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AdvertisingShift
Can Salon's Revamp Help it Stop Bleeding Money?
Salon.com was a pioneering website launched in 1995 by former editors of the San Francisco Examiner, mixing opinion and investigative reporting with a sharply progressive slant. Although the company went public at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999, it had lost more than $80 million by 2003, and lost $4.6 million in the fiscal year ending March 31,...
more »EducationShift
Why is American University Becoming Center for New Journalism?
I visited American University last month to try to answer a burning question for me: Why was the School of Communications there becoming such a hotbed for new forms of journalism? The Center for Social Media is there. The J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, moved to American from the University of Maryland. And Charles Lewis, the founder of...
more »Legacy Media
Collaboration the Key to Future of Investigative Journalism
BERKELEY -- The second day of the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley is more of a half-day with one panel devoted to the future of investigative journalism and a brunch at the Frontline World offices near campus. Just like last year, I had trouble getting an Internet connection in the journalism school library so had to live-Twitter the panel and...
more »NewspaperShift
Live-Blogging Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at Berkeley
BERKELEY -- I am at the University of California-Berkeley for the 3rd Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium this weekend. It's an invite-only event run by Lowell Bergman, known for his work at "60 Minutes" (and being played by Al Pacino in "The Insider"). The theme this year is "Reporting on Corruption," and included a preview showing of...
more »MagazineShift
Mother Jones Boosts Community in Site Revamp
As digital technology wreaks havoc on the business models of legacy media such as newspapers and magazines, they are now turning more often to the non-profit model. Can they raise donations, micropayments, or get grants? They might want to check out a magazine that's been a pioneer with the non-profit model, and first went online in 1993: Mother Jones. The...
more »NewspaperShift
State of Investigative Reporting at Newspapers, Broadcasting
BERKELEY, CA -- I am blogging live from the conference, "Crisis in News: Symposium on Investgative Reporting," at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. It is perhaps the most beautiful day outside here, with glorious blue skies, but investigative journalists are like vampires, hiding out in dark spaces when it's warm and sunny outside. So here we are in...
more »NewspaperShift
Examples of Online Investigative Journalism
This weekend I'll be attending "The Crisis in News: Is There a Future for Investigative Journalism?" hosted at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. There will be a lot of old school journalism types who have been plying the trade of investigative work for decades. Most of these folks work at big news...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Public Documents + Shoe Leather Reporting = The Smoking Gun's Staying Power
In a world of social network widgets, videoblogs and Web 2.0 gewgaws, sometimes it's the simple things that work best. That's the lesson of Web 1.0 startup The Smoking Gun, a simply designed site that relies on public documents and criminal mugshots to bring in boatloads of traffic. If a prominent politician or celebrity has run afoul of the...
more »Open Source Reporting
EarmarkWatch.org Enables D.I.Y. Investigative Work
As professional journalists, we often believe that we have all the answers, or that we can find the knowledgeable source that has all the answers. When it comes to covering the workings of the U.S. Congress, journalists often rely on Congressional staffers or aides with inside information to find out what's going on. Or they follow the money through...
more »Citizen Journalism
'People Searches' Let Everyone Investigate You
After being an online journalist for 12 years, I figure one of my specialties is doing investigations online about people I'm interviewing for stories I write. I want to know their background, where they've worked, where they live and whatever can give me relevant context for my interactions with them. But lately, I've noticed that my "people searching" skills...
more »Digging Deeper
Sunlight Foundation Mixes Tech, Citizen Journalism to Open Congress
When people talk about corporate cutbacks in mainstream journalism organizations, there's almost a fervor about how our very democracy is in jeopardy because of the failings of Big Media in holding our government accountable. What such critiques fail to consider is that as citizens we can and will hold our government accountable, with or without the media apparatus. One...
more »NewspaperShift
How the Online Newspaper Can Become a Community Hub
I was talking with someone the other day about the future of newspapers. That seems like the topic du jour with anyone in the news business, or anyone who follows the media. I brought up the recent imbroglio over people who believe that investigative journalism will die with the newspaper printing presses, and I was asked, "Well, how will...
more »Philosophy
Serious Journalism Won't Die as Newsprint Fades
I was reading my local newspaper today -- yes, I still read it in print -- and came upon this unfortunate passage in an otherwise nice report on a maverick newspaper publisher in rural California: "With classified advertising usurped by the Internet, newspapers across the country are facing mounting losses and, in many cases, cuts in staff and resources....
more »Digging Deeper
TPMmuckraker Thrives as Political Corruption Runs Rampant
If Roosevelt lived today, he might add in "blog" to the list of places where muckrakers do their work -- and he probably would be a bit more scared of the work they're doing. One hundred years after Roosevelt coined the "muckraker" term for journalists who uncover corruption and fraud, bloggers have taken the mantle once reserved for investigative print journalists and created a new brand of muckraking that moves at the speed of the Net and involves collaboration with readers.
more »Online Video
Matt Foremski's Sleuthing Leads to Jessica Rose
Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a winner of the MediaShift Your Blog Here Contest. I was a bit flustered trying to figure out the mystery behind the Lonelygirl15 series of videos on YouTube, so I started a contest to see who could solve this mystery -- and to take my pain away.
more »Your Take Roundup
U.S. Government Should be Focus of Investigative Reports
Whether it's the Iraq War, the events of 9/11 or the Department of Homeland Security, government conduct (or misconduct) is what you'd like to see investigated most. I asked a very open-ended question to you last week, "What investigative report would you like to see done?" Your answers included many bread-and-butter issues such as health care, education and real estate. But the overriding issue was government conduct, a popular issue in classic journalism investigations such as Watergate in the '70s -- but perhaps lacking in today's corporate media.
more »Your Take
What investigative report would you like to see done?
There are a few movements afoot in the academic world to remake investigative journalism. The worry is that as Big Media companies cut back on reporting resources, less investigative work is being done and the Internet should be a place for a new style of in-depth journalism, perhaps combining professionals and amateurs. One such project is NewAssignment.net, led by NYU's Jay Rosen and funded in part by Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Another project is the sprawling News21 initiative by five journalism schools and the Carnegie and Knight foundations. (Much more on that later at MediaShift...) But Rosen has put out the call -- what ideas do you have for investigative reports? What do you think journalists should cover more in-depth? The oil industry? The government? Rising university tuitions? Share your ideas in the comments below, and I'll send them along to Rosen and others to consider -- plus, you'll get showcased in next week's Your Take Roundup.
more »Citizen Journalism
Can Investigative Journalism Be Done in Collaboration Online?
Robert Parry, an investigative reporter who broke stories about the Iran-Contra scandal in the '80s, wrote about the importance of investigative journalism for his ConsortiumNews.com site.
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