GroundTruth Media Partners
GroundTruth on Substack is powered by GroundTruth Media Partners LLC, an independent journalism organization. Founded by award-winning journalist Charles Sennott, GroundTruth is a boutique editorial brand that features Sennott’s reporting in the field, showcases thought leadership, offers paid consultancies, and serves as an incubator for new ideas in journalism.
GroundTruth is an editorial spinoff of The GroundTruth Project, a non-profit journalism organization founded by Sennott in 2012. This new entity is dedicated to field reporting and thought leadership forged by Sennott’s four decades of global and local experience as a reporter, editor, author, documentary producer and social entrepreneur.
GroundTruth Media Partners is a separate and independent entity from The GroundTruth Project, and its flagship programs, Report for America and Report for the World.
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Although most of our reporting will remain free and accessible to all, electing to offer your support allows us to do what we do we best: to be out there in the field at a time when on-the-ground reporting has never been more important.
Founder, Charles M. Sennott
Charles Sennott is the founder of The GroundTruth Project and this new editorial spinoff, GroundTruth Media Partners LLC.
Sennott is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author, and editor with 30 years of experience in international, national, and local journalism. A leading social entrepreneur in new media, Sennott launched GroundTruth in 2012 and in 2014 the organization was officially recognized as a 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission of inspiring and supporting a new generation of journalists to do on-the-ground reporting through reporting fellowships that focused on team reporting projects which were amplified through partners such as PBS FRONTLINE, the Atlantic and PRX The World. In 2017, Sennott wanted to recognize the deep need for more reporting in under-covered corners of America and joined forces with Steve Waldman to launch the non-profit organization's local reporting initiative, Report for America. In 2021, he worked with co-founder Kevin Grant to create Report for the World. Both of these flagship programs share the mission of serving local communities by matching local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues across America and around the globe.
Reporting on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 20 countries, including the post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring, Sennott began his career in local news covering cops, courts, and municipal government. Sennott’s deep experience in reporting led him to dedicate himself to supporting and training the next generation of journalists to tell the most important stories of our time. Sennott is also the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website.
Previously, Sennott worked for many years as a reporter at the New York Daily News and then the Boston Globe, where he became Bureau Chief for the Middle East and Europe, and a leader of the paper's international coverage from 1997 to 2005. Sennott has also served as a correspondent for PBS FRONTLINE and the PBS NewsHour. He has contributed news analysis to the BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and others.
He is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2016, Sennott was accepted into the DRK portfolio of leading social entrepreneurs who can make a difference. In 2024, Sennott was honored to receive the World Press Freedom Award from the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.
The meaning of GroundTruth
At the core of what we do is the idea of “ground truth,” which means being on the ground to tell the story. The origin comes from NASA, and ‘ground truthing’ is a technical term that refers to a calibration process used in satellite imagery and across technologies. When NASA measures something using a satellite, a human being on the ground takes the same measurement as a way to calibrate accuracy. That human measurement is known as the “ground truth.” As NASA states, ‘when technology and the ‘human reading’ are in conflict, trust the human reading.’ We believe the act of journalism, particularly in a time of great disruption and enormous potential, can be thought of as the ‘human reading’ in the calibration process for a technology known as ‘ground truthing.’
