Investigative journalism: First casualty of the Net?
I'm spending Saturday in an auditorium somewhere in the bowels of Microsoft's Mountain View, Calif., campus. The occasion: a series of panels co-sponsored by Microsoft, Google, the Computer History Museum, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, probing "the impact of information technology on society."
That's quite a mouthful, not to mention quite an ambitious subject to tackle, but a very timely conclave. To their credit, the hosts have assembled a collection of very big brains up for the task.
The day started off with a rocking presentation by Joshua Cohen, a Stanford professor of political science. Alluding to the accelerating collapse of newspapers, he cautioned that the still-to-be-determined impact on the American polity will be anything but good.
From left to right: Edward Lazowska, Joshua Cohen, Henry Brady, and Edward Felten
(Credit: Charles Cooper/CNET)"Here's where there is a big problem," he said, arguing that a "successful democratic sphere" is impossible without the information that newspapers supply. He added that "the damage is growing, and the consequences, potentially, are severe."
"Call me old-fashioned," Cohen continued, but blogging will not offer "a viable alternative" to investigative journalism. He faulted arguments that an increasingly decentralized blogosphere can fill that vacuum, a contention that he dismissed as "cyberutopianism."
"It is not only misplaced," Cohen said. "It's dangerous."
Talk about waking up with a strong cup of coffee.
Cohen's argument has been made by many others in different forums. But for the sake of perspective, however, keep in mind that it not universally shared. You'll find investigative reporting by agencies or individuals who don't belong to the ranks of professional journalists. But as the discussion broadened out to the political impact technology was having on public discourse, electoral politics, and governance, Cohen maintained that investigative journalism was "an important source" of information for the nation's political discourse.
"I think you have to talk about investigative journalism...It's not about weather or reporting sports. A world in which investigative journalism disappears is not a world in which democracy works very well," he said.
"The situation is getting urgent. Big newspapers are laying of about 20 percent of their investigative journalists," he said. "This is a profession where people learn how to do it. There are standards. It would really be a disaster if this investigative profession went out of business, a disaster for democracy. There's absolutely no reason to think that there's a fundamental hostility between the future of investigative journalism and technology, but nobody's figured it out yet."
He was right about that. Nobody did provide a conclusive answer to the question. Another panelist, Edward Felten, who teaches computer science at Princeton University, said that by 2020, the current disruptions taking down so many newspapers will lead to a reshaped landscape with more emphasis on what's taking place in peoples' backyards.
"There will be many fewer newspapers...partly due to fact that people can read newspapers from far away. We'll see smaller outlets which focus on the local and operate in a low-budget way, more like a community paper than a big city newspaper. And we'll see a lot of non-profit or low-profit punditry."
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_standards
"While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of ? truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability ? as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public." (Source Wikipedia)
These things have largely been deemed unnecessary in our society today... so it is little surprise we're seeing this result. Why should journalists be any different?
Journalists such as Nigel Jaquiss from the Willamette Week (my local FREE weekly) have shown that there is NO degradation in quality of investigative journalism between the dailies and the weeklies. Is there room for more than one weekly in a city? Absolutely, as each weekly doesn't necessarily want to focus on the same demographic or the same format. Is there room for charging a nominal fee for quality weeklies? I think so.
I think the real problem is that the old corporates move like dinosaurs in a fiber optic society, and their lack of creativity is proof that they're living in the old paradigm.
I have observed many prominent newspapers being sold at very high prices in the last decade. Often it is the founding families who decide to cash-in and sell their newspaper(s) for hundreds of millions of dollars. This means that the new owners (who often buy newspapers by the dozen) are saddled with billions of dollars in debt, which is what really makes the cost structure of the newspaper untenable.
The newspaper is then transformed from an institution with roots in it's community to an entity within a large corporate structure, competing with other entities for resources, and tasked with extracting enough profits from its operation to pay the debts imposed upon it.
The newspapers have also not done themselves a favor by being 'nearly free' - they have built a customer based who thinks the value of a newspaper is 50 cents. The price consumers pay for a copy of the paper is really on the cost of printing and distribution (if that). Now that they no longer have a near-monopoly on advertising, they face an uphill battle in getting consumers to bear more of the cost of operating news organization.
Unless the american people began to actually value a quality news organization, it is hard to see how a sustainable business model can be built on free or nearly-free distribution of a costly product.
Like thats going to happen! Most americans *still* believe that Saddam Hussein launched the 9-11 attacks, so how can anyone expect "the American people" to value anything other than Fox News and Rush Limbaugh?
With the internet it may be an actual scientific researched paper, or a movie that someone took at an actual scene, and the viewer can make up their own mind about what the truth is, without it being spun in some different direction.
There will still be room for "investigative reporting" provided that it is factual and not spun for a particular purpose. (like dis-information or sensationalism) But that will probably not be through "special interests" controlled newspapers.
Also, he is forgetting that every respectable news organization *is* "mainstream". When Fox News talks about not being in the mainstream, they are lumping themselves in the same category as the Nation Enquirer and the Weekly World News (Bill O'reilly interviews bat-boy! Next on Fox!)
Which is where they rightly belong.
and what a great idea... Bill O'Reilly interviews Bat-bot!!!!
much love from the WWN :)
Yes it may appear totally different and new. What we have to realize is the consumers will dictate what happens and if papers are to survive and investigative journalism are to live on it will be up to the public that demands it and not the powerful guys in the room. Not in a capitalist society. If we do not let these businesses reorganize or fail we will simply be digging ourselves a bigger hole with bailouts. Our country has already changed we no longer feel safe within our borders as we once did and our lives are much more open and public. Where we will be in 25 years no one knows but what is known is that it will not look anything like it does today.
That's the effect not the cure. Investigative journalists are now in the boat with the musicians and other writers. Welcome to selling in the clouds. It's a challenge to business models that run in locale.
Still, it is a matter of taking the same service and integrating it into a social network interface cluster.
Every change of scale in media has meant the collapse of singletons into clusters in terms of semantic classing. Emergent groups in the pricing. Family cell packages. Yadda.
So, party like it's 1899. Party lines. Have fun you're parents parents had at Bell's expense. That's what Facebook is.
Instead of selling a service to a single customer point of distribution, sell to the clusters.
- by JonAwbrey March 3, 2009 7:42 PM PST
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(18 Comments)See the thread entitled "How Wikipedia Is Putting The Existence Of A Free Press At Risk":
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