Ownership and funding

Who owns The Field, who pays for it, and what that money does not buy.

Who owns it

The Field is owned and edited by Ismail Abukar, an independent investigative journalist. It has no parent company, no shareholders and no outside investors. A human editor makes every decision to publish, and no one outside the editorial team can order a story run, changed or held. You can read more about him on the founder page.

Who pays for it

The Field is a volunteer project. It is free to read and carries no advertising, no sponsored content and no paywall. The costs are small, mainly the domain name, email and hosting, and the founder pays them. Writers are not paid, and The Field does not pay sources.

We have taken no money from any government, political party, company, foundation or advocacy group. If that changes, we will say so on this page before the money is spent, and we will name the donor and the amount. A funder will never see a story before it runs, choose a subject or ask for a change.

The Organization for Prisoners' Rights

Ismail Abukar is also co-founder and chairperson of the Organization for Prisoners' Rights (OPR), a nonprofit based in Mogadishu. OPR is a separate organization. It does not fund, host, staff or edit The Field, and The Field does not fund or edit OPR. To keep the two apart, The Field does not publish stories about prisons, detention or custody. We refer those pitches to the OPR Journal.

Who can ask us to change a story

Anyone can ask for a correction, and we handle it in public on the corrections page. The people and institutions a story is about get a fair chance to reply before we publish, and we record whether they did. Replying does not give them a veto. Our standards for sourcing, anonymity and conflicts of interest are in the editorial guidelines.

Updates to this page

Last reviewed on 2026-10-30. Questions about ownership or funding go to pitches@thefieldreporters.com.