The Center Square
American news website
The Center Square, formerly Watchdog.org, is an American news website that features reporting on state and local governments. It is a project of the Franklin News Foundation, an American conservative online nonprofit news organization. The Center Square distributes its content through a newswire service.
As Watchdog.org, it broke a story about website data inaccuracies for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that appeared to show "phantom congressional districts".
Background
The Center Square is a project of the Franklin News Foundation (formerly called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity), an American conservative online nonprofit news organization. The Columbia Journalism Review in 2012 called the Franklin Center "perhaps the most ambitious conservative news organization you’ve never heard of", said its productivity was "impressive," and noted the original news reporting produced by websites it funded in 18 states at the time.
The Franklin Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, received 95% of its 2011 revenue from mostly anonymous benefactors via the American nonprofit donor-advised fund Donors Trust, which is a major source of funding for conservative groups.
Watchdog.org
In 2012, Watchdog.org had sites in 18 states. In 2014, the Franklin Center said it had one reporter in each of 14 state capitols and two in Nebraska and Virginia. In 2015, most of the Watchdog sites had one staff reporter in addition to accepting contributions from citizen journalists via a platform called Watchdog Wire.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Center Square” is american news website. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Center, Square and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american news website” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7973118. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2012, 2011 and 2014.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Center Square”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Center Square primary sources, The Center Square archive and Center research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Center Square”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Center Square” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.