Fourth Estate (association)

Fourth Estate
Fourth Estate
Abbreviation 4E
Motto Democratizing News for the Public Benefit
Formation 2011
Type Cooperative Public-benefit corporation[1]
Legal status Cooperative
Public-benefit corporation
Focus Freedom of the Press
Media Ownership
Media Ethics
Journalism
News Deserts
Headquarters 1717 K Street NW, Washington DC, 20006
Location
Area served
Global
Method Advocacy
Lobbying
Publications
Outreach
Education
Entrepreneurship
Official language
English
Executive Director
 Jeff Brown[2][3]
Budget
undisclosed
Staff
3-5
Website www.fourthestate.org

The Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation (also referred to as Fourth Estate) is an international, non-partisan, human rights, membership organization dedicated to an engaged and informed public, well equipped with quality information needed to make informed decisions by a strong free press.

Organized as a member owned, multi-stakeholder new generation social cooperative,[4] members of the Fourth Estate are both individuals and organizations representing news producers as well as consumers.

The organization's initiatives include: advocacy, publicity efforts, investments, and strategic litigation strategies. Its name references a segment of society that wields an indirect but significant influence on society even though it is not a formally recognized part of the political system.[5]

Public Benefit

The Fourth Estate is a mission driven Public-benefit corporation. Its national office is located Washington, DC. Its membership is global. Individual members are: journalists, educators, and news consumers; organizational members are news organizations, corporations and educational institutions.

Mission

Fourth Estate's mission is to "contribute to a healthy society by fostering, supporting and incubating a sustainable and vibrant free press."[6]

Key Projects and Initiatives

First Amendment and Freedom of Press Advocacy

The Fourth Estate advocates for the First Amendment and Freedom of Press and works cooperatively[7] with other civil-society organizations[8] on Freedom of speech programming and initiatives.

Awesome Journalism

Awesome Journalism provides 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 program. It now operates independently.

The program provides a platform for an international network of autonomous chapters of micro-philanthropists that provide small grants for journalists to produce news and journalism. Each independent and fully autonomous chapter funds and supports awesome local journalism projects and stories through micro-grants, usually given out monthly. Awesome Journalism chapters are geographic or are organized along topics.[9]

NewsFoundry

NewsFoundry applies proven lean and startup tools and techniques to build successful journalism businesses over 54 exciting and inspiring hours. NewsFoundry participants com from a wide range of backgrounds -- editorial, product, business, design and delve into an innovative curriculum that culminates with lively presentations.

News and Journalism Entrepreneurship

The Fourth Estate operates numerous programs to foster news and journalism entrepreneurship[10] including free and discounted web infrastructure services ,[11] entrepreneur mentorship programs, and startup seed funding.[12]

JournSpark

JournSpark is a incubation program that provides free web hosting and support for startup digital news organizations, press clubs, or student news publications who regularly publish news and information in the public interest.

Fourth Estate Angels

The Fourth Estate Angels provide seed and early stage funding in the range of $5K-$25K for news and journalism startups.[13] 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.

Zero Knowledge DNS

In December 2017 The Fourth Estate announced the launch of a "Secure, Encrypted, Zero Knowledge DNS Service for journalists and public interest news organizations".[14][15] The service is designed to make it harder for governments, ISP’s, and/or corporations to use DNS requests to spy on journalists and news organizations. It is referred to as a "zero knowledge" DNS service because the way that the DNS query data is stored, encrypted and managed.

Name server IP addresses

IPv4 Addresses
Zero Knowledge DNS[16]
  • 45.77.165.194 (accuracy.ns.fourthestate.co)
  • 179.43.139.26 (truth.ns.fourthestate.co)
  • 45.32.36.36 (independence.ns.fourthestate.co)

Journalism Awards and Grants

The Fourth Estate honors journalistic excellence and innovation through various contests open to professional, collegiate and high school journalists and news organizations in all forms of media.[17]

Media Law Network

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.[18]

Software

The Fourth Estate has developed software and plugins, including a NewsML plugin[19] for WordPress, content syndication systems and an enterprise CMS for online news organizations. The organization also contributes back software code and extends the capability for a variety of software tools and suites.

Committees and Advisory Board

The organization's Advisory Board[20] consists of select members from the journalism, academic, legal and business communities represent and support the organization's efforts and mission.

Strategic Litigation

Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com

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 case has a pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the question whether registration of a copyright occurs when an application is filed (the “application approach”) or rather when the Copyright Office has approved or denied registration (the “registration approach”)[21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

The Fourth Estate is arguing 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.

References

  1. ↑ "Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation". B Lab.
  2. ↑ About the Fourth Estate: fourthestate.org
  3. ↑ "FIU looks to bring entrepreneurship to journalism with appointment". South Florida Business Journal. Retrieved 2017-05-08.
  4. ↑ "Governance Documents of the Fourth Estate". Fourth Estate. Fourth Estate. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  5. ↑ "fourth estate". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House. Retrieved Jun 28, 2017.
  6. ↑ About the Fourth Estate at www.fourthestate.org
  7. ↑ "Fourth Estate + Project Galileo". Project Galileo. Cloudflare. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  8. ↑ "Org Spotlight: Fourth Estate". National Association for Media Literacy Education. National Association for Media Literacy Education.
  9. ↑ "About Awesome Journalism". Awesome Journalism.
  10. ↑ "Fourth Estate at Crunchbase". Crunchbase. Crunchbase. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  11. ↑ "Fourth Estate launches journalism startup hosting program". Miami Herald. Retrieved 2017-05-05.
  12. ↑ Fourth Estate Angels
  13. ↑ "Fourth Estate Angels". Gust.com. Gust. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
  14. ↑ "Free and Public DNS Servers". Lifewire. Lifewire. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  15. ↑ "Secure, Encrypted, Zero Knowledge DNS Service for journalists and public interest news organizations". Fourth Estate. 2017-12-12.
  16. ↑ Zero Knowledge DNS
  17. ↑ Journalism Awards
  18. ↑ Media Law Network
  19. ↑ "WordPress NewsML Parser". WordPress plugin repository. Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  20. ↑ "Fourth Estate Advisory Board". Fourth Estate. Fourth Estate. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
  21. ↑ "Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, et al". Fourth Estate. Retrieved 2017-05-19.
  22. ↑ [hhttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-copyright-idUSKBN18I2GQ/ "The deepening appellate divide over when copyright owners can sue"]. Reuters. Retrieved 2017-07-08.
  23. ↑ "ELEVENTH CIRCUIT WEIGHS IN ON CIRCUIT SPLIT DEFINING COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION". 11th Circuit Business Blog. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
  24. ↑ "Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com Pending petition". SCOTUS Blog. SCOTUS. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  25. ↑ "Fourth Estate vs Wall-Street.com and Jerold D. Burden". Lexology. Lexology.
  26. ↑ "Fourth Estate vs Wall-Street.com and Jerold D. Burden". IPPro The Internet. IPPro The Internet. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  27. ↑ "Supreme Court to Resolve Split Over Copyright Registrations". Bloomberg. Bloombery.
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