E-Bay's Omidyar to be publisher of his own news venture

• New umbrella company will be called First Look Media
• It will include a nonprofit news operation and a for-profit media technolgy unit

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar has released $50 million for the ambitious digital news outlet he's launching and says he plans to be its publisher.

The money represents a fifth of Omidyar's initial commitment to the highly anticipated initiative, which will cover a wide range of subjects. Its marquee hire so far is Glenn Greenwald, who has led the way in publishing documents revealing extensive government surveillance leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

"This initial capital is the first step of many to bring the vision of this news organization to life," Omidyar said in a post on The Omidyar Group's blog. "I am deeply committed to the long–-term effort to build a new and exciting platform for journalism — one that not only provides the innovation and infrastructure journalists need to do their best work, but that brings their reporting and storytelling to the widest possible audience."

In the blog post, Omidyar says the new venture will cover "politics, government, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, arts and culture, business, technology, and investigative news."

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Omidyar is calling the umbrella organization for his initiative First Look Media. He says it will have a number of components, including a nonprofit news outlet and a for-profit company aimed at developing new media technology. He hopes profits from the latter will help fund the former. The news operation itself doesn't have a name yet.

First Look Media is setting up operations in New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

Omidyar has hired Eric Bates, a former executive editor of Rolling Stone, to help plan editorial strategy and develop the infrastructure.

The eBay founder has a deep interest in journalism. He has funded a number of initiatives in the field and three years ago launched Honolulu Civil Beat, an online, for-profit news outlet that covers Hawaii.

As for Greenwald, he sounds excited about his new mission. In an interview Monday on Al Jazeera America, he said, "I think my new visibility that I have, and the new platform is much greater than before, which allows me to speak out on things like the dangers of surveillance, and the importance of privacy and Internet freedom."