The Huffington Post announced today that it is launching a new initiative to produce a wide range of investigative journalism — The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. It is being funded by The Huffington Post and The Atlantic Philanthropies, and will be headed by Nick Penniman, founder of The American News Project, which will be folded into the Investigative Fund.
“The importance of investigative journalism cannot be overstated — especially during our tumultuous times — and we are delighted to be creating an initiative whose goal is to produce stories that will have a real impact both nationally and locally,” said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. “Everyone who recognizes the role good journalism plays in our democracy is looking for ways to preserve it during this time of great transition for the media. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is one of the ways we are addressing that need, while also providing work and a platform for seasoned journalists downsized by major media outlets. We are grateful to the American News Project and The Atlantic Philanthropies for their generous contributions, and intend to engage with other donors as we continue to expand the Fund.”
Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, said, “There is no more critical reporting than investigative journalism. This nonprofit investigative journalism venture is a very important and logical next step for The Huffington Post. Our mission will be to produce and distribute distinguished, independent journalism made widely-available to all news outlets. We are proud to be working with our prestigious partners and look forward to expanding and building upon this venture with other investigative news organizations from around the country, and the world.”
Tagjournalismbiz
From an un-scientific survey of laid off reporters:
Many of the respondents have found new jobs. It’s too early to tell about those who lost their jobs within the past year, but for those who did so between 1999 and 2007:
• Just under 36 percent said they found a new job in less than three months. Add those who say they freelance full time, and the total jumps to 53 percent.
• Less than 10 percent say it took them longer than a year.
• Only a handful – 6 percent – found other newspaper jobs. The rest are doing everything from public relations to teaching to driving a bus and clerking in a liquor store.
While they’ve found work, many of the people with new jobs are making less money. The midpoint salary range for their old jobs was $50,000 to $59,000. Those who listed salaries for their new jobs were a full salary band lower – $40,000 to $49,000.
Of the people who volunteered their old newspaper salary, only 2 percent made less than $20,000 a year. Of the people who gave me their new salaries, that number shot up to 17 percent. The age of those at the bottom of the salary scale has changed surprisingly as well. The median age of those who made less than $20,000 at their old newspaper job was 24. The median age of those now making less than $20,000 is 48.
On Monday, Seattle P-I owner The Hearst Corp. said that while it would end the print edition of the paper effective Tuesday, it would continue to maintain Seattlepi.com as a source of local news and opinion.
It marks the first time that a major metropolitan daily has attempted the switch from print and online to digital only. The shift could eventually be replicated in cities across the United States.
But at least in Seattle, the new digital product will be very different from the old operation — in both size and tradition.
Managers said the site will have an editorial staff of 20, down from more than 150. An additional 20 people are being hired to sell advertising. The staff writers remaining include columnists Joel Connelly, Art Thiel and Jim Moore, as well as cartoonist David Horsey.
Put simply, it’s getting too expensive to gather news.
So here’s a novel idea: Let’s get university professors to do it. For real. And, best of all, free of charge.
Remember, most professors aren’t paid for what they write now. When I publish an article in an academic journal, I don’t earn a cent. But I also don’t engage more than a handful of readers, mainly fellow specialists in my own field.
It wasn’t always that way. A hundred years ago, many of the leading lights in the social sciences and the humanities wrote for the popular press. If we want to revive the press – as well as our own struggling disciplines – we might look to their example.
Consider Robert E. Park, founder of the “Chicago School” of sociology and one of the most prominent intellectuals of the early 20th century. After earning his PhD in 1904 from the University of Heidelberg, in Germany, Park became secretary and press agent of the Congo Reform Association. Park’s muckraking magazine articles exposed Belgium’s vicious atrocities in the Congo, helping to turn world opinion against the colonial regime of King Leopold.
Full Story: The Christian Science Monitor
(via Ethan Z)
After a day or two of playing with the numbers, he came back to me with an interesting picture: Based on its current level of online ad revenue, he says, the L.A. Times could support a staff of about 275 people at their present salaries, and even offer a slight bump in benefits. This factors in office space, equipment, and all other major costs. And get this: The paper would be a solid moneymaker, boasting a profit margin of about 10%.
Of those 275 folks, Stanton figures, about 150 would work in the newsroom; the rest would sell ads, provide tech support, and handle various administrative duties.
This is far from a perfect solution, of course. Many older readers, in particular, are bound to balk at any arrangement that tries to force them online. What’s more, cutting the news-gathering ranks to just 150 would sharply curtail what the Times could do, while causing a great amount of pain to those who’ve lost their livelihoods. The paper today has about 625 reporters and editors around the world (a stable that’s down from the 1,000-plus when I was there just a couple of years ago).
But perfect isn’t an option for the newspaper industry anymore. “In turbulent times,” Drucker wrote, “the first task of management is to make sure of the institution’s capacity for survival.” And that’s just it: With 150 journalists, a paper such as the L.A. Times could indeed survive—and still provide an indispensable service to the community.
(via Jay Rosen)
The Arizona Guardian and Heat City are two examples of web-only news sites started by recently unemployed journalists.
The Arizona Guardian is run by four Phoenix-based journalists who were recently laid off from the East Valley Tribune. The Guardian covers legislative issues and other aspects of the state capitol.
Heat City is run by Nick Martin, another journalist laid off by the Tribune. The website covers criminal justice and media issues, but the centerpiece of its coverage is the trial of accused serial killer Dale Hausner.
(via Ethan Z)
I know I’m stating the obvious, but if I brought anything away from last night’s journalist mash-up, No News Is Bad News, it’s that West Seattle Blog is HOT, HOT SHIT right now.
The premise of the event was … well, I don’t remember. But, what it became was a chance for 150ish journalists and a few of their subjects to come together in one room, talk about the state of the industry, pontificate on how we got where we are and who’s to blame, and toss around ideas for how to save QUALITY JOURNALISM (not necessarily ink and paper). West Seattle Blog, perhaps more than any other voice in the room, is demonstrating an idea, a business model, and a way to preserve local journalism. They have skin in the game. They’re making it work. They’re not just talking about it, they’re doing it. And doing it well. But they’re not saying they’ve found the digital news solution, either. They’ve found something that works in West Seattle, not necessarily the rest of the country or even the city.
(via Jay Rosen)
In response to a long, righteous article in the New Republic about why the decline of newspaper is going to be bad for democracy, ex-journalist Dan Conover holds forth:
Goose a few newspaper journalists these days and they’re likely to exclaim something about why Americans should care about saving their industry. And it’s likely to sound something like this: “Without us protecting the public as investigative watchdogs, government corruption is going to run amok!”
Which might be a compelling point, were it not for five little things:
1. Watchdogging government is hardly the primary purpose of modern newspapers (it doesn’t even make the Top Three in most outfits), and if Watchdogging ever interferes with Job No. 1 (generating double-digit profit margins for shareholders), Watchdogging is right out;
2. Few newspaper “watchdog” reports are based primarily on original research;
3. Newspaper editors, for all their posturing about government openness, have roughly zero interest in opening up their own processes and decision-making to public inspection;
4. The amount of resources devoted to truly investigative, power-challenging, applecart-upsetting, potentially unpopular stories at the average American newspaper is likely dwarfed by the comics page budget;
5. And finally, this argument assumes without evidence that even if my objections were untrue, newspapers would still be the appropriate place for this important societal function. […]Ever wonder who does most of the public-policy grunt work in America? For the good guys, it’s typically underpaid crusaders at civic-minded non-profit groups, people who care about clean water and safe food and healthy children other such left-wing nonsense. Newspapers count on these scruffy muckrackers, even though they typically distance themselves from their “radical” agendas.
The bad guys, like the American Petroleum Institute, or, say Envron, hire platoons of well-groomed lobbyists, experts and public-relations specialists to sell their stories. And even though they are deliberately engaged in distorting the truth to protect their interests, these people are treated as respectable, credible media sources.
Much of what passes for watchdog investigative reporting is based on studies conducted by these pesky non-profits, or by anonymous government underlings in some state auditor’s office, or the federal GAO, and so on. They produce the proof, editors build stories around their findings, and each year on press awards night, some reporters get plaques that credit them with the whole enterprise.
Is there newspaper reporting, investigative or otherwise, that takes on a public-policy issue and challenges ruling orthodoxy without a boost from an interest group? Probably. But newspapers generally refuse to poke the status-quo without being able to cite some interest group for raising the issue. Wanna know why? Because the status quo is where the money and power are. Do the math.
One final thing about this weird dance of newspaper reporters and watchdog groups. In the old days, each benefited. Today, the only thing the newspaper gives the watchdog is greater exposure — not the ability to publish, not the credibility to contact influencers and decision-makers. What newspaper people won’t tell you is that their value to the original institutional watchdoggers is declining. Rapidly. […]
These systemic failures do nothing to limit government corruption. Rather, the first-hand knowledge of how easy it is to warp press coverage and spin public opinion has the opposite effect. Through our sloppy standards and the overarching greed of our corporate paymasters, my former profession has encouraged generations of corporate and governmental sleaze. We didn’t watchdog President Bush’s claims about WMDs. We didn’t take seriously the voices that had been warning for years about the impending collapse of the subprime mortgage market. If your local newspaper gives the mayor’s denials of proven but complex facts equal weight with the facts themselves, then your city hall is likely rife with sleek, smug injustice. And so on.
(via Jay Rosen)
I’d previously written about the need to save professional media – not necessarily established newspapers – here. This definitely makes the case that the role of the big established news organization is a lot less important than we might think.
I used two examples: The Chicago Tribune‘s coverage of the Jena 6 and the New Yorker‘s immigrant detention centers. In the case of the former, regional bloggers covered the case until it got the attention of the Tribune’s Howard Witt, who went to Jena and did a story and managed to get it on the national radar. In the case of the latter, it’s still not a widely known issue and I imagine it was actually pretty heavily researched by advocacy groups before the NYer.
So really the main things that bloggers are missing is perceived legitimacy and authority of the establishment media: the power to make what advocacy groups or local or regional bloggers say matter. The establishment media completely failed the public on two most important issues facing us today: the pretense for the Iraq War, and the economic meltdown. Hundreds of bloggers were debunking the Iraq War claims as they were being made, and at least a few (Billmon for example) were warning us about the subprimes. If only anyone had listened.
They have been abject failures on one of the other most important issues of our time: the drug war. Gary Webb‘s career was ruined for exposing the CIA’s complacency in drug running. Today, the best journalism on that beat is coming from an online source: Narco News.
In other words: maybe we really are better off without them after all.
1. Public funds investigative journalism
2. Angel funding for investigative journalism
3. Government funds Journalism
4. A Non-profit Trust funds Journalism
5. Regular Donation Drives funds Journalism
6. Small, localized, Print on demand newspapers
7. Small, online only news teams
8. A mix of free papers for young people and special editions with analysis for an older crowd
9. Subsidize serious reporting with consumer service coverage
10. Subsidize serious reporting with non-intrusive business line extensions
11. Small Newsroom of Investigative reporters, brand name bloggers and community managers
12. Subscription based site plus free articles
13. iTunes type Pay for each article using micropayments
14. Newspapers consortiums join forces with distributors like Google or Yahoo
(via Jay Rosen)
See also my article on new revenue sources for professional news media outlets
What I imagine is a newsroom that is also a cafe. Of course the reporters would have desks somewhere private to do work (a 2nd floor would be ideal), but the front of the newsroom would be a public space where people could get coffee, eat a bagel, use the wireless, etc. At least one reporter would be on-hand to talk with members of the public during business hours. These would be publicly announced “office hours.” We wouldn’t make a big pony-show of it, it would just be a part of the cafe’s appeal. You may just be hanging out – but perhaps you’ll end up in a news story!
Aside from being a revenue stream (coffee, bagels, etc) it would create a deeper connection between the news organization and the public. Could story tips be garnered this way? Perhaps it would be a great way to meet and encourage citizen journalism partners. Could a “Newsroom Cafe” take on MediaBistro in the workshops/training department? Could the space eventually be used to organize civilized public debates? Is this something that could be franchised and repeated in the following cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, etc?
And of course, see also: New revenue sources for professional news media outlets
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