privacy Policy
GENERAL PRIVACY PROCEDURES
- Reconstitution.com is a site designed to introduce investors and partners to our portfolio of social impact intellectual property.
- Reconstitution.com is not a product or marketing site and therefore we will never sell or share any data about our visitors with other sites.
TRACKING
- Outside the log-in we only track total traffic and page views in aggregate. We do not place permanent tracking cookies or handle third party cookies in any way outside the login.
- Reconstitution does use cookies and WordPress plugins to track the activity of visitors inside the login of our site for the purpose of understanding visitor interests, and in order to protect our intellectual property. We do not handle third party cookies in any way inside the login.
- Some visitors requesting a log-in may receive one-time-use or short-term log-ins, depending on their role and area of interest. When their log-in expires those visitors may continue engagement directly with Reconstitution team members directly, or may request that their login be renewed.
ReNews’ Editorial Independence Policy
We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:
Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.
Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.
Donate to Support ReNews Context Journalism
How Nonprofit Donating Works
ReNews Context Services is in the process of earning its non-profit status from the IRS. Until that process is complete the IRS allows Citizens to donate to us through our sponsor 501C3 charity, Community Ventures, and receive the full tax deduction. ReNews pays Community Ventures a fee of 4% to cover administrative costs. You will be supporting two valuable social impact ventures! The ReNews Context Services FEIN is 88-3438853.
Why Support ReNews Context Services?
In an era when publisher consolidation, misinformation, polarization, and privacy violation have redefined the flow of information that we receive as “news,” Citizens need the data and tools to more completely understand how the news impacts them today and into the future.
Your support of ReNews will help launch and sustain a transformative Citizen experience of American news journalism.
How Your Donation Will Create Impact
Your donation to ReNews will:
- Make quality news freely available to all Citizens regardless of wealth, income, education, geography or any other variable.
- Analyze news journalism across publishers, extract and identify patterns of influence, and present original journalism revealing the complexity of issues relevant to each Citizen-reader’s individual context.
- Curate, analyze, and widely distribute publicly available data defining every news topic, issue and policy’s relevance to each American Citizen.
- Build a community of engaged Citizen-readers, journalists and academics committed to restoring journalism’s role in shining transparency into the function of our democracy.
- Use content and data analytics to surface and report on societal inequities and commission independent journalism to investigate the human impacts those issues.
- Publish original data journalism covering the lifecycle of policy development to reveal sources of influence and inequity manipulating policies on the way to becoming legislation, executive, or judicial action which will impact a Citizen.
- Help build a sustainable business model reinforcing the role of news in American democracy.
Renews Context Services, Inc. is incorporated in California as a not-for-profit organization and is currently partnered with the Community Ventures as our non-profit fiscal sponsor. We are applying for 501c3 tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service.
Our Donor Policy
ReNews is committed to providing everyone with access to high quality, deeply researched, data-based journalism regardless of their ability to pay. We do not accept advertisements, and we have no paywalls or subscription fees. We depend exclusively on the support of individuals, foundations and organizations who share our commitment to reporting on and confronting inequality.
We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.
To maintain the integrity of our journalism, there is a strict firewall between funders and the newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content. We do not take commissions or assignments from any funder. Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services, or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations, and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics and special projects. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that operates as a public trust, we will not pay certain taxes. We may receive funds from standard government programs offered to nonprofits or similar businesses.
As a news nonprofit, we avoid accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources, government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence. We will make public all revenue sources and donors who give $5,000 or more per year, and we will list them on this page as well as in our 990s.
ReNews Context Services Donors
- Reconstitution, Inc. – $500
- Bennet Harvey – $75,452
- John Beahm – $50
