By Virginia Schneider
Los Angeles, CA, (The Hollywood Times) 4/1/25 — Evident is a new non-profit news organization founded by Zach Toombs and Kevin Clancy. Both men are Emmy-winning news producers formerly of Scripps. Toombs supervised documentary programming, and Clancy was Senior International Producer for Scripps Longform media. Now with Evident, Toombs and Clancy are joined by a team of six to eight journalists with combined experience working at VICE, PBS and other news outlets. Evident produces high-quality short-form documentaries in partnership with various organizations around the world, such as Bellingcat (a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence) and CalMatters (a non-profit news organization covering California state politics and policies), focusing on impactful current events. They utilize grassroots fundraising and strategic partnerships to create and distribute in-depth content across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, aiming to build audience trust by bridging the gap between viewers and traditional news sources.
Launched in March 2025, Evident has produced four documentary news pieces, one with CalMatters, one with Bellingcat and will continue working with various non-profit news sources. Each partner team is composed of a small number of researchers or independent journalists who collaborate with Evident on individual projects.
Evident’s in-depth documentary reporting takes an average of several weeks or perhaps months of production time per project. While Evident undertakes some projects solo, their partner collaboration system provides extensive specialized intelligence with partner organizations. The partners provide on-camera reporters with subject-matter expertise and Evident handles post-production. Evident releases a new in-depth documentary news piece every two weeks, on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@evidentmedia along with releasing daily short-form content on their social media channels, primarily Instagram. @evidentmediaorg
With YouTube as their main platform, Toombs says Evident aims to build an audience focused on high-quality documentary journalism. Evident also issues a newsletter about events and updates, all relating to existing projects.
To date, Evident has released the major projects: Nature Divided – How Border Walls Affect Wildlife Worldwide, Arming the Pacific, about the military build-up between China and the U.S., an AI-focused piece called AI Detection 101, How to Spot AI Scams in partnership with Bellingcat, and Operation: Return to Sender a CalMatters partnership on mass deportation.
The documentary piece, In Real Life: A Hidden War, a partnership with Bellingcat was a runner-up for the 2025 Overseas Press Club Foundation award.
Evident focuses on current events stories with cinematic production aiming for topics with a longer a self-life, while avoiding daily news events. Their focus is on the individuals impacted by the policies and events, rather than the specific politics themselves, thereby keeping audiences aware of the human-interest factor. Currently Evident has several upcoming stories in various stages of production and development with different partner research groups. Evident will also have live events in various cities, such as the utterly astonishing documentary Museum on Fire, which explores the damaging effects of climate change on ancient cultures and archeological sites. This work premieres on April 21st, the opening night of the Climate Action Summit in Washington D.C.
Evident’s financing model relies solely on grassroots fundraising and licensing its documentaries to other platforms, not on private investment. Anyone may become a supporter by going to their website to make a contribution: https://www.evidentmedia.org/. There, you can also sign up to be on their email list of upcoming events.
Follow their YouTube channel: main page: https://www.youtube.com/@evidentmedia
Evident website: https://www.evidentmedia.org/
Evident Instagram: @evidentmediaorg
