A.P. To Distribute Nonprofits' Investigative Journalism

The NY Times is reporting on the Associated Press's decision to distribute the investigative journalism of four nonprofit groups. This ought to benefit both struggling newspapers, which have cut investigative staff, and the nonprofits where, we can hope, many of those laid-off journalists are plying their trade. It's refreshing to see this kind of forward thinking coming out of an organization not normally known for its progressiveness. "Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material. The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets."

a very good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

This move is a very good thing. What many people fail to realize is that investigative journalism costs money (a lot of money). When the Boston Globe broke the story about the Catholic child molestation/priest shuffling coverup a few years ago, that cost them over a million dollars to cover the months of research and tons of staff that went into it. This isn't the kind of thing that you'll get from Joe Blogger sitting in his den rehashing/aggregating stories he found elsewhere on the web. Yes, a lot of what passes for "professional journalism" these days is somewhat low level. But that doesn't mean it all is.

Think of it like this (analogy time!) -- just because there are a lot of shitty visual basic programmers out there, that doesn't mean that every programmer is a shitty one that can only program in VB. That's exactly the type of comparison a lot of you make when you talk about shitty journalists. We need to encourage good investigative journalism, and this is a step in the right direction.

Sideways...

[owlnation]

I think this is a step sideways. The term "not for profit" is very misleading. In fact, most such organizations need to get their name and "issues" out there to raise funds. Hence, there's plenty of biased, scaremongering stories that comes from non-profit orgs, NGOs and charities. In fact, almost all scaremongering stories come from those very sources. Sensationalist headlines means the organizations name is out there along with a guilt trip designed to encourage people to donate to "fight" whatever issue is being trumped.

Many, if not all, Newspapers already regurgitate press releases from non-profit orgs as news. What would really help newspapers is to stop relying on press releases, and stop relying on the the A.P. or Reuters etc., and actually get out there and investigate actual news. Where are the Bob Woodwards? Those type of guys are what newspapers need. That will save them. There's plenty of stories and scandals in every national and local government, in every corporation -- things we really NEED to know about. But we're not finding out about because no-one is digging into them any more.

Blogs or Google News, or other news feeds, are the perfect places to report things from A.P. or non-profits, or entertainment P.R. Newspapers should be the sources of comment and actual investigative journalism.

Re:No better than the rest

[paazin]

Lets all take a cue from Woodward and Bernstein, who all these J school grads aspire to emulate - follow the money. These groups are being funded by people with agendas, just like the media they purport to study/critique.

Indeed, though that doesn't necessarily mean the investigation isn't true; a classic example is Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' where an avowed socialist wrote about the exploitation committed in Chicago's meat-packing district and how adopting a socialist philosophy was the only way help the working man in the US.

The latter was pretty roundly dismissed but there were a good number of regulations implemented because of that initial investigation and publication.

Source of funding indicates bias.

[reporter]

These investigative non-profit organizations (INPOs) must receive funding in order to even operate. To check whether bias has entered into any investigation by an INPO, it must disclose its funding sources.

The Internet and the natural expectation (by the typical American) of "free" news have destroyed the economic model of newspapers. Here, "newspapers" refers to both print material and online material. We can expect a continued hollowing out of the investigative department of most newspapers.

There appear to be only 3 viable models for the future of newspapers. They are the following.

1. non-profit model. The newspaper operates like the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and receives donations and government funding. The danger in this model is that the ruling political party may withhold funding if a newspaper publishes a damaging story that ruins the career of a politician from that party.

2. public-service model. The newspaper is run as a public service by a non-profit organization or a for-profit business. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is a good example of this model. The Christian Science church publishes the CSM as a public service. The CSM is quite good -- good enough for use by the Central Intelligence Agency to supplement its own political analyses of hotspots in the world.

3. endowment model. A rich person creates a billion-dollar fund. The interest payments from that fund then fund a particular newspaper.

Model #3 is the best. In it, external interference is minimal. Bias is least likely to enter into a story.

However, model #1 appears to be the one advocated by the AP. In effect, a newspapers' distributing the investigative stories of INPOs is equivalent to this model. The INPOs receive government funding and public donations. The INPOs then use the funds to do investigations, of which the results are fed to newspapers for distribution.

Curiously, Google management almost implemented model #2. There was talk of Google's buying a newspaper. It was likely the "New York Times".

All of this stuff is not merely idle talk for geeks on Slashdot on a Saturday afternoon. The fate of newspapers is vitally important to every Westerner. Newspapers have long served as the 4th branch of government. They are our eyes and ears in keeping us informed of the operation of our government. Without the in-depth investigative reports by newspapers, the voters would be ignorant. An ignorant public is the 1st step to the establishment of an authoritarian society.

Re:No better than the rest

[jmorris42]

> Try making that same argument about Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton and see where it leads.

A sordid tale of lust and perjury based on a stained blue dress might be as close as Ken Starr got to Bill Clinton himself but do remember those various probes netted a Governor of Arkansas and several other felony convictions. And he did manage to at least get Mr. Clinton disbarred.

Now compare to Patrick Fitzgerald. He knew from the first or second day who leaked Plame's name, that it wasn't anyone in the White House or VP's office and that it wouldn't have been a violation of the law at any rate since Ms. Plame/Wilson was no longer a covert agent. Yet he drug out an investigation for how long, paralyzing much of the government during wartime? And in the end he managed to, after trying how many grand juries, to get a perjury conviction on Scooter Libby under teh most dubious of circumstances. No others were even charged let along convicted. No Fitzmas present of Rove perp walked out of the White House.

Re:More propaganda

[Saint Stephen]

The main thing I can't understand is why the left gets so apopleptic over Fox News or Liberty Media when they so clearly spew out essentially the same formula. It's just like I couldn't see any difference between San Francisco when I lived there and the PTL club when I lived near the NC/SC border -- both groups of people were defined by a vaguely circus-like atmosphere and never meeting a soul who didn't instantly believe the exact same things you do.