Results matching “pro publica new fo”

With surveys revealing the public’s decreasing trust in the media, news organizations are actively responding to the call for a more civic conscious journalism. News consumers are growing increasingly critical and are asking for more opportunities to have their opinions heard by news sources.

Dr. James Castonguay, associate professor and chair of Sacred Heart University's Department of Media Studies and Digital Culture, who helped oversee the university's recent media reliability study, elaborated on readers becoming more active and responsible news consumers.

"We have some critical citizens who are not naively accepting as truth the news they consume," he said, in an interview with the Poynter Institute. "Maybe people see themselves as taking a more responsible and active role in the democratic process to check sources and be more active consumers of news,” Castonguay explained.

Websites like the French Vudesquartiers.journalisme.co, launched by Jérôme Bouvier, president of the Association of Journalism and Citizenship, hope to improve the relationship between journalists and inhabitants of  local neighborhoods. A previous Weblog posting discussed how the goal of the project is to reinstate public trust in journalism, and encourage reporters to work closely with the people they cover.

The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash. has undertaken a similar challenge in providing readers with a forum for community feedback. With its online feature “The Transparent Newsroom”, the Spokesman-Review offers readers the chance to voice criticism, needs and concerns they may have about the paper’s content or editorial choices.

Some highlights include an “Ask the Editors” section, where Spokesman editors field readers’ questions about the paper’s operations and editorial processes. A live webcast of daily newsroom meetings and a total of 10 blogs encourage readers to observe and participate in the quotidian operations of the paper.  

Spokesman-Review editor Steven A. Smith expressed why the paper has taken on such a strong civic responsibility.

"Journalists always retain the right to say no. Transparency is not the same as passivity," Smith said. "When you’re as open as we are, it's possible to engage in a debate with readers in ways that we couldn't in the past. When people pitch us an idea it still has to be vetted in all the ways that stories do: Is it important enough? Does it match up with our values?" he said.

While becoming ‘transparent’ allows for sometimes unwanted criticism, Ryan Pitts, online director for the Spokesman maintains that the challenge is worth it.  The Spokesman’s undertaking, editors hope, will represent a trend towards fostering a more democratic relationship between readers and news organizations.

Source: Poynter Institute

The newest non-profit news outfit, the D.C. based The Washington Independent, has just launched, the latest experiment in perfecting a non-profit news business model.

The best non-profit formula is still a work in progress, but successful versions tend to blend guerilla and traditional approches to journalism. According to Independent editor Allison Silver, "All informed discussion about the future of journalism involves the non-profit model. This is one reason why so many people are interested in what happens with Poynter and the St. Petersberg paper."

The news comes on the heels of the recent launch of Pro Publica, and the debut last year of MinnPost, both US-based non-profit news sources.

Equiped with top-tier staff boasting resumes including The New Republic and The Financial Times, The Indepenent offers a mix of investigative features, well-researched commentary and bloggy news analysis. It is affliated with The Center for Independent Media.  

Although the new site is still working out some design and technology kinks, Silver is pleased with its progress, less than two weeks after the "semi-hard" launch.

As for entering an already crowded market of sites offering bloggy investigative journalism, Silver sees no problem with the presence of similar sites like The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, and Slate, among others.  

"I think the Net is not about competition, or limitations. It's indeed like democracy—because it's about making the pie bigger," she said.

Source: Online Journalism Review 

Pro Publica, an independent newspaper project, which aims to *revitalize investigative journalism”, launched last month, reports mediachannel.org. The paper will be staffed by some of the US’s top journalists and hopes to provide the sort of thorough investigative reporting that is becoming increasingly scarce in today’s media.

According to mediachannel.org, stories will be made accessible to a variety of media outlets under an assortment of distribution arrangements. Paul E. Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, will act as the editor-in-chief.

The project was launched with a multi-million dollar grant from Herbert M. and Marion O. Sandler, previous owners of Golden West Financial Corporation, which they sold in 2006.

While Pro Publica’s intentions are noble, Robert Jensen, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and contributor on mediachannel.org, suggests that the group’s lofty mission statement, in which it claims it will report in an “entirely non-partisan and non-ideological manner, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality,” illustrates the failure of independent journalism to acknowledge the inherent partiality built into the corporate commercial system of today’s media industry.

Other critics have also presented concerns that the Sandlers’ past endorsement of Democratic Party candidates and liberal causes could skew Pro Publica’s coverage.

Although some critics remain skeptical as to whether or not Pro Publica’s can hold to its mission to provide groundbreaking, unbiased investigative reporting, the initiative nevertheless presents hope for journalism unbridled by profit-driven motives.

Source: mediachannel,org

Last week, Finnish business daily Taloussanomat announced that it would no longer publish in print by the end of the year. In this interview with the Weblog, Mikael Pentikainen, chief executive for parent newspaper group Sanoma, affirmed that the group’s major print newspapers are here to stay, and that Taloussanomat’s fate may be linked to its specific market, but was aware of the growing possibility that print newspapers turn to online-only.

It seems Pro Publica, the all-new investigative journalism venture, to be headed by former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, is receiving applications from all the major news outlets in the US.

It has been said that journalism schools have been lagging behind in their adaptation to new media and the rapid evolution of journalism (flashback: in 1995, a publication by the Society of Professional Journalists contended journalists’ new media skills were “nice, but not necessary.”). This is starting to change though – or is it? What should tomorrow’s journalists be learning? Jeff Jarvis, Roy Greenslade, and Keith Woods from the Poynter Institute describe their own experiences for the Weblog.

Paul Steiger, long-time top editor of The Wall Street Journal, is to assemble a group of investigative journalists, who will offer their work to news outlets. An all-new way of doing journalism, which will be driven by trial and error.

While many newspapers now understand the importance of collaboration with blogs and citizen journalism, the public still often doubts the credibility of new media. Rightly so, in some cases. So traditional media can use their credibility – ‘media literacy’ – to their advantage by orienting the public towards trustworthy blogs.

Just about everybody in the media now agrees that blogs and citizen journalism will strongly influence the media landscape of the future. But how much so? A WeMedia / Zogby Interactive poll showed that 74% of Americans believe citizen journalism will play a vital role in the future of American journalism.