Question
Is there a business model which will support intelligent investigative journalism, or will the future just be about leaks from government like Wikileaks?
Answer
This is a huge topic in journalism today. It's almost the only topic. A special feature of the decline of old media has been that it is this "core" activity that got hollowed out first. The only viable future seems to be nonprofit support.
The pioneer is Chuck Lewis' Center for Public Integrity. Pro Publica has a nice warchest to do something big.
But overall, the nonprofit support model does not seem capable of recreating the level of deep commitment that was there during say, the Watergate era or the years during which the Philadelphia Inquirer went about investigative journalism with missionary zeal.
My own opinion is that the social function that investigative journalism provided 20 years ago will be provided by a combination of forces that interlock to check and balance each other in new media rather than a single substitute. This complex will be better than the original.
The function will get "refactored" so to speak. One piece of the refactoring is things like wikileaks, yes. Another big piece is blogosphere commentary that is more informed than journalists usually are, but openly polarized and unbalanced, with no pretense at being fair/balanced. The fairness and balance will emerge out of aggregation and curation mechanisms. So at least 3 pieces of the puzzle are leaks/whistleblowers/informants, a polarized blogosphere, and aggregation mechanisms. I think a few pieces are missing still.
But overall, we'll create a robust machine out of flawed parts, instead of a flawed machine out of robust parts, which was kind of how old media operated. i.e. it was built out of trained reporters who had a good process, but the uneasy mix of capitalism and public service driving the news business made the whole thing messed up, as Chomsky showed in "Manufacturing Consent." By contrast, the processes by which leaks and the blogosphere function are haphazard, undisciplined and badly flawed, but oddly enough it all adds up to an overall more honest picture.
Of course, the medium is the message. The old machine was good at doing things like going deep into war zones or other places mainstream people don't go, for extended periods to dig out very invisible stories. The new machine will be better at peering into very different sorts of invisibilities.
Old school journalists often don't get this. They think that the new media machine cannot be a substitute because it can't discover things they could. They don't realize that OTOH, it CAN discover things THEY never could with their old methods.
On balance, the volume of discovery may be greater, and to a certain extent, the social function we need fulfilled is more about volume than specifics. But that's a longer conversation.
The pioneer is Chuck Lewis' Center for Public Integrity. Pro Publica has a nice warchest to do something big.
But overall, the nonprofit support model does not seem capable of recreating the level of deep commitment that was there during say, the Watergate era or the years during which the Philadelphia Inquirer went about investigative journalism with missionary zeal.
My own opinion is that the social function that investigative journalism provided 20 years ago will be provided by a combination of forces that interlock to check and balance each other in new media rather than a single substitute. This complex will be better than the original.
The function will get "refactored" so to speak. One piece of the refactoring is things like wikileaks, yes. Another big piece is blogosphere commentary that is more informed than journalists usually are, but openly polarized and unbalanced, with no pretense at being fair/balanced. The fairness and balance will emerge out of aggregation and curation mechanisms. So at least 3 pieces of the puzzle are leaks/whistleblowers/informants, a polarized blogosphere, and aggregation mechanisms. I think a few pieces are missing still.
But overall, we'll create a robust machine out of flawed parts, instead of a flawed machine out of robust parts, which was kind of how old media operated. i.e. it was built out of trained reporters who had a good process, but the uneasy mix of capitalism and public service driving the news business made the whole thing messed up, as Chomsky showed in "Manufacturing Consent." By contrast, the processes by which leaks and the blogosphere function are haphazard, undisciplined and badly flawed, but oddly enough it all adds up to an overall more honest picture.
Of course, the medium is the message. The old machine was good at doing things like going deep into war zones or other places mainstream people don't go, for extended periods to dig out very invisible stories. The new machine will be better at peering into very different sorts of invisibilities.
Old school journalists often don't get this. They think that the new media machine cannot be a substitute because it can't discover things they could. They don't realize that OTOH, it CAN discover things THEY never could with their old methods.
On balance, the volume of discovery may be greater, and to a certain extent, the social function we need fulfilled is more about volume than specifics. But that's a longer conversation.