BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Month: October 2007

  • Shufflin’

    7 comments on Shufflin’

    I was flying to Toronto though I didn’t really want to go. The jet’s engine had metal debris in it so they wisely switched jets. Add 2.5 hours. I almost leave the airport and bag the trip. Some damned work ethic keeps me there. We finally take off.

    Approaching T’ron’o, we are told there’s bad fog. We circle. Visibility worse. Fuel low.

    We land in Buffalo, which is crowded with diverted jets but no hotels or cars.

    We are supposed to fly back to Newark, where this odyssey started. But they are going to let some people go in Buffalo. So that means an hour sorting bags and refueling.

    It’s 1:30 and I have no idea where or whether I will sleep tonight.

    But at least the captain has a sense of humor.

  • Resolved

    I just wrote for my column about the Networked Journalism Summit that I see sites seeking a new paradigm of interactivity built more on quality and reputation than on quantity of comments. Well, here’s one attempt: The Economist is running the first of three Oxford-style debates online with a pro and a con giving their best shots and the audience voting for the winner. I’m reminded of the ill-fated LA Times wikitorial, which made the mistake of thinking that the public would collaborate on a single editorial about Iraq — ha! I suggested then that they should have turned this into an Oxford debate with a resolution and two sides giving their best and most persuasive arguments. At the time, Jimmy Wales tries to fork the wikitorial — his term — but it was too late. Collaboration had died with civility. We’ll see whether the Economist and restore both.

  • So much for the idiot vote

    7 comments on So much for the idiot vote

    I just filled out my absentee ballot here in New Jersey and there was this:

    STATE PUBLIC QUESTION No. 4
    Constitutional Amendment Concerning the
    Right to Vote for Certain Persons

    Shall the amendment of Article II, Section I, paragraph 6 of the Constitution, agreed to by the Legislature, revising the current constitutional language concerning denial of the right to vote by deleting the phrase “idiot or insane person” and providing instead that a “person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting” shall not enjoy the right of suffrage, by adopted?

    So it is now the law in New Jersey that idiots and insane people can’t vote. Why fix what’s not broken?

  • Paying for investigative journalism

    13 comments on Paying for investigative journalism
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    Paul Steiger, outgoing editor of the Wall Street Journal, announced today that he is heading Pro Publica, a foundation-backed, nonprofit organization that will perform investigative journalism and place it in established media organizations.

    Is this how investigative journalism will be supported in the future, with journalistic organizations shrinking inexorably?

    I have been dubious about foundation support for journalism. Rich people with good intentions are often held out there as the great hope for reporting: foundations and moguls that save news and newsrooms from the ravages of the marketplace. I’ve warned against thinking that there is or should be any such white knight who will save news organizations from change and let newsrooms operate exactly as they have. We must find ways to make journalism sustainable in the new marketplace. Indeed, we must find ways to expand it (thus the Networked Journalism Summit).

    But supporting independent investigative journalism may be another matter.

    Having heard about Pro Publica last week, I was thinking about the ecosystem of news today and I’m working on a post about trying to do a zero-based analysis of news. That is, how much of news is really investigative? How much is beat reporting? How much is about a news event? How much is crime? How much is hyperlocal? How much is opinion? How much is entertainment? Where should each kind of journalism come from: staff, citizens, links? And how can each be supported?

    Whenever news people complain about cutbacks, someone in the room will argue that if another job is lost, it will be the end of investigative journalism. But I, obnoxious fellow that I am, always ask why that one job couldn’t be that of the golf columnist or movie critic or wire rewriteman. Who says that shrinking news organizations — and finding efficiencies — should hamper investigation? Well, some argue that in atomized news, investigative journalism brings no inherent advertising, so it may not be supported by the market. Or one could argue back that investigative journalism is precisely what makes news organizations valuable to their communities and those communities know that. So how will they support it?

    I think that if we analyze the staffing and production devoted to investigation in American journalism, we’ll find that it’s a pretty damned small proportion of news budgets. And I suspect we’ll find that if it is not supported by large media organizations, it could be supported by foundations and public donation. That could come from independent organizations like Pro Publica and others (in its list of comparables, the Times misses the Center for Public Integrity). It also could come from independent journalists like Josh Marshall.

    There is one caution to this: These organizations can be backed by and run by people with axes to grind. And so we may find an imbalance in investigation. That’s why the role of the editor, the journalist upholding public standards, remains important. Jay Rosen saw that when he started New Assignment and initially planned on having the public assign the stories (which I hope he still does); the editor stood in the way of the axes. And at Pro Publica, I have every confidence in its independence and intellectual honesty because it has Paul Steiger at its helm. It’s hard to name a more respected editor in this country.

    No, foundations are not the salvation of newsrooms as we knew them. But this one could demonstrate that we could save — even expand — the scope of investigative journalism. I’ll be eager to watch.