Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz provides some more background on the New York Times / ProPublica Pulitzer win, as an example of a new way of funding serious journalism.

This is a glimpse of an unexpected future: a battered newspaper business, an idealistic start-up with a deep-pocketed liberal backer, and dogged reporters who otherwise might be out of work. If the Times was piggybacking on ProPublica – which covered about half the $400,000 cost of the investigation – the paper has plenty of company.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

• ProPublica: Susan White on the secret to being a successful editor
• After 250 job cuts, LA Times leading reporters head to ProPublica
• ProPublica editor-in-chief on a changed world: ‘Investigative reporting in the web era’
• Inside Story: Behind the Age’s Australian banknote investigation
• Rumour mill cranks up over upcoming New York Times ‘paywall’

Talking about making sausages

Dispatches from inside the “echo-chamber of mediated Manhattan” today, courtesy of the NYT’s David Carr. Carr has an interesting piece up on what he sees an increasing amount of news on the news: ‘Breaking the story that isn’t”

As a media reporter, I’m obviously not one to suggest that the activities of journalists are not a legitimate source of inquiry. But I worry that the incremental needs of an always-on Web — everyone wants to know what the state of play is at any given moment — will imperil the practice of longer-form journalism, the kind that demands time, an open mind, a lot of questions and sometimes results in dead ends.

As a media reporter reporting on a media reporter reporting on over-zealous media reporting, I’m really obviously not one to suggest that the activities of journalists are not a legitimate source of inquiry.

As Carr puts it, “the manufacture of sausage is sometimes as much the point as the sausage itself”.

These US Digest posts are little more than an aggregation, a round-up of published material, but Carr has the close online scrutiny of ongoing stories in his sights.

Twitter and blogs may have become part of advancing the story, but it’s more likely that incremental updates on what the reporters are up to — or misleading rumors about same — may harden the opposition, button up sources and sometimes derail investigations.

So at what point does the navel-gazing jeopardise good stories? How much talking about making sausages spoils the taste of them?

Carr’s piece may have been prompted by the attention paid to his paper’s coverage of the Governor Patterson scandal, which he refers to as “wild and wildly off-base rumours”. Paying the most attention was the ever-vigilant NYTPicker.

“The deeper sounds of a small journalistic orchestra”

Journalists complaining about cost-cutting moves toward ‘one-man band’ journalism isn’t anything new. Journalists extolling the virtues and opportunities of ‘one-man band’ journalism isn’t anything new either.

But using a handful of good examples Howard Kurtz has produced a decent, objective edition of Media Notes today looking at both sides of the coin. Lazy journalists living in the past be warned, it also includes some intimidating tales of multi-tasking.

The highlight of the piece is the story of one journalist’s remarkable transformation, graduating from suits and ties to baseball caps and a dirty hatchback:

A coat-and-tie journalist who has worked in television news for 27 years, Broom had to reinvent himself – with the aid of a three-day boot camp on shooting video – when he joined the Gannett station in 2007. Now he wears a black jacket and black Channel 9 cap and rarely goes to the newsroom. Instead he cruises the area in an unwashed white Honda hatchback, its front seat filled with a Dell laptop, police radio, tripod and Sony HVR-V1U video camera.

Kurtz’s article is balanced, and doesn’t jump to defend the profession against the suggestion that journalists should be able to do it all, but there is a simple reminder that standards may be at risk:

A one-man band is cheaper, quicker and more nimble — but cannot produce the deeper sounds of a small journalistic orchestra.

No press pass, no get out of jail free card

Student journalist Cameron Burns finds himself on the other side of the story today in The Daily Californian, after finding himself charged at by riot police on a California freeway at the end of last week.

Covering a demonstration over public education funding for student paper The Daily Californian, Burns had left his press pass in the office and was tackled to the ground and arrested alongside the protesters, despite repeated assertions that he was a journalist.

The result? A twenty hour stint in jail and a court appearance scheduled for April 6.

L.A. Times disappears behind paywall Johnny Depp

From Reuters, news of dismay among the L.A. Times’ readership after the front page – “our most valuable real estate” according to Times’ spokesperson John Conroy – was replaced by a mock front page adorned with a huge advert for Tim Burton’s new Disney-backed Alice in Wonderland adaptation.

It seems some readers have been particularly offended by the decision to use a mock-up front page in the background of the ad, which includes the paper’s masthead, although the word ‘advertisement’ is written underneath in small letters.

“We made it clear that this was a depiction of the front page, rather than a real front page of the newspaper,” said Conroy. “We had an unusual opportunity here to stretch the traditional boundaries and deliver an innovative ad unit that was designed to create buzz.”

Perhaps the style of the L.A. Times advert is particularly galling, but as the Reuters article points out, it is not the first quality newspaper to exploit the value of the technique, called a ‘cover-wrap’.

The nationally circulated USA Today drew criticism for a pseudo edition of its newspaper distributed at an AIDS conference in Geneva as a promotion for a pharmaceutical company. The Wall Street Journal and other dailies have run partial wrap sleeves around the outsides of their papers.

I’m not sure how the film reviews page rates in real estate terms, but the film producers are in luck significantly less people will have gone for a viewing there, where the film didn’t make quite the same splash.

Fading to Black have an image of the cover here.Similar Posts:

• New America Media: LA Watts Times managing editor on why his paper covers the black community better than the MSM
• VisualEditors: Rocky Mountain News goes retro with final front page
• Bloggasm: How much original reporting on HuffPo’s front page?
• New York Times media desk gets the Hollywood treatment (sort of)
• Update: Le Carré’s past – as told on the web

Howard Kurtz takes a look at True/Slant, a website ‘that is mapping a new relationship between journalists, readers and advertisers’:

“Lewis Dvorkin, founder of the site, which officially launches today after a trial run, makes no apologies for throwing out the old model. ‘It’s tailored for the entrepreneurial journalist,’ he says. ‘We’re enabling and empowering journalists to develop their own brand.’”

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

• Next Generation Journalist: leverage your expertise
• Poll: Is the new Daily Mail beta website an improvement?
• Entrepreneurial journalism – how Newcastle University is shaping up
• Reflections of a Newsosaur: How one entrepreneurial journalist found success with her business niche
• Advertising Age: Why ad networks are surviving

A take on the Polis paper from the States. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman says that the Polis’ ‘What is Financial Journalism For?’ report addresses ‘one of those big, “dumb” questions’ that he ‘finds so valuable.’

“Those kinds of questions don’t get asked much on this side of the pond. That’s too bad. Even the subject of business media’s performance in advance of the current crisis seems to be something of a taboo.

“The scant attention the subject has received has been either the once-over-lightly treatment, a la Howard Kurtz, and or an ‘all-clear’ for the business press from our cousins over at the American Journalism Review.”

Full story…Similar Posts:

• Poynter: Msnbc.com narrative slideshow garners 78m page views
• CommentIsFree: Angela Foster on ‘why we still need a black press’
• ProPublica photographer followed by BP employee, detained by police
• Going it alone: Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondents live interview FRIDAY 2pm (GMT+1)
• Reuters Institute papers used in Ofcom regional news review

Howard Kurtz takes a look at magazines Time and Newsweek, and asks ‘do newsmags still matter?’

“The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal,” writes Kurtz.

“It is nothing less than a survival strategy,” he says.

Full story…Similar Posts:

• Peter Preston: Can the Economist succeed where Newsweek has failed?
• García Media: Newsweek’s new approach
• As the axe is readied, a heartfelt defence of Newsweek.com emerges
• WashingtonPost.com: True/Slant – mapping a new relationship
• Howard Kurtz: The media benefiting from non-profit investigations

Two new managing editors have been named at the Washington Post: one of them is a the first woman in the role in the paper’s history. Full story…Similar Posts:

• Washington Examiner appoints ex-Townhall.com managing editor Mary Katharine Ham
• The Washington Post and the cancelled lobbyist event
• MediaGuardian: Jeff Jarvis on LA Times covering entire payroll through online advertising
• paidContent: WaPo’s social media guidelines in full
• Washington Post uses mobile phone video for live stream

Barack Obama ‘figured out early on that he had better limit his media consumption before it consumed him,’ writes Howard Kurtz. Obama stopped reading and watching media as his campaign got underway, instead asking his staff to flag up important stories.Similar Posts:

• WashingtonPost.com: ‘The survival strategy’ of newsmags
• Washingtonpost.com: Bloggers criticise MSNBC’s anchor decision
• DNA09: Who made Obama President – More the candidate than the campaign?
• Confirmed: New York Times website will introduce FT-style charging system
• E&P: US media ‘unabashedly biased’ toward Barack Obama

Howard Kurtz comments on the bloggers’ reaction to MSNBC’s decision to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchor duty during live political events.Similar Posts:

• WashingtonPost.com: ‘The survival strategy’ of newsmags
• WashingtonPost.com: Howard Kurtz asks ‘does Obama need the press?’
• ‘Making light of a bad situation’ – CNN report gets pranked by kissing couple
• Bloggers showing ‘plenty of interest’ in writing for HuffPo UK
• WashingtonPost.com: True/Slant – mapping a new relationship