Speaking of hard journalism

If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.

This is the type of article that I think, if newspaper organizations die, we will be losing. And as a society (and as consumers) we ought to consider that very carefully before we decide to throw news companies to the dogs.

Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

This, in particular, is the phrase that says to me “no blogger could write this.”

But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

There will be more on this at Eat Sleep Publish when the blog launches, probably later this week.

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April 20, 2008 | Written by Jason | Filed Under publishing 

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    yeah, i think it's really important that, at least for now, we preserve some sort of public information body (like that of the media) as an institution, and not just as an organic movement of "citizen-journalists." it's cool to be engaged in discussion and debate, but without some sort of personality as an organized group, it's tough to exercise much sway when it comes to investigative reporting.

    decentralizing media is a cool idea, and i think it's important that we recognize what a boon it can be to spreading ideas and encouraging communication between peoples. in one sense, it creates a guerilla force of people who are out, (sometimes purportedly untainted by financial interest) taking plainclothes observations about the world around them. but if, in the fervor of blogospheredom, we tear down the brick-and-mortars, i worry we risk making journalistic pillar susceptible to divide-and-conquer suppression.

    i think (or at least hope) that it's possible to reconcile the breadth and robin-hooded altruism of citizen-journalism with the formal swagger that newspapers wield—or used to. hopefully your blogging will help save the clumsy beasts from extinction.

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    I would love to think I'm that influential ;)

    I think you're essentially outlining the industry vs individualism argument here. There are merits to either approach, but the one argument in favor of organization that I haven't yet heard well refuted is that newspapers serve as a great legal and $$ backbone for reporters to conduct good, honest, journalism.

    In short, reporters are backed by their papers. Bloggers rarely are.

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