Category Archives: Journalism, norgs, the future of news

Share It When You Can Find It: Investigative Journalism

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88 percent of newspaper coverage is ‘churnalism’: rewritten wire copy and PR. Only 12 is derived from reporters initiative or is fact checked.

That’s the state of newspaper journalism in Britain according to what Nick Davies has written in his book “Flat Earth News”. You can read more about “Flat Earth News” in a recent London Review of Books article (via dangerousmeta).

No wonder the majority of Americans no longer trust the media and folks like Jeff Jarvis are making an issue of it.

We have a clue we are being spun. And I bet that niche media’s pursuit of ‘authenticity’ – the practice of wrapping news in greater and greater extremes of opinion to seem ‘genuine’ – folks probably feel at an instinctive level the exploitation.

In this environment, it has become more and more difficult to find investigative journalism you might care about or might need to know about.

There are many initiatives that have sprung up over the past few years that attempt to address how investigative journalism can be pursued, developed, created and funded.

Scott Rosenberg shares his doubts about one of the latest, “ProPublica”, a non-profit driven by some big names in traditional journalism.

Think about a story the Philadelphia Inquirer recently published: “Philadelphia faces shortage of housing for mentally ill”. It was front page of the Local section. Some editor thought that I, as a reader, would find that story interesting or pertinent.

In a world driven purely by linkage, PageRank, traffic counts, and other topic based story algorithm filtering systems – would I see that story? Would that story even be written? Who is its audience?

Think about it. And what it means for your knowledge of others that sit outside your topical or social spheres.

Now I’m not saying that algorithm driven – or crowd driven – news filtering is bad. Far from it.

Nor am I saying that a world where only ‘experts’ provide access to the news stories is good. Again far from it.

But the folks who *do* say one or the other are selling something. And it is at our expense.

MSM Blog Networks Aren’t All That Bad

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I hate the term “MSM” (Mainstream Media) that we bloggers use to describe older media and news organizations, but sometimes you need to acquiesce.

Lots of folks thought that members of traditional media couldn’t ‘do blogging’ for various reasons. They were wrong. Take a look around and you will find some of the best blogs are being produced in places once thought unlikely.

Wired Magazine’s Wired Blogs have some of the most interesting technology/geek focused blogs you could subscribe to.

For politics there are those hosted at The Atlantic.

And, at least in Philly, local newspapers have fully embraced them at Philly.com (The Inquirer and Daily News), philadelphia weekly, and Philadelphia City Paper.

Shoot, even local TV News shows have gotten in the act at NBC 10 and Fox 29.

The NYTimes gets into Blog Aggregation!

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TechCrunch: NYTimes Blogrunner v. TechMeme.

They are using a technique I had originally suggested while I worked at Philly.com to handle the enormous legal and quality concerns – use a third party aggregator service like Blogrunner.

Bravo to the NYTimes 🙂

A Great Example of Networked Journalism

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EarthTimes.org: “Consumer Reports Names Their All-Star Appliances”:

“Our brand-repair histories are culled from approximately 450,000 respondents reporting on nearly 2.5 million appliances,” said Robert Markovich, editor at Consumer Reports. “Choosing a reliable brand will boost a consumer’s odds of getting a reliable model and in the end often save consumers money.”

You can even say the report was ‘crowdsourced’.

Now if only we could collate a list of safe and fun toys that parents would want to buy.

1 in 3 Americans Still Believe Saddam Involved in 9/11

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Unbelievable isn’t it?

Editor & Publisher: “Hit and Myth: Poll Shows 1 in 3 Americans Still Believe Saddam Involved in 9/11”.

Wow.

The sad thing is, predictably, pundits and experts on both sides of the new media debate (something I have yet to understand) will inevitably point fingers.

Nick Carr: “The people formerly known as informed”.

Dan Gillmor: “Journalists Failure to Dispel Saddam-9/11 Myth is Media Scandal”.

Mathew Ingram: “News flash: Digg headlines not “real” news”.

Fact: Despite the information revolution, despite the advent of 24/7 cable news, despite the advent of 24/7 talk radio, despite the Internet, set aside the Web and participatory media for just a minute, it’s already been determined we’re no better informed about our world than in 1989.

So those who long for the good old days can point your fingers at bloggers all you want.

And those who say today far better than the past can point your fingers at ‘traditional’ media journalists all you want.

The failure is complete. It is across the board.

And it portends terrible things for our democracy and society as a whole.

Yahoo! and Google Move to Squeeze Newspapers Further

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Yahoo! has relaunched it’s local search service. It better surfaces community driven participation and feels far more like a destination than before.

Screenwerk: Yahoo! Refreshes, Redesigns Local.

They still haven’t gone as far as I expect them to one day do – integrate Flickr, del.icio.us, and Groups, and Maps into a cohesive whole, but the potential is there.

On the other side is Google, which recently launched its Business Referral Representative program.

Google will now pay you as an independent contractor to collect information on local businesses, telling them about Ad Words, and submitting them to Google Maps. You can read more about it from here and a recent SearchEngineWatch article.

We’re No Better Informed About Our World Than In 1989

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Despite the information and communication revolutionary time we live in, Americans remain in the dark about our world.

Pew released a survey back in April detailing Americans knowledge of current affairs, comparing the status quo to that of 1989.

We’ve had a literal explosion of new media and communications services and tools come into being these past 15 years. They have completely reshaped how we get our news and how we connect with our communities.

Social Networks, Blogs, RSS, News Aggregators, Email, Email Lists, Message Boards, Websites, News portals, the Web, the Internet, Cable network 24/hr. news, talk radio, online magazines, collaborative news filters, algorithmic news filters, the list goes on and on.

You would think with so many choices, so many avenues to get informed, we’d actually be better informed.

You’d be wrong.

On average, today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago. The new survey includes nine questions that are either identical or roughly comparable to questions asked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2007, somewhat fewer were able to name their governor, the vice president, and the president of Russia, but more respondents than in the earlier era gave correct answers to questions pertaining to national politics.

In 1989, for example, 74% could come up with Dan Quayle’s name when asked who the vice president is. Today, somewhat fewer (69%) are able to recall Dick Cheney. However, more Americans now know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is generally considered a conservative and that Democrats control Congress than knew these things in 1989. Some of the largest knowledge differences between the two time periods may reflect differences in the amount of press coverage of a particular issue or public figure at the time the surveys were taken. But taken as a whole the findings suggest little change in overall levels of public knowledge.

The survey provides further evidence that changing news formats are not having a great deal of impact on how much the public knows about national and international affairs.

I’m among a bunch of folks who tend to trumpet online services as a cure-all for our past lack of information awareness and communications access.

On the opposite side of the bench have been those who have sounded alarm after alarm about how our ever growing media-and-communications-scape will fragment us ever further and result in ever tightening echo chambers, making us less informed about subject matter as a whole.

Turns out both perspectives are wrong.

Here we are, with so much new technology, so much new media, transforming the way we live our lives, and yet we are as informed, as ill informed, as we were in 1989.

Related:

Newsweek: Dunce-Cap Nation

Wired: Infoporn: Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed

Digby reveals herself

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Whether you are interested in the social software/media as a toolset for activism and participatory politics, or reporting the news, or simply community, there is something for you in Digby’s speech at Take Back America 2007. Take the time and give a listen to her today:


Congratulations Rajiv

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Congrats to Rajiv Pant, who has taken a job in NYC at Conde Nast Publications as VP of Information Technology for CondeNet!

Rajiv was my manager (and eventually VP) at Philly.com and Knight Ridder, before the dotcombust, back when KR took risks and had a future. He’s a real visionary who always finds a way. I learned a lot from him during my time there and miss our deep talks about the nature of well.. just about everything.

Rajiv, my friend, congrats to you 🙂

Latest Norg and Social Software/Media Must Reads

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danah boyd: “The Significance of Social Software” (pdf)

Guy Kawasaki: By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09

Seth Finkelstein: The Dr. Robert Lindeman / “Flea” anonymous blog outing – Blogging HARMS! (Read “Blogger unmasked, court case upended” right away!)

Invisible Inkling: 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head (subscribe to this blog now!)

A VC: The Free Music Business

akkamsrazor.com: The New Creative Class: A Threat to the Republic…