For years at DKos, I have written about the Culture of Corruption in Washington. The focus of my research and work was Jack Abramoff and the horrific human rights abuses on the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Island, a US Territory in the Western Pacific. And it still is, but it is a hobby—something I do in the spaces between a full time job and family life. Lately those core obligations have left me with very little time to research and craft new Diaries.
That’s too bad in a way because a lot is going on and I wish I had the time to write and publish the Diaries that I have been thinking about and researching, but like most folks I have to work for a living and "my hobby" does not pay the bills—these days it is a luxury to have any time for it.
And yet, every now and then I read something that inspires me to make the time. This happened yesterday when I read a recommended Diary by Cenk Uygur.
To the jump...
Even as I had little time to write, I have been checking in with DKosville on a daily basis. I read Diaries and sometime I have time to leave a comment or two. I follow the ebb and flow of the tweetspeed news cycle as it plays out in Diaries and comments. New conventional wisdoms form and then crash on this site like waves. Items are magnified into issues and fragments of knowledge are quickly woven into a web of evidence that the sky is falling, we have been betrayed and that we are powerless. The focus is—way too often for my taste—on short term news and a desire for quick results. If the results are not quick enough, then we are doomed. Many folks are very quick to grab their blunderbusses and form the progressive Democrat circular firing squad. So it goes.
We’ve been going through a few weeks of Obama is betraying everything diaries and/or Obama is not solving everything fast enough diaries and/or the very popular Obama sucks because he is not addressing this issue I care about in the way and with the tactics I think he should use dairies. It is natural to expect Diaries like these when a Democrat is President and some of them have been quite good. I have some problems with some of President Obama’s choices and I question some of his tactics, but that is not unusual because I am a Democrat. Still, overall I think President Obama is doing a fantastic job and that he has his focus set on a bigger goal than Tweets, the 24-hour cable shows or even most blogs take the time to think about. Despite any reservation I have I am very glad he is our President. And that brings me to Cenk’s Diary.
I am a fan of Cenk and the Young Turks. I like the work he has done over the years and that is why his Diary knocked me back for a bit of a loop. His Diary was about Obama’s decision to pursue a new legal argument to delay or prevent the release of some more Bush era torture/abuse photos. When it comes to the issue, I find myself in agreement with Al over at The Field and some other recommended Diaries like this one by NCrissieB, this one by clammyc and this one by sortalikenathan. Still, Cenk made some good points, but my reaction to his Diary had nothing to do with its main theme of torture photos. Rather it was this bit right here:
But I come back to a question that keeps popping back up - are there any real journalists in this country? Has everyone become so obsessed with access and so cowed by possible governmental reaction that they don't actually do their job anymore? They seem so damn frightened by what the big, bad government might say about them. [snip]
Now, are so-called journalists going to act or are they going to just sit there and take it again? We're going to find out if we have attack dogs in the press that uncover the truth as it actually is or if we just have a bunch of lap dogs that can't wait for their master to give them the crumbs off his table. This is a litmus test. Is this an free and open country, or isn't it?
This kind of we are victims of the media talk drives me crazy. It knocked me back when I read it in Cenk’s Diary because I had thought he knew better. Perhaps it was just the anger of the moment clouding his reason.
Yeah, there are hacks in the media and there are also heroes. Most of what we know of the Bush era is because somebody took the initiative to investigate the issue. More often than not this was somebody from a traditional media outlet—usually a newspaper, sometimes a magazine and even sometimes a teevee or radio program. Most Diaries and comments seem to use this traditional media reporting as the heart of their content. Some of these Diaries are very good, but quite a few are kind of lame.
And then there are some in the netroots who investigate, research, report and write. These folks have learned that if you want something done right, then you need to do it yourself. They have learned that if the stories you want investigated are not being done by traditional media outlet that we can do it ourselves—and that we can push some of these stories into the news cycle. This is what I thought Cenk knew because he has done some reporting of his own. Like it or not he is (IMHO) one of those journalists he rants about. He has the power to do something about underreported stories. We all do.
Investigations matter.
They are important. They have to be done and they have to be reported. The word must get out. I know this from first hand experience. If the results of an investigation can break into the news cycle they can make a difference.
I have been researching Jack Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption in Washington for over a decade. From 1999 to 2004 I tried and tried to get the word out, but there were very few opportunities (for most of that time the Netroots did not exist). A handful of stories were done but it wasn’t until the Washington Post put the story on the front page that Jack Abramoff became a household name and a scandal that brought down Republican control of Congress. It is with some satisfaction that I know that my work helped to bring the GOP down and keep Abramoff as an gift that keeps giving.
Here at Daily Kos there are many Diarists who would fit the definition of an investigative reporter. They have become netroots created journalists. They have developed areas of expertise. Their research, reporting and writing skills have grown over time. It is an unrecognized phenomenon repeated all over the so called blog-o-sphere. And as these blogger/investigative reporters dig into the stories they pursue they all bump into the same problem that I have had and that news organizations big and small have: how do you pay for the time it takes to do this work?
The media landscape is changing. News organizations that once could exist on only one platform are finding that they need to exist on multiple platforms. They need to adapt or fade away. Some will make it. Some have already failed. The ones that survive will learn how to get paid for delivering their content on multiple platforms like the Web, the iphone and the Kindle as well as more traditional platforms like print and the teevee.
As new technology creates new opportunities the current media landscape is looking more and more like the late 1800s after advances in printing presses and typesetting machines led to an explosion of newspapers. Dozens of papers competed in an average size city. It was a wild time. Some papers were sensational. Others were very political. Over time things settled down and in the last thirty years traditional media has gone through a period of rapid consolidation, profit taking and damage to the best ethics of journalism. Fewer and fewer news organizations have the budget to fund investigative reporting and the worst of this contraction of resources overlapped with the Bush era (when solid journalism was really needed).
Now things are really in flux. Newspapers are closing and with them go an important source of support for investigative reporting. The funding gap is increasing and yet, investigations matter. They are important to our Democracy. Somehow, new models for solid journalism and the resources to fund that work must be created.
The good news (IMHO) is that this will happen and that the netroots are part of the solution.
Look around and you’ll see that netroots journalists are rising. Some have developed a following and even recognition for the value of their work. Josh Marshall and his gang at Talking Points Memo and Marcy Wheeler quickly come to mind. Both have broken major stories and won some prestigious journalism awards. They are solid investigative reporters and their work has been outstanding. And both are working new models to pay for the quality journalism they practice. Josh has formed his own media company and plows the revenue from his site and supporters into more staff and more reporting. Marcy has had to rely on donations from her readers to underwrite her work (please follow the link and do what you can). Other netroots sites like Huffington Post, ProPublica and others are working to explore new ways to support and fund the investigations that a free society requires and the journalists required to complete that work. Some of these models are promising, but the fact that Marcy has to fundraise to cover the costs of her reporting tells you a lot about the long-term sustainability about some of these funding strategies.
I think we need to do better and I think we can, but a first step is seeing ourselves as equals to more traditional media outfits as oppose to being victims of their reporting. Daily Kos is an online community, but it is also evolving into a new media company with the resources to compete with more traditional outfits and change the way news is gathered and reported.
Polling is a good example of what I am talking about. In the 2004 election and most of the 2006 cycle it was a common to read a diary at Daily Kos complaining about the bias of this or that poll in a traditional media outlet. At some point it became clear to Kos that if he wanted reliable polling he needed to do it himself. And he did. Look at the top of the front page and take a moment to marvel at what this site has done to change political reporting and polling. Yes, we are a progressive Democratic site, but the quality of these polls can hold their own against any scrutiny. There are best practices in polling and we follow them—and it gives these polls authority and power.
Another example of this site challenging traditional media would be the excellent resource Congress Matters. Again this site was faced with a similar problem to bad polling. Reporting on the daily activities of Congress, the schedule, the Bills, the tactics, the votes is spotty in most traditional media outlets and behind a wall at some outlets that do it best. And then there is the pro-Republican bias in much of the reporting covering Congress regardless of how small the GOP shrinks. And so, Congress Matters.was born as a Daily Kos DIY response to a need in the marketplace.
It is time for another DIY response. I think it is time for the Daily Kos community to stop complaining about the lack of investigative reporting in other media outlets and Do It Ourselves. I would propose creating an Investigations Matter site where we focus on reporting and best practices of journalism. It is time to do for reporting what we have already done with polling. It is time for this community to get the credit for the stories we break. Since the Abramoff scandal broke into the news cycle back in 2004, I have helped many reporters break news in the scandal, but most of the story has yet to be told. It requires more investigations. The same is true about health care issues, Iraq, torture, Katrina, the drug war, ongoing corruption in Washington and a host of other issues. It would be nice to break some of these stories here not as a Diary, but as a news reports that could be and would be picked up by other media outlets.
Aggressive competition from Daily Kos on solid reporting would force other media outlets to improve their game. Josh Marshall and Marcy Wheeler have already proven that the netroots can challenge reporters to step up their game. This site could increase that pressure if a place for solid investigative reporting was created and funded.
One of the reasons that so many traditional news outlets have a Republican bias is because the conservative movement was very good about training and placing reporters in the eighties and nineties. And when these young reporters came to The Hill the sources and world view they developed had a built in biased to GOP talking points. We are changing that and there is an opportunity train a new generation of journalists. This is already happening through the Diaries, but I think another step is needed.
Investigations matter. The structure of journalism and media companies are changing. We are loosing the traditional ways that investigative journalism has been funded. New models need to be created. Daily Kos could (and should IMHO) create one of those models.
Look at the stories that need to be told.
Investigations matter.
I can think of dozens that are long overdue, hundreds really. We can wish that traditional media outlets were doing these investigations or we could stop complaining and change the game with a little DIY.
As the good Doctor once said, You Have the Power
I would be happy to help if this seems like a good idea.
Cheers