Tag Archives: Managing Editor

What would a UK-based ProPublica look like?

In today’s MediaGuardian, City University of New York (CUNY) journalism professor Jeff Jarvis writes that that foundations will not take over newspapers, à la Scott Trust / Guardian relationship. He told Journalism.co.uk: “It is an empty hope for white knights to save news from inevitable change and business reality. But he says: “We’ll see foundation and public support able to fund a decent number of investigations.”

Yesterday, Journalism.co.uk published comments from New York University (NYU) professor, Jay Rosen, and ProPublica’s managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, as well as from Jarvis in a feature looking at the sustainability of ‘lump sum’ funded journalism – they all said that the point was not to look at ‘one solution’ but at a hybrid of funding opportunities (an issue picked up by Julie Starr here.)

US-based ProPublica, funded by the Sandler Foundation, for example, employs full-time journalists to conduct investigations which are then supplied to other media bodies. Journalism.co.uk raised the point with some of the NYJournalism interviewees (fuller features forthcoming) that similar foundation funding is a bit trickier to come by in the UK: just what would a UK version of ProPublica look like and could it be funded?

Would the equivalent of ProPublica work over here? Or, for that matter, something in the mould of Spot.Us, New America Media, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, or the Center for Public Integrity?

Last week the Guardian’s Stephen Moss mentioned Paul Bradshaw’s new project, HelpMeInvestigate.com in his giant G2 feature on the troubled regional newspaper industry. It’s a proposal not quite on the scale of ProPublica, which has an annual operating budget of $10 million, and it’s seen success so far, making it to third stage of the (American) Knight News Challenge 2009 and it awaits news of further progress.

How about existing organisations in the UK? There’s the Centre for Investigative Journalism with its annual summer school, but it doesn’t run and supply investigations in the way ProPublica does. There’s MySociety which can help journalists with stories, but is not designed as a primarily journalistic venture.

Author of Flat Earth News, Nick Davies, has previously told the Press Gazette (which has just announced its last issue) about his idea of models of ‘mini-media’.

“It may be that we are looking at funding mini-media or a foundation that will give money to groups of journalists if they can pass the quality threshold,” Davies said at an National Union of Journalists (NUJ) event in January, as Press Gazette reported.

“The greatest question in journalism today is what will be our ‘third source’ of funding,” Davies told Journalism.co.uk last week.

“If advertising and circulation can no longer pay for our editorial operation, we have to find this third source.

“I suspect that place by place and case by case, the answer to the question will be different, a matter of wrapping up whatever package of cash is possible, using donations or grants or sponsorship or micropayments from foundations, rich individuals, local councils, businesses, NGOs, universities – anybody who can understand that the collapse of newspapers is not just about journalists losing their jobs but about everybody losing an essential source of information.

“And in an ideal world, central government would lead the way by setting up a New Media Fund to provide seed money to help these non-profit mini-media to establish themselves and to find their particular third source.”

So could a third source-funded model work? And what shape would it take? It’s a question Journalism.co.uk will continue to ask. Please share your thoughts below.

Dan Mason: ‘Five things journalists should do now – before they face redundancy’

“I’ve seen both sides of the story,” writes Dan Mason, a former regional newspaper editor (Coventry Evening Telegraph and Birmingham Post) and most recently, managing editor of 12 weeklies in London.

His post looks at ‘five things journalists should do now – before they face the threat of redundancy’. “It’s a beginning more than an ending,” he writes.

Firstly, ‘understand the redundancy process clearly BEFORE it starts,’ he says.

Full post at this link…

Editor&Publisher: Star-Ledger to outsource local news to new service

The US paper will partner an as yet unestablished news service, being created by former Star-Ledger managing editor Rick Everett, for local news coverage.

The new organisation is expected to hire around 30 reporters, including college students. The collaboration will boost the paper’s coverage after it lost 151 newsroom staff last year.

Full story at this link…

PoynterOnline: ‘Future of newspapers’ transcript from Charlie Rose’s show

Read the “Future of Newspapers” transcript from Charlie Rose’s show on February 11 at this link…

It features: Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal; Mort Zuckerman, owner and publisher of the New York Daily News and the editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report; and Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute (formerly the editor of Time magazine.)

Times responds to blogger’s claims of ‘cut-and-paste’ journalism

It was human error, rather than calculated plagiarism, that led to the incident that Megan McArdle flagged up on her Atlantic.com blog last week. She had spotted two strikingly similar article extracts:

‘Doctors fear return of Steve Jobs’s pancreatic cancer‘ by David Rose, TimesOnline, January 15, 2009 (note: the article has now been amended)

In 2003 Mr Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumour in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Mr Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy. (go to McArdle’s blog for more….)

Compared with:

‘Why Does Steve Jobs Look So Thin?‘ by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune magazine, June 13 2008

“In 2003 Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumor in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy.”(go to McArdle’s blog for more….)

McArdle said she read Rose’s piece and thought… ‘wait a minute, I’ve read this somewhere before’. But how did it come about?

It seems the root of the problem wasn’t David Rose, as an email from another journalist at the paper, Mike Harvey, to Megan McArdle revealed, in which he explained how he [Harvey] had added the additional comments ‘at the last moment before publication’.

“It was done in a real hurry and I meant to put the proper attribution in but failed to do so before I pinged the email off. It was a mistake made in haste and my thanks to you for pointing it out,” he wrote. For players in the UK looking for a trusted and exhilarating online casino experience, admiral casino uk stands out with its exceptional selection of games, top-notch security measures, and generous bonuses.

“As a blogger and technology writer I know the importance of sourcing and linking to sources and rightly feel aggrieved when it does not happen,” he added.

Journalism.co.uk has been informed by David Rose and Mike Harvey that this email is genuine. The article has now been changed – Journalism.co.uk has a screen-grab showing the original with the paragraph intact.

Harvey since told Journalism.co.uk that he was trying to correct an omission in the original piece before it went online. The additional information specified the specific type of cancer that Steve Jobs had (note: something which has also caused controversy on McArdle’s blog).

The Times’ managing editor, David Chappell, is now dealing with the issue; he had no further comment for Journalism.co.uk but confirmed David Rose’s information.

Washingtonpost.com: First ever female managing editor at Washington Post

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…

AP to stream live video on US election night for first time

According to a press release from the Associated Press (AP), the agency will embark on its first continuous, live video news coverage on US election night, November 4.

The Big Issue: Election Results stream will feature a host of AP reports and will be streamed from 7pm (EST) on the agency’s online video network.

The stream will include views from 10 non-journalists, representing the electorate, who have been selected from AP’s collaboration with Yahoo to track the changing attitudes of 2,000 American voters during the presidential campaigns.

“We recognize that this is a once in a quarter century election,” said Michael Oreskes, AP managing editor for US News.

“Through the course of the year we have dug deeply into the dynamics of race and gender and economic fears that are suffusing the electorate. Our pre-election AP-Yahoo! News poll assessing the impact of racial attitudes on the electorate is being cited as the prime source on the issue this year. We plan to carry this work into our preparations for election night.”

Global News Enterprises makes editorial appointments

Global News Enterprises has expanded its editorial and executive teams ahead of its official launch in January 2009.

The web-based news organisation has made a host of appointments to further its aim of providing daily international news coverage from internationally-based correspondents:

  • Thomas Mucha has been named managing editor and will oversee Global News’ body of correspondents and its multimedia operations. He will also contribute to special features and reporting projects, and pen a weekly column on global business.
  • Former deputy managing editor of Politico Barbara Martinez becomes managing editor for the web.
  • Andrew Meldrum has been hired as senior editor and regional editor for Africa.
  • Amy Jeffries takes on the role of webmaster and will be responsible for technical aspects of the website and the implementation of multimedia content. Jeffries was previously a reporter and producer for WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio and a freelance reporter for Frontline World Online.

The organisation has also named James Wooster as business manager and Richard Byrne as its new director of communications and marketing, it said in a press release.

Managing editor wanted for Gawker

This isn’t where we normally flag up job listings (for full job listings visit this part of the site) but this is an interesting one – since it was posted on September 2, the advert has received 6,722 views, and 150 comments. Manhattan media news and gossip site, Gawker.com, is inviting applications for the post of managing editor.

The incumbent, Nick Denton, says that he needs to get back to his ‘other job’, so is calling for a permanent replacement to join the team.

While admitting he’s never watched an episode of the Hills, he does say it’s mandatory to be ‘plugged into both society gossip and mass culture’. Follow the link here for full details.