Watchdog Conference

by Renee Feltz

Moderator: Josh Friedman, director of International Programs, Columbia Journalism School
Bruce Shapiro, executive director, Dart Center
Joel Simon, executive director, Committee to Protect Journalists
Kwame Karikari, head of the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA)
Drew Sullivan, advising editor, Center for Investigative Reporting, Bosnia

Investigative journalists are the most vulnerable to physical and psychological assaults, but few in the profession are familiar with how to counter these threats, a panel of journalists agreed this afternoon.

“Our profession needs to acknowledge the work we do is hazardous in more ways than one,” said moderator Josh Friedman.

Physical threats to journalists are simplest to quantify. There were 722 journalists killed between January 1, 1992 and December 31, 2008, said panelist, Joel Simon, executive director, Committee to Protect Journalists. He further broke down the deaths by coverage area:

Read the rest of this entry »

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 of Investigative Reporters and Editors

Bill Grueskin asked the panelists to discuss what they have been thinking about in terms of the distressing state of affairs within the industry.

Mark Horvit gave a summary of the state of investigative journalism, as he’s hearing it from his members from IRE. He said IRE has seen its membership go down 15 percent this year. Among the 70 responses to a survey he did, 65 percent said newspapers were doing less investigative work. Only 10 percent report doing more. Some of the responses he heard were that projects used to last two to four months, and now they are lasting two weeks. Another said, “I frequently get the impression that we don’t know what we don’t know anymore.” Solid stories are getting relegated to the AP. They are buying out veteran reporters and editors. A mid-size daily in the South said they’ve increased the team from one to three reporters and put a new emphasis on computer-assisted reporting, but they had to cut on beat reporter side. Read the rest of this entry »

by Kristin Jones

Legal Threats and Opportunities: Reporting on National Security and Other Issues

Moderator: John Dinges, professor, Columbia Journalism School

Lucy Dalglish, executive director, Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press
James Risen, reporter for The New York Times and author of State of War
Roman Shleynov, investigations editor, Novaya Gazeta (Russia)
Harinder Baweja, news and investigations editor, Tehelka

What are the biggest legal threats to journalists around the world, and what does it feel like when you’re the target? Newspaper reporters from the U.S., India and Russia and an American press freedom advocate weighed in this morning on the shifting legal threats to journalists.

by Rebecca Castillo

Some of these risks are not so much new developments as throwbacks to the Nixon administration. For example, New York Times reporter James Risen noted that his lawyers were warned of possible espionage charges related to his national security reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

by Malia Politzer

INTRODUCTIONS: Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemman and Bevis Longstreth

PANELISTS: Founding Chair of Fund for Independent Journalism Charles Lewis and Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University – Global overview.

How will watchdog journalism survive? In order to understand the challenges watchdog journalism faces, we need to know where we are now. So where are we? And what challenges do we face?

Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemman kicked off the conference with a pithy summary of two key factors critical to the survival of watchdog journalism:

• Laws and institutions that support press freedom and independence
• Resources. Journalists need to be able to have the money and personnel to do long-form projects.

by Rebecca Castillo

Next came Bevis Longstreth, founding chair for the Fund for Independence in Journalism, who – after rattling off the doom-and-gloom layoff statistics – made an interesting point: Perhaps journalism should never have been sustained by advertising in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday and Friday, keep an eye on this site. We’ll be posting news from the upcoming panels on threats to investigative journalism, and new opportunities and innovations in the field. We invite you to follow the days’ proceedings online, and we welcome your comments and questions. Write to watchdogcolumbia@gmail.com or post your comments below.