Common Language Project Mission

The mission of the Common Language Project is to engage, educate and inform Americans of all ages on the crucial human issues of our time through innovative and accessible journalism.

The Common Language Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

What We Do

The Common Language Project is a nonprofit multimedia production house that reports news from around the world about the people affected by key social justice issues, with a specific focus on stigmatized regions and peoples underrepresented in the traditional media. Our coverage is focused on issues of human rights, gender equality, social and economic justice, immigration, education, labor, health, environmentalism and resource equality.

Our Core Values

• Fostering an audience of informed, engaged global media consumers
• Producing relevant media in response to the crisis in American journalism
• Highlighting US connections to global issues
• Understanding journalism as a non-corporate, nonprofit public service
• Humane Reporting: telling stories from the bottom up, not the top down; seeking out people working on the ground and those directly affected by the issues as primary sources
• Telling engaging stories through technology
• Fostering broad and equal access to information
• Using journalism as an educational resource
• Developing new communication techniques
• Covering underreported stories

More About the CLP

The American media tend to fixate on a small rotation of international stories weighted toward conflict, terrorism and global markets, giving little attention to issues affecting the day-to-day lives of common people or their struggles. Even less attention is given to stories that might foster cultural awareness, increase international communication or provide a deep context for understanding international affairs.

American news media are facing the biggest crisis the industry has ever known. For most newspapers, the answer to shrinking budgets and disappearing ad revenue has been to eliminate foreign bureaus and cut enterprise reporting in favor of generic wire stories, superficial local stories and sports or celebrity coverage — the things, they say, that keep people buying papers. But the CLP believes that Americans want investigative local and international news now more than ever before.

Our work is part of an emerging conversation about new economic models for investigative reporting at the domestic and international levels. We see journalism as a public service, one that is increasingly important in our globalized world. We want to see in-depth, humanizing reporting on key social issues become a valued and vibrant part of our shifting media landscape.

We see the change our industry is facing as an opportunity to redefine journalism for the 21st century, using multimedia technologies and new distribution models to bring our profession back to the fundamentals of investigating power, giving voice to the voiceless, and fostering an informed and engaged citizenry that feels empowered to participate in a thriving democracy.

Awards

The CLP is the proud recipient of the following awards:

• 2008 Knight Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, Interactive Narratives, Notable Entry: Water Wars
• 2008 Society of Professional Journalists Award, First Place, Business Reporting: Bitter Harvest
• 2008 Unity Awards in Media, Reporting of Economics: Bitter Harvest
• 2008 Edward R Murrow Award, Region 1, News Series: Life on the Duwamish
• 2006 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, International News, Notable Entry: CLPMag.org
• 2006 Independent Press Association Award, Best Feature: Dismantling a Dangerous Past