{"id":27,"date":"2011-10-08T18:47:08","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T22:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/passblue.com\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2026-01-24T13:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T18:28:17","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/passblue.com\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\"Volodymyr
The Security Council met on Sept. 24, 2024, to debate once again Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. The country\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, above, participated, saying, \u201cRussia can only be forced into peace.\u201d JOHN PENNEY\/PASSBLUE<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>

PassBlue<\/strong> is an award-winning, independent, women-led nonprofit news company that closely covers the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the world body. We report from our base in the UN press corps in New York City and are read throughout the US and Canada and overseas: London, Geneva, Paris, Berlin, Delhi, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Manila and Australia\/New Zealand, with most readers located in New York, Washington and London, making us a local\/regional\/global source of news.<\/p>

We are a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News,<\/a> from which we derive our 501 C3 status.<\/p>

Mission<\/div>

PassBlue’s fearless, award-winning public-service journalism holds the powerful people and 193 member countries at the UN to account by providing original news reports, analyses, scoops and investigations each week to our tens of thousands of subscribers and social media followers across the world. Citizens need in-depth reporting on public institutions to ensure transparency and strong, stable democracies: there is no greater mission in our world today.<\/p>

Affiliation and financing<\/div>

As a US-based nonprofit news site, we are financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Open Society Foundations, Wallace Fox Foundation, Pinkerton Foundation and other charitable institutions as well as by thousands of individuals, who contribute through US tax-deductible donations.<\/a> In addition, we derive a percentage of our annual revenue from advertisers. We are a longstanding member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.<\/a> *For our editorial independence statement, see below. To donate to PassBlue, please go here<\/a>.<\/p>

UN-Scripted<\/div>

UN-Scripted<\/a>, an award-winning podcast series, features our Security Council Presidency<\/a> column, which focuses on the top diplomats presiding over the monthly rotating seat in the UN’s most important body. The series drew an average of 1,300 listeners to each episode since it originated in August 2019 but was paused in September 2024 in favor of producing a new short-video series on Young Diplomats<\/a>, financed through a Google News Initiative grant, as well as regular video clips of events at the UN each week and short quizzes with UN staffers on the basics of the organization.<\/p>

Coverage<\/div>

PassBlue clears the air by reporting on how the UN deals with the most urgent problems plaguing the world today as well as reporting on the UN itself. The institution was founded in 1945 to maintain international peace and security, and the United States is by far the biggest financial contributor to its operating and peacekeeping budgets. Yet at its core the UN is a political body, and UN staff often work in the world’s worst danger zones, which invariably mires the UN in controversy and sometimes flawed operations. Covering the UN requires providing context for readers so they can better understand how the UN and its member states react to and deal with global crises and what their actions or inactions can mean.<\/p>

Institutional influence<\/div>

That is where our fearless coverage stands out: producing well-written articles and op-eds, professional videos and podcasts that have pushed the UN to increased transparency and accountability and exposed a wide range of its members to journalistic scrutiny. Our most important coverage has been on geopolitics, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022; Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in 2023; UN peacekeeping, notably in West Africa; and women’s issues, including gender equality in the UN hierarchy as well as among UN member state delegations in New York.<\/p>

We were the first independent media site based at the UN to report on the dearth of women in top UN posts, for example. That coverage set in motion an institutional change and a new agenda: people inside the UN and those outside it working on gender equality now look to PassBlue for news and other information on the status of women’s global rights, enshrined in international law. As a result of our initial coverage of women’s rights at the UN, the organization started a public effort, carried out by Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, to achieve gender parity among its top jobs. It still has a long way to go to providing equality both in its internal operations but also as a model for all member states.<\/p>

Reach and engagement<\/div>

Our subscribers include foreign affairs specialists, diplomats, heads of state and government, academics, UN staffers, development experts, global-financial analysts, journalists and students, with the largest demographic traffic being 18-34 years old and most readers based in the US: New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Abroad, they are primarily located in London, Geneva, Delhi, Lahore, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne and Manila. Our stories are sent out by email to our tens of thousand of subscribers, with the average-year open rate of 35% and average click rates of 1.7%, above industry averages. (Our top subscribers by location are based in the US, Britain, France and Geneva.) PassBlue’s subscriptions and social media follows grow every year. Its editor and publisher, Dulcie Leimbach, received a certificate in 2021 from the Google News Initiative’s Digital Growth Program Audience Development curriculum.<\/p>

Media amplification<\/div>

Our articles have been reposted or aggregated in such sites as Google Discovery, Ms. Magazine, Politico (Playbook), The Daily Beast, Premium Times (Lagos), Afrique XXI (Paris), Inter-Press Service, Global Geneva, Fair Observer, Geneva Solutions, Consortium News, Global Policy Institute, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Center on International Cooperation, International Politics and Society, International Press Syndicate Group, Igarap\u00e9 Institute (Rio de Janeiro), This Week in Africa, Welt-Sichten (World Views, Frankfurt) and included regularly on the UN’s daily internal news clipping service.<\/p>

In 2020, we partnered with a Norwegian business daily, Dagens Naeringsliv, on investigations related to Norwegian diplomats at the UN. (In 2021, our No. 10 story of the year was produced with DN, “A Now-Retired UN Force Commander From Norway Double-Billed for Expenses.<\/a>“) More recently, we have co-posted with Geneva Solutions and France 24. A monthly newsletter on top UN appointments, Blue Smoke<\/a>, is produced by PassBlue and UNA-UK.<\/p>

Our freelance reporters and editors have been interviewed by PRI-Boston, BBC, NPR, NHK (English-language version),\u00a0 Ian Masters’s Background Briefing (KPFK-FM 90.7, Los Angeles backgroundbriefing.org<\/a>), ARD German TV & Radio Network, Verdens Gang (Norway’s leading publication), Bern-based Radio SRF (Swiss Radio and TV) and other media. We have participated as media experts for events with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (German political think tank), the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, UN Women, the Foreign Press Association, UNA-USA (San Francisco and DC chapters) and Konrad Adenauer Institute, among other organizations. Our podcast, UN-Scripted<\/a>, was cited by Esquire magazine among its top-podcasts review.<\/p>

PassBlue articles have been cited in news articles by AFP, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Daily Beast, Deutsche Welle, BBC World News and elsewhere. Our stories are distributed globally by email to our subscribers and through such channels as NewsBreak, NewsText and Smart News (Japan). We are also regularly featured in Google Alerts, Spotlight and Bing News Pub Hub. We partner with Patch to repost local stories and are part of the Covering Climate Now media consortium reporting on global warming.<\/p>

Our most-influential reporting<\/div>
\"Barbara
On the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the Security Council voted on a draft resolution, led by the United States, that \u201cimplores\u201d a \u201cswift end\u201d to the conflict but did not acknowledge Russia’s illegal invasion of the country, much to the consternation of Europe. Ten countries voted yes on the text, including Russia, while five abstained, including Britain, above, Feb. 24, 2025. A General Assembly resolution to end the war, drafted by Ukraine and the European Union, succeeded while a US text failed. JOHN PENNEY\/PASSBLUE<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>
2024<\/div>
The wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan kept going as new tensions arose in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. PassBlue co-published three stories related to the Gaza war with France 24, earning both media sites a joint silver Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize.<\/a> Yet, the top PassBlue stories were an informal readers’ surveys on which woman should be the next UN secretary-general and the UN persons of the year, respectively:<\/div>
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\u2022 Which Woman Should Be the Next UN Secretary-General? Our Survey Results<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 A Movement to Suspend Israel From the UN Needs a Country to Take the Lead<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 Iraq’s Parliament May Allow Girls as Young as 9 Years Old to Marry<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 The Key to Security Council Reform? Fewer Permanent Members<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 Serbia Is Resisting a UN General Assembly Plan to Mark the Srebrenica Genocide<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 UN Persons of the Year, 2024; Readers’ Survey<\/a><\/div>
2023<\/div>
The year was marked significantly by the continuation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a new civil war in Sudan and the start of the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza. The latter conflict directly affected the UN, which has a large presence in the Palestinian territories, and two PassBlue scoops on a related controversy at the World Food Program proved to be among the most-popular stories of the year. A gender equality story also made it in the Top 5 reads.<\/div>
\u00a0<\/div>
\u2022 The World Food Program’s Boss Faces Backlash for Attending an Event Honoring Israel<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 Rwanda Helped Oust Jihadists in Mozambique. Can the Model Work in West Africa?<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 Watch the Gaps: A Feminist Reaction to the UN’s Own Gender Equality Review<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 World Food Program Boss Faces More Rage for Her Actions Amid the Gaza War<\/a><\/div>
\u2022 Afghan Women Judges Trapped in the Country Are Desperately Seeking Sanctuary<\/a><\/div>
2022<\/div>
In 2022, at the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, PassBlue’s journalism and original photos (by John Penney)<\/a> were cited in a Medium essay<\/a> as an example of an “independent news source” that could help readers “understand the implications of the war.” We tackled the invasion through a UN angle, producing exclusive investigations, analysis, opinion and breaking news. Op-ed essays<\/a> on the UN itself also garnered top status, as did our daily coverage of the annual General Assembly opening debates. Our This Week @UN summary<\/a> is continuously popular as is our Women as Changemakers<\/a> series and Security Council Presidency<\/a> column and its UN-Scripted podcast episodes<\/a>.<\/div>
\u00a0<\/div>
Top stories:\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>