After long wait, The Markup is ready to ‘show our work’

Reported today on The Seattle Times For the full article visit: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/after-long-wait-the-markup-is-ready-to-show-our-work/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business After long wait, The Markup is ready to 'show our work' After a turbulent year during which the top editor was fired and rehired, The Markup, a website with ambitions to combine investigative and data-driven journalism to cover technology, will make its formal debut Tuesday. "We're calling it a launch," said Julia Angwin, the editor-in-chief. "But we're also cognizant of the fact that we've had several big public announcements prior to this, so this is a 'show our work' moment for us." "Show our work" is also a motto of The Markup. Alongside its articles, it will provide readers with detailed explanations of how its reporters got their stories. The Markup was founded in 2018 by Angwin, an investigative journalist and a veteran of The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica; Jeff Larson, a data journalist who also worked at ProPublica; and Sue Gardner, a former head of the Wikimedia Foundation. It was bolstered by a gift of more than $20 million from Craig Newmark, the Craigslist founder whose other philanthropic beneficiaries include the City University of New York's journalism graduate school (now named for him), ProPublica, the Poynter Institute and Consumer Reports. The Markup's topsy-turvy development period drew widespread attention among journalists and tech-industry people. Last April, a few months before a planned July start date, Angwin was fired by email, and most of the small newsroom staff resigned in protest. Larson was installed as editor-in-chief. Angwin said in a letter at the time to Newmark that Gardner, then the site's executive director, wanted to change The Markup's mission to "one based on advocacy against the tech companies," instead of "producing meaningful data-centered journalism about the impact of technology on society." Gardner disputed t