eBay Founder Admits He's Backing Glenn Greenwald's New Media Project

Glenn Greenwald announced he was moving on from The Guardian and heading out to a new media project that he couldn’t really give too much detail about.

Although he tried to keep everything hidden, reports soon indicated that Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, was actually the one offering financial backing to this new project.

Now, Omidyar has officially confirmed that he is, indeed, the one who is behind this new site that Greenwald is involved in.

In a statement, Omidyar admits that over the summer he has considered buying The Washington Post, which eventually went to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The entire process made him think about actually creating a media outlet from the ground up.

“I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest. And, I want to find ways to convert mainstream readers into engaged citizens. I think there’s more than can be done in this space, and I’m eager to explore the possibilities,” Omidyar wrote.

About this new project he’s financing, the eBay founder says they’re only in their early stages and there’s no launch date yet or even an idea about how it will look like.

“What I can tell you is that the endeavor will be independent of my other organizations, and that it will cover general interest news, with a core mission around supporting and empowering independent journalists across many sectors and beats. The team will build a media platform that elevates and supports these journalists and allows them to pursue the truth in their fields. This doesn’t just mean investigative reporting, but all news,” he wrote.

Omidyar admits he reached out to Glenn Greenwald to figure out what journalists like him need to do their jobs well only to find that he, along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill were actually working on creating an online space to support independent journalists.

“We had a lot of overlap in terms of our ideas and decided to join forces,” the billionaire writes. “I believe that independent journalists like Glenn, Laura and Jeremy play an important role in our society.”