Remembering David Potter

The David and Elaine Potter Foundation was born in 1999, only four years before the birth of the CIJ.  Elaine was an investigative journalist; David a successful businessman and technologist with a profound social conscience. This was a time of considerable concern about the state of the mainstream media, and considerable expectation that someone should do something to help independent journalism. David and Elaine’s foundation stepped into the breach, and began funding the work of the CIJ. In due course Elaine became a CIJ Board member, and the pair generously endowed the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at its birth.

 

David Potter died late last month. For an obituary, read this lovely piece by Franz Wild at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. For our part, we at the CIJ will always be enormously grateful to both David and Elaine for backing the CIJ at a time when home-grown British philanthropists who wanted to help sometimes difficult and cranky investigative journalists were as rare as hen’s teeth. Our thoughts are with Elaine and the Potter family.