PassBlue
PassBlue is an independent, US-based digital publication that monitors and reports on activities by the United Nations. It was founded in the fall of 2011 as a project of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the City University of New York. PassBlue moved to the New School, a private university, and is now under the fiscal sponsorship of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
The term PassBlue is a play on the diplomatic passport known as laissez-passer, a blue travel document used by UN officials on missions and issued by national governments and world institutions during wartime and other periods to allow officers to travel to specific areas. PassBlue does not have an official association with the UN.
History
In its 2013 description of PassBlue, the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies said on its website:"The articles and essays are written by top UN journalists, who include Barbara Crossette, a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times and UN correspondent for The Nation; Irwin Arieff, who covered the UN, the White House and other assignments for Reuters; Helmut Volger, the editor of A Concise Encyclopedia of the United Nations; and Dulcie Leimbach, former editor of UNA's The InterDependent and "A Global Agenda: Issues Before the UN" and an editor/writer at The New York Times for more than two decades."
In 2015, PassBlue was financed primarily through the Carnegie Corporation of New York, with other grants from the Samuel Rubin Foundation, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation as well as individual donors. PassBlue has also received funding from the Open Society Foundations "To support The New School's project PassBlue expand their operational capacity to serve as a watchdog media site on the UN and related foreign affairs institutions."
PassBlue is also supported by the Wallace Fox Foundation, Pinkerton Foundation and other charitable institutions, as well as by thousands of individual donors.
PassBlue has been led since its founding by Dulcie Leimbach, who serves as editor of its articles, and Barbara Crossette. Its managing editor is John Penney. It has engaged hundreds of writers for its publications since its founding.