Wednesday, June 17, 2009
News / News Bites The Knight Foundation makes some bets on the future
Posted by Michael Miner on 06.17.09 at 03:37 PM
The Knight Foundation announced Wednesday that it's awarding nearly $2 million to nine projects that propose to use "crowdsourcing, mobile technology and digital investigative journalism to bring news and information to communities in new ways."
At the top of the ticket is $719,500 to ProPublica and the New York Times for DocumentCloud. That's a Web site "that will enhance investigative reporting by making source documents easy to find, share and read," the foundation explains. "While rich source documents are the foundation of investigative journalism, too often reporters throw or tuck them away after a story fades, never to be used again."
That's true, and not simply to tidy up their desks. Journalists are proprietary about their working materials, often feel a need to be protective of the sources of them, and will get rid of them to keep them out of the wrong hands. I'd expect reporters to think very carefully about what they turn over to DocumentCloud.
The site, the Knight announcement continues, "will provide an online database of documents contributed by a consortium of news organizations, watchdog groups and bloggers, and shared with the public at large. Users will be able to search by topic, agency or location. Reporters will benefit from the wisdom of the crowd, which will be able to collaboratively examine large document sets."
Here's a link to a Knight pdf that describes all nine projects and the people behind them. The awards are a part of Knight's "five-year, $25 million News Challenge, an international contest to fund digital news experiments that transform community life."
Comments (6)
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I don't think the idea is to turn over notes. I think the idea is to use other source docs, like indictments, budgets, governors emails, etc. Most of the documents are or should be public anyway. What's the harm in sharing them?
Couldn't agree more Dan. I think DocumentCloud is going to be an incredibly interesting project for all kings of reasons. More eyeballs on public documents never hurts anything that shouldn't be hurt.
Depends on the document. If it's something obscure that a reporter works hard to uncover and feels he needs to protect sources who provided it, then it's problematic. If John Q. Public isn't willing to pony up and pay for full-time journalists to find and report on such documents, then let John Q. Public go out and dig them up between shifts at Walmart. Looking at it another way, where's the revenue stream? The problem is, we have no shortage of civic-minded people and organizations out there who are in love with the Web. But that's the easy part. That part we've mastered, and the main product is thousands of laid-off journalists and the rapid stupidification of mainstream media. I'd propose that all mainstream media organizations slap a complete moratorium on brilliant ideas to put any kind of info online unless it's tied to a credible scheme to pull in big revenue that translates directly into job security for journalists.
"If John Q. Public isn't willing to pony up and pay for full-time journalists to find and report on such documents, then let John Q. Public go out and dig them up between shifts at Walmart." I would suggest re-reading this sentence-- very slowly, if necessary-- and asking, What's wrong with this statement? If you feel fine saying things like "let John Q. Public go out and dig them up between shifts at Wal-Mart," that's your call. But don't turn around and start whining about Thomas Jefferson when John Q. Public tells you to go f--- yourselves. Just a thought.
Too late, Jen. John Q. Public long ago told journalists to drop dead. Journalists are among the most despised of professionals, and the prevailing online model holds that they shouldn't even be paid for their work (the news should be free, and all that). As it happens, I think that SOME of the long-standing revulsion with journalists is rather richly deserved, for reasons I won't launch into here. But at least there once was a model and there were media that allowed journos to make a living. Now even that is fading as Mr. Public in effect says, I despise everything about you journalists but I expect you to deliver a timely, finished, professional product for nothing. That, I submit, is asking too much, especially from reporters and editors held in such low regard, however justifiably.
