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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."
Just for the edification of the reader... the AP also is a not-for-profit cooperative.
So they now offer their non-profit services created by other non-profit organisations to organisations who gain profit with that? Remarkable value-creating chain.
From the article:
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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Newspaper content already tends to be interchangeable as regards many news stories. How is this going to help make newspaper content more unique?
Y'know, since they sent a cease and desist over a Youtube video embedded from their official Youtube page?
I suppose, rather than just sitting there are re-printing PR fluff handed to you.
The 4th estate has long since abandoned its post.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
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.
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.
I don't know about the others, but ProPublica is a left-wing propaganda organization. It was founded by Herbert and Marion Sandler, from Time's 25 people to blame for the financial crisis. It has provided propaganda stories to newspapers around the country disguised as news....
On second thought, that should fit right in with the rest of what the AP distributes.
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.
We all agree the news is biased. Some say it has a left wing bias, others a right wing bias, and we all experience a little of both. Yet the stereotype of activist/journalist who willingly manipulates the facts to get their point across is untrue for most journalist's I've observed (save the obvious Bill O'Reileys of the world).
Recognize that a journalist's job is tough. It's up to them to get the facts, and nobody is willing to talk. People naturally distrust reporters, and their first instinct is to keep quiet. They don't want to be bothered by journalists. It's a hassle.
But in the end, the journalist has to get the facts. So they get quotes from anybody willing to speak to them. And usually, the only people willing to speak to journalists are those with an ideology to spread. Someone with an interest in how the news gets reported.They volunteer to be interviewed.
That's where most bias comes from: Not the reporters, but their sources. So naturally, if a bunch of non profits "generously contribute the news they've gathered" you can bet half of those groups are doing it to manipulate the news in their favor.
> It's refreshing to see this kind of forward thinking coming out of an organization
> not normally known for its progressiveness.
If by 'progressive' you mean they are slightly to the right of Marx, ok. Guess I better take a note that the word has been redefined again.
Or are we discussing a different AP than the Associated (with terrorists) Press that runs Al Qaeda and Hezbollah propaganda as news... because their 'stringers' are active members. The same AP that could learn lessons in objectivity from Pravda?
Now to this 'novel' notion. It is just a formalization of long standing practice. As the old media have been dying they have long since lacked the resources to do actual journalism and have been printing press releases as news for years. Of course only SOME organizations get that sort of treatment and they always match the political views of the typical newsroom. Don't expect to see Heritage or Cato getting their work carried as is as news.
But even when a press release isn't run over the wire as a news article it is common to see them lightly reworded by a 'journalist' and run as a news article. Not just politics, it is big in tech and business news too.
This sort of thing is why I giggle every time some MSM dead man walking goes droning on about the advantages of traditional news, the research, the editors and fact checkers, etc. vs bloggers in their underwear. It used to be true but not for years. Read a NYT or CNN article or two. Note the spelling and grammar errors. If an article were still going past several humans before hitting print/web wouldn't ONE of them used the spell checker or caught the grammar glitches? Now read a couple where YOU know as much or more about the subject as the reporter. Bet you found factual errors didn't ya. If they still had editors and fact checkers shouldn't they have caught those? If they still had humans in the loop would the NYT have let Jason Blair get away with passing off his mashups of stolen copy and outright fiction until people OUTSIDE the paper caught him?
It's all a fiction, you are getting the same opinion passed off as fact in a modern newspaper or TV news piece as you get on a blog, difference is bloggers really do get fact checked by other bloggers and the best and most reliable over time float to the top of the page view rankings.
Democrat delenda est
Be suspicious of investigative reporters bearing gifts. Anybody remember Rathergate. I did a quick google on the contributing "non-profit orgs" and I would not describe them as unbiased.
JoeR
AWESOME! Another source of left-biased news!
It warms my cockles of my stone-cold neo-con heart to know I can get continue to "get my liberal on" courtesy of the mighty AP....
Caring for the AIDS Patient
The government tells us that AIDS cannot be transmitted "casually." The government also tells us that it should raise our taxes, and risk our sons for Saudi Arabia.
Recently, a non-government physician writing in Gene Antonio's Healthwatch Report (P.O. Box 90140-264, Arlington, TX, 76004, $25 a year), gave some excellent advice "To Those Caring for the AIDS Patient."
Among his recommendations: 1) Wear rubber gloves when handling the clothes, dishes, etc. of the patient. Wear a surgical mask if he is coughing or wheezing. 2) Use paper plates and cups and burn them afterwards. 3) Boil all his laundry for at least 15 minutes. 4) Pour a half cup of Clorox in his bath water before draining it. 5) Always wipe the toilet seat with a soapy paper towel. Do not put the towel in the toilet, but in a paper bag to be burned. 6) No kissing, since AIDS can be transmitted by saliva. 7) No sexual relations, since condoms are far from foolproof. 8) Do not allow the patient to eat in a restaurant. 9) Do not allow the patient to drive or operate machinery due to mental impairment.
How often are these sorts of commonsense precautions taken? Not often, because they violate the government propaganda line, and would be considered a hate crime. But they give us an idea of how we should actually proceed, instead of having tax-funded programs to promote the conduct that causes AIDS.
Dr. Ron Paul, Ron Paul Political Report, October 1990
How could the "MSM" not take his campaign seriously?/s
It doesn't matter who is talking or not, it's all about how you frame issues, and the language you use to describe a situation. Not to mention selective inclusion of quotes from people who did talk to you, often out of one context and into another of your choosing...
Placing no blame on journalists is doing the profession a disservice as the first step is to admit you have a problem.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if only because, online, we have to hear more voices like yours. you know, those with an obvious axe to grind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They should make the license viral, so that anyone publishing their content may only do so without charging for it. If newspapers' business model is obsolete, who are we to hinder their natural extinction?
Intellectual Property: an immaterial non-entity, most fiercely contended by those with no proper intellect to speak of.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/
Dunno why facts are rated troll, I guess if inciting someone to react by delivering unwelcome news counts as trolling.
Blast 'Em?
If you live in a major city, you've probably already heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking.
It is the hip-hop thing to do among urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in recent months.
In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob.
What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).
I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.
Dr. Ron Paul, Ron Paul Political Report October 1992
... when pamphleteers lost their influence. What matters the fate of newspapers?
Of those listed, I'm a little familiar with the Center for Public Integrity, and find their research leans toward facts rather than opinions and meaningless left-right distinctions. Check it out for yourself though, skim through the topics and if you're open minded could even read an article. If you have already internalized certain core values, you'll look at the list and say it's leftist propaganda. It's funny though, since your post makes use of a rhetorical trick ("25 people to blame"), you're probably not much interested in deeply analyzing and critiquing propaganda no matter what its source.