The website was co-founded in 2007 by publisher David Sassoon and executive editor Stacy Feldman. Originally called SolveClimate News, it adopted its current name "to counter the perception that it was an environmental advocacy organization." As a non-profit journalism outlet, InsideClimate Newss model is similar to that of ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which have similarly gained recognition. Like the other two organizations, InsideClimate News publishes its content for free on the Web, collaborates with for-profit news organizations that republish some of the nonprofit's work with credit, and aims "to tackle topics that bigger, better-known news organizations are not equipped or inclined to do." A 2015 article by Jillian Melchior in National Review said there are questions about InsideClimate News's possible conflict of interest and bias. As of February 2018, InsideClimate News had a staff of 18, including 7 full-time reporters.
Awards
Three InsideClimate News reporters—Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer—won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their series of "rigorous reports" on the Kalamazoo River oil spill in Michigan, in which an Enbridgeoil pipeline spill led to the costliest onshore oil spill in American history. The Pulitzer citation praised the reporters for exporting the aftermath of the 2010-2012 oil spill and "flawed regulation of the nation's oil pipelines, focusing on potential ecological dangers posed by diluted bitumen, a controversial form of oil." In April 2016, InsideClimate News was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, for the 2015 Exxon: The Road Not Taken series. InsideClimate News was awarded a 2015 Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists for the informational graphics in the Exxon: The Road Not Taken series, which "provide a visual timeline of Exxon's views and efforts on climate change since the 1970s, and evidence of its uncertainty campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s." The White House Correspondents Association awarded InsideClimate News a share in the 2016 Edgar A. Poe Award, which annually honors "excellence in news coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance, written with fairness and objectivity," for the Exxon: The Road Not Taken series.
