Newswatch has, in the past, tried to conduct analytical, quantitative studies of the news coverage of various issues in the Indian media. The findings have been published under the slug Contentious, and can be found here. Subsequently, it was felt that one needs to go beyond these content analysis studies and present a broader picture to the public.

The inspiration for this project has been Project Censored of the Sonoma State University, US. Project Censored is a non-profit, sociological project of an investigative nature within the Sonoma State University Foundation. It is managed through the School of Social Sciences at the university.

The organisation describes itself as a media research group that "tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media."

This project, so to speak, is an Indianised version of Project Censored. The elementary objective of Project Blackout of Newswatch is pretty much the same—to identify and track news stories which have been underreported, mis-reported, or self-censored in the Indian mainstream, corporate media.

The first stage of Project Blackout would be to invite nominations from the general public. Once a published news story has been accepted as a nomination, it will be put up on the site for rating by readers. Subsequently, the stories will be shortlisted and put up for evaluation by a panel. The panelists will then, rate the story on basis of a number of parameters. These criteria, needless to say, will be made transparent to the public in due course of time.