Investigative Journalism Done Better, Faster And Cheaper Without Newspapers

from the let's-get-real dept

There have been a series of ridiculous articles lately claiming that, with the collapse of some newspapers recently, somehow investigative reporting and local coverage won't work, meaning an era of corruption and the collapse of democracy. Fortunately, some are demonstrating the fallacies underlying these proclamations of doom.

Jay Rosen has been running an interesting experiment trying to find out just how many truly local stories an average newspaper includes in its paper, between all the national wire service stories. A look through a recent Seattle Times issue showed a grand total of seven locally produced stories. And a look at an issue of the Chicago Tribune found a total of eight locally produced stories. We're not talking about huge numbers here.

And, in fact, the finding of eight stories in the Trib comes from Geoff Dougherty, a guy who created quite a stir in newspaper circles when he claimed he could provide the equivalent (or better) local coverage of the Chicago Tribune for just $2 million a year, and provided the spreadsheet to back it up. And he's not just talking in theory. He's doing it. Today. For much less than the Tribune (which is bankrupt).

He's not the only one either. Talking Points Memo has been quite successful with its investigative reporting, which does a lot to leverage its community to help out in the process, while still employing full time journalists who are doing tremendous investigative reporting -- which should only improve as better tools are created to enable more to be done. The first link in this paragraph also discusses another example, the Voice of San Diego, which does local investigative reporting, and was funded by a bunch of local businesses that felt there wasn't enough investigative reporting locally.

Those who say that this can't be done apparently aren't looking around. Sure, some of these experiments may fail, but it's about time we got rid of two myths:

• Myth 1: Newspapers put tons of money and resources into investigative journalism. They don't. And never have.
• Myth 2: Only newspapers can do investigative journalism.

Not all of the new business models will work out, but some will, and we'll likely find the new models actually work much better than what we have today (which, let's face it, hasn't been that good in investigating things like corruption).

I was on a panel recently for journalists and PR people, and someone raised their hand to ask how people could "put the genie back in the bottle and charge for information again." The problem is that the question itself is wrong. There's no genie and there never was a bottle. People have never paid for the news. Newspapers never spent that much on investigative reporting, and they rarely did a particularly good job of it, other than an occasional big story in an attempt to win a Pulitzer. People can pine about that mythical genie and bottle, or they can start focusing on all the opportunity out there that will be coming out of some of these (or other) experiments.

Filed Under: investigative journalism, journalism, local news
Companies: chi town daily news, talking points memo, voice of san diego

Will Local TV News Be The Next To Have Its Reckoning Day?

from the news-at-eleven dept

The change in the newspaper business is undeniable, with many newspapers' fortunes looking bleaker and bleaker as they continue to misunderstand, underestimate and ignore the internet. But with a downturn in ad spending hitting TV stations hard, will local TV news be the next to go through industry-wide upheaval. While newspapers have struggled, TV news has puttered along, but the cost pressures of the current market could change that as stations pursue resource-sharing agreements or other measures to cut their newsgathering costs. The fundamental question, as PaidContent asks, is is there too much local TV news? And as they conclude, it's hard not to answer no. With three or four (or more) affiliates in many markets -- and even smaller markets getting their own 24-hour stations -- there's a lot of airtime to fill, and a lot of overlap with other news sources, many of which do a better job of reporting or delivering news to readers. The basic thought seems to be that more local TV news is better, particularly as stations have added more and more slots to fill (such as the 5 o'clock and 4 o'clock broadcasts that have been added over the years). But with the slowdown in ad spending and the rise of parts of the population completely unfamiliar with the idea of local TV news, just like they're largely unfamiliar with getting news from newspapers, the future looks bleak. Will TV stations manage to negotiate the shift to the internet any better than most newspapers have done? That too, seems doubtful.

Filed Under: local news

Whistleblower Reacts To FCC Clearing The FCC On Supressing Study For Politican Reasons

from the must've-been-some-investigation dept

About a year ago, Senator Barbara Boxer surprised FCC chair Kevin Martin by asking him why a study on the impact of local TV ownership on the news wasn't published. A whistleblower claimed that the FCC had actually ordered the report destroyed because it didn't agree with the political statements those in charge of the FCC were making. Of course, after being confronted about this, Martin agreed to have the FCC's Inspector General (someone who works directly for him) investigate the claim. A few weeks ago, the report came back from the FCC clearing itself of any wrongdoing. Shocking, right? You let the folks accused of being partisan hacks let their own direct reports investigate whether or not they're partisan hacks -- and they come back saying no, of course they're not partisan hacks. Matthew Lasar writes in to let us know that he interviewed Adam Candeub, the original whistleblower. Candeub had been an attorney at the FCC in their media bureau (which produced the report), but has since left the FCC and is a law professor. He refused to take part in the FCC's investigation, knowing that it wasn't going to fairly portray the situation. Despite staffers telling the Inspector General that they felt they had been told to lie if they wanted the report to see the light of day, the IG still didn't find the FCC at fault. Candeub doesn't sound too surprised, and notes that the whole thing was political -- and it's ridiculous to believe that the FCC didn't suppress the report for political reasons. He also notes that academic researchers are now retracing the steps that were done by the original FCC researchers, suggesting they were doing things correctly -- unlike what the FCC implies. I realize it's all politics at some level -- but shouldn't an organization like the FCC be most focused on what's best for communications policy, not on furthering a party line?

Filed Under: fcc, local news, politics, suppressed reports