Enlarging the spaces for investigative journalism: Countering threats, supporting innovations
After two days of conversation on tackling threats to watchdog journalists worldwide and fostering the kind of innovation necessary to sustain investigative reporting, conference participants met in break-out sessions to identify next steps.
The Challenges to Investigative Reporting in Today’s Market
Panel Discussion, 1-2:30pm, March 12, 2009
By Lizza Dwoskin
Bill Grueskin, academic dean, Columbia Journalism School
Paul Steiger, editor in chief, president and chief executive of ProPublica
Gustavo Gorriti, columnist, Caretas magazine, Peru
Mark Horvit, executive director, Investigative Reporters and Editors
Cheryl Phillips, data enterprise editor, Seattle Times, and president [...]
One of the last remaining two-newspaper cities lost that status on Friday. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News closed its doors. In Seattle, another doomsday draws near. Hearst executives back in January put the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the auction block, giving it 60 days. If no savior steps in to buy it, that paper may go online-only, or shut down completely.
What does it mean for investigative journalism when formerly competitive markets become one-paper towns? For now, it probably means that some stories never see the light of day. But in Seattle and Denver as elsewhere, there are signs that new models will emerge.
The relationship of classified and display advertising revenue to newspapers has been drastically disrupted by the new online technologies and the simultaneous, declining consumer interest in serious news. And a new for-profit model, able to employ hundreds of full-time journalists in a single online news organization, does not yet exist. Amidst all of this turmoil, new economic models for funding investigative journalism – nonprofit, for profit and hybrid – have been emerging in recent years.
10:15-11:45am on Friday, March 13
(Panel Briefing by Charles Lewis)
Amidst all of the turmoil in the media industry, new economic models for funding investigative journalism – nonprofit, for profit and hybrid – have been emerging in recent years. Josh Marshall’s political blog, Talking Points Memo, winner of the 2007 George Polk Award for its legal reporting, [...]
