The first part of this serialised chapter for the forthcoming book Investigative Journalism: Dead or Alive? looked at new business models surrounding investigative journalism. This second part looks at how new ways of gathering, producing and distributing investigative journalism are emerging online.

Online investigative journalism as a genre

Over many decades print and broadcast investigative journalism have developed their own languages: the spectacular scoop; the damning document; the reporter-goes-undercover; the doorstep confrontation, and so on. Does online investigative journalism have such a language? Not quite. Like online journalism as a whole, it is still finding its own voice. But this does not mean that it lacks its own voice.

For some the internet appears too fleeting for serious journalism. How can you do justice to a complex issue in 140 characters? How can you penetrate the fog of comment thread flame wars, or the “echo chambers” of users talking to themselves? For others, the internet offers something new: unlimited space for expansion beyond the 1,000 word article or 30-minute broadcast; a place where you might take some knowledge, at least, for granted, instead of having to start from a base of zero. A more cooperative and engaged medium where you can answer questions directly, where your former audience is now also your distributor, your sub-editor, your source.

The difference in perception is largely a result of people mistaking parts for the whole. The internet is not Twitter, or comment threads, or blogs. It is a collection of linked objects and people – in other words: all of the above, operating together, each used, ideally, to their strengths, and also, often in relationship to offline media.

Networked, multimedia, participatory

This deconstructed but linked nature is fundamental to the shape that online investigative journalism often takes. Paul Lewis’s reporting, for example, for the Guardian allows users to see both its parts – as it takes shape – and its whole when it results in a more traditional narrative. All this before it breaks down once more into ongoing updates on subsequent court cases, demonstrations and inquests.

The “story” – a form that was created for print and then broadcast media – is broken down online, providing multiple points of entry across the network of its parts, as well as points of control, such as what medium you experience the story in.

Because, rather than being restricted by the qualities of the medium – rejecting a lead because it will not make “good television” or “doesn’t have a clear angle” – online investigative journalism sometimes takes advantage of its multimedia qualities. Frontline’s investigation into police shootings in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example, adds text reports to broadcast video, online updates and resources, providing users with the ability to explore the subject through individual cases – and even supply a tip via email. This requires a different mindset from the journalist: an ability to see how a story might play across different platforms to have maximum impact. In other words, not to take the medium for granted.

Finally, online investigative journalism is often participatory: those points of entry across the network are also potential points of interaction. Paul Lewis’s investigations into Ian Tomlinson’s death during the G20 protests in central London in April 2009, into undercover police infiltrating the environmental movement, and into the death of a man being deported to Angola all benefited from ongoing participation through online networks. Clare Sambrook’s investigations into child detention took place on blogs and social media where its campaigning nature found a natural home. Talking Points Memo’s investigation into the firing of US attorneys won a George Polk Award thanks largely to the participation of its users who looked through thousands of e-mails and internal Department of Justice documents. There are dozens of similar examples.

This is often called “crowdsourcing” – a memorable term for what is, simply, collaboration with people who don’t share the same employer. The key is to remember that there has to be mutual benefit – calls to “send us your stories” will not be enough. That involvement of the former audience can be confusing, and drag us into endless debates about who gets to be called a journalist, or a publisher – even whether something gets to be called “investigative” or not. This is an egotistical waste of time. Journalists’ job titles are not important: what they produce is.

Part 3: What next for investigative journalism in a world of information overload? is now live here.

Umair Haque always talks intelligently about economics, and yesterday’s post ‘The Nichepaper Manifesto’ is well worth reading in full. Some choice quotes:

“Journalists didn’t make 20th century newspapers profitable — readers did. 20th century newspapers were never supernormally profitable because of what they wrote: it was the natural monopoly dynamics of classifieds that fueled massive margins.”

Note: those monopolies are going.

[Nichpapers reinvent what news is:] “Knowledge, not news. Newspapers strive to give people the news. Next stop, commodity central. Nichepapers strive to impart meaningful, lasting knowledge instead.

“Commentage is the kid sister of reportage: it is the art of curating comments to have a dialogue with the audience — because the audience can fill gaps, plug holes, and thicken the foundations of knowledge. Many newspapers have comments — so what? Almost none are having a dialogue with commenters — who are mostly stuck in a twilight zone where they can only talk to one another. Nichepapers, in contrast, are always having deep dialogues with readers.

Note: this is because they understand that to do so is a) part of any good distribution strategy and b) delivers efficiencies in newsgathering.

“Topics, not articles. That’s why Nichepapers develop topics — instead of telling quickly-forgotten stories. When Talking Points Memo exposed the Bush administration’s series of politically motivated firings, it did so in a series of posts, that let the story develop, surface, thicken, and climax. Stories are for information — topics are for knowledge.”

Note: Google likes topics better than articles, which is why a number of news websites are creating mini-sites around big stories and issues.

There’s a lot more in the full post, including 4 examples of ‘nichepapers’ currently operating, including Perez Hilton, Talking Points Memo and Huffington.

h/t Will Perrin

Part five of this draft book chapter looks at how blogs have changed the funding of journalism through their ability to attract reader donations, as well as other increasingly important sources such as licensing and foundations. I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.

Fundraising

Just as new media technologies are challenging publishing and distribution conventions, traditional business models have also been disrupted in a news industry which has, at least in the West, been facing declines in readership and advertising revenue for decades (Meyer, 2004). In this environment investigative journalism has been one of the first to suffer from cuts to staff and resources (Knightley, 2004; Outing, 2005; Freola, 2007), or to be targeted towards the more profitable areas of celebrity coverage.

In response to this decline in funding, blogs have offered a new way to finance investigative journalism.

In April 2003 former AP reporter Christopher Allbritton posted a notice on his site, Back-to-Iraq.com, asking for readers to donate money so he could cover the Iraq war. In response, 320 people donated $14,334 through the site. As Allbritton filed stories, donors were put on a ‘premium e-mail list’, receiving stories early – as well as extra reports and pictures. They also passed along story ideas and “occasionally berated him for overheated metaphors. “Readers were my editors,” he says” (Ante, 2003).

Freelance journalist David Appell repeated the experiment successfully when he asked readers of his blog to support him in investigating a sugar lobbying group (Bowman and Willis, 2003), while Talking Points Memo also relied on reader donations for its continuing existence before BlogAds allowed Josh Marshall to fund his operation through advertising (McDermott, 2007).

Readers of Firedoglake.com donated enough money to cover the travel expenses of six volunteer bloggers and $3,500 a month rent on a Washington apartment so that they could report on the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (Shane, 2007). These donations of both money and time meant the site was able to draw on “more boots on the ground than any commercial news operation … more background, savvy and commitment to the case. And they dominate[d] the coverage of a big news event. Journalists themselves use[d] it to keep up and get their bearings.” (Rosen, 2007).

Jay Rosen added of the fundraising:

“What makes it possible are the people who gather at the site, and the falling cost for those people to meet up, realize their number, find a common mind, and when necessary pool their dollars to get their own correspondents to Washington … the cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, and work together is falling— dramatically. And so things unthinkable or impractical before might be quite doable now.” (Rosen, 2007).

Marshall Kirkpatrick (2007), writing specifically about video journalism, notes three models for financially sustaining investigative work: foundation support, viewer donation and licensing/advertising. Typically, the reality is a mix of all three. Alive in Baghdad and Alive in Mexico, for instance, aim to finance their work through licensing deals with mainstream media, but the team has also drawn on donations, subscriptions and prize money (Gannes, 2007). Democracy Now! is financed by foundations and viewer donations, while Collateral News, says Kirkpatrick, “appear [to] do commercial video production to support their investigative journalism”. Michael Yon, on the other hand, has added to reader donations by selling photographs online, and copies of a book (Yon, 2007).

Read the conclusion of this chapter here.

The third part of this draft book chapter (read part one here and part two here) looks at how blogs have changed the sourcing practices of journalists – in particular the rise of crowdsourcing – and provided opportunities for increased engagement. I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.

Sourcing material

While the opportunity that blogs provide for anyone to publish has undoubtedly led to a proliferation of new sources and leads – particularly “Insider” blogs produced by experts and gossips working within particular industries (Henry, 2007) and even ‘YouTube whistleblowers’ (Witte, 2006) – it is the very conversational, interactive and networked nature of blogs which has led journalists to explore completely new ways of newsgathering.

One of the biggest changes that blogging and new media have brought to journalism is the rise of ‘crowdsourcing’, whereby individual elements of a particular project are spread (or ‘outsourced’) between members of a particular community. Typically these take one of two forms: tapping into a range of experience and expertise; or simply tapping into distributed manpower.

Borrowing from the open source movement, attempts to tap into the ‘wisdom of crowds’ draw on blogs, wikis, social networking and mailing lists enabling journalists to tap into a wider range of knowledge – or manpower – than exists in the newsroom – and pursue stories that might otherwise not have been covered, or which would have taken longer to cover.

Talking Points Memo, one of the most successful investigative journalism blogs, frequently draws on its readership to pursue big stories. In December 2006 the blog posted a brief piece about the firing of an Arkansas US attorney and, noting that several other US attorneys were being replaced, asked its readers if they knew of anything similar happening in their area. As the blog, along with sister blog TPM Muckraker, accumulated evidence from around the country the rolling story led to the resignation of a senior Justice Department official and the cause being taken up by Democrat politicians.

In a different story, owner Josh Marshall asked readers to survey their own members of Congress on the issue of the proposed privatisation of Social Security. Marshall says that:

“Hundreds of people out there send clips and other tips … There is some real information out there, some real expertise. If you’re not in politics and you know something, you’re not going to call David Broder. With the blog, you develop an intimacy with people. Some of it is perceived, but some of it is real.” (McDermott, 2007)

Similar approaches have been adopted by Porkbusters.org – which invited readers to identify wasteful spending in their state or district, blog about it, and link to it from the Porkbusters site (Reynolds, 2005) – while in another example, bloggers and readers mobilised to cover a story about the contamination of pet food ingredients exported from China which they felt was being overlooked by the mainstream news media. Blogs such as The Pet Connection, PetFoodTracker.com and ThePetFoodList.com provided information ranging from symptoms of poisoning and safe foods, to the latest news on the issue, as well as acting as focal points for pet owners, lawyers, industry groups and reporters. One site, Itchmo.com, became so popular that it was banned in China (Weise, 2007).

Hurricane Katrina has acted as a particular focal point for crowdsourcing initiatives, with a number of online operations, including TPM, drawing on reader input to compile ‘timelines’ for the events leading up to, during and after Hurricane Katrina. One of the best examples came from the ePluribus Media community, who gathered information on over 500 events, fact-checked and sourced, documenting “the devastation, the political shenanigans, and the struggles of the people living on the Gulf Coast.” (ePluribus Media, 2006) These range from a 26-year-old report about weak soil under the levee to an article 11 months after the levees broke documenting a tripling in suicide rates.

Once the online world had proved the approach could work, mainstream media began experimenting. And when in May 2006 Florida’s News-Press received calls from readers complaining about high prices being charged to connect newly constructed homes to water and sewer lines, Kate Marymont, the News-Press‘ editor in chief, decided that,

“”Rather than start a long investigation and come out months later in the paper with our findings we asked our readers to help us find out why the cost was so exorbitant … We weren’t prepared for the volume, and we had to throw a lot more firepower just to handle the phone calls and e-mails.” … Readers spontaneously organized their own investigations: Retired engineers analyzed blueprints, accountants pored over balance sheets, and an inside whistle-blower leaked documents showing evidence of bid-rigging. “We had people from all over the world helping us,” said Marymont. For six weeks the News-Press generated more traffic to its website than “ever before, excepting hurricanes.” In the end, the city cut the utility fees by more than 30 percent, one official resigned, and the fees have become the driving issue in an upcoming city council special election.” (Howe, 2006a).

In a further example from the Fort Myers News-Press in Florida, the newspaper put information online on which citizens had received government help after Hurricane Katrina, and encouraged readers to look through it. “Within 24 hours, there were 60,000 searches from readers, who then told News-Press journalists about neighbours with wrecked homes who had not received aid. The readers did the investigating and the paper then reported the stories.” (Beckett, 2007)

But there are reservations about using crowdsourcing for covering particular issues – in particular concerning legal issues such as libel and contempt of court, as well as the effect on newspaper staffing, and the potential for abuse.

Gregory Korte, an investigative journalist with the Cincinnati Enquirer who has been working to implement Gannett’s crowdsourcing policy, says crowdsourcing holds “a great deal of promise for certain “pocketbook” issues, like the sewage scandal in Fort Myers”, but that it will take time and work to discover the best ways of using it. “The newspaper of the future is going to need more programmers than copy editors, and we’re going to have to figure out how to make that transition.”" (Howe, 2006a). Greg Yardley at Yardley.ca, meanwhile, illustrates the danges of stories being hijacked by political groups and agendas, asking what would happen if he organised ten friends to call the paper, asking for an investigation into the local ‘Demolican’ councilman. “Can I influence the news? Now imagine the local Demolican party gets wind of this, and they start paying some inclined members to counteract this with their own stories and investigations. How much could they in turn influence the news?” (Howe 2006c)

The News-Press examples highlight not just how newsgathering is being changed by new media technologies, but also news consumption and – specifically – engagement. Jennifer Carroll, Gannett’s Vice President for new media content, notes that, “We’ve learned that no one wants to read a 400-column-inch investigative feature online. But when you make them a part of the process they get incredibly engaged.” (Howe, 2006a). Guardian investigative journalist David Leigh also notes that multimedia elements of the web such as graphics, video and audio can bring stories to life:

“The problem with all these bribery and corruption stories is they are often quite complicated, financial and dry. Because of the legal problems, of which there are many, you have to be quite roundabout with the things you say. But to find ways of doing it online that can bring it alive for people and give them a handle on it is a really exciting thing. You’ve seen these stories which say ‘Complex web of financial transactions’, and people’s eyes glaze over. This is about trying to find a way past that.” (Smith, 2007)

This point is echoed by filmmakers Journeyman Pictures, who state on their website: “Multimedia developments offer diverse and different broadcast potential in a way never possible before. They offer new platforms to a niche previously too small to justify much airplay on terrestrial TV. … A combination of the web’s interactivity, a powerful publicity machine and a topical sales focus means films remain easy to discover, and continually on offer” (Journeyman Pictures, 2007).

Added to this potential for increased engagement is a perceived opportunity to revitalise the fourth estate, as the ‘unfinished’ and conversational nature of blogs has opened opportunities for journalists to test their work in public, fine-tune it for errors, and invite additional information. When science policy blogger Nick Anthis proposed to write about the NASA public affairs staffer George C. Deutsch, for instance, it was one of his readers who suggested that he might not have graduated (Revkin, 2006). After confirming this was the case, Anthis published, and the story led to Deutsch’s resignation.

Afghanistan-based video journalist Vaughan Smith also posts regular updates to YouTube, mini-blogging tool Twitter, and a blog, providing a number of spaces for readers to contribute. Colleague Graham Holliday notes: “A lot of what Vaughan is doing is likely background stuff for longer features including interviews and suchlike. I think he’ll be putting that together when he gets back to London, making a longer feature or features.” (Jones, 2007)

Journalists who don’t post their ‘rough drafts’ online in the new media age, meanwhile, run the risk of being fact-checked and ‘outed’ after final publication or broadcast, by bloggers with a keen eye for detail or specialist expertise. The most famous example is ‘Memogate’ or ‘Rathergate’, when in 2004 CBS broadcast a programme about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service, and bloggers raised questions about the memos on which the story was based.

“On 7 September, the day prior to [the] broadcast … [the] left of centre blog Talking Points Memo [posted] news that the programme was set to present ‘documents that shed light on Bush’s guard service or lack thereof’. Blogs of all political descriptions were promptly stirred into action in anticipation of the broadcast, especially those on the political right [...] Nineteen minutes into the broadcast, the first post calling into question the integrity of the memos appeared on the right-wing blog FreeRepublic.com. Four hours later the documents under scrutiny were decried as a hoax again.” (Allan, 2006: 95)

One blogger in particular, Minneapolis lawyer Scott Johnson, posted an email from a reader to that effect, and returned from work to find “50 emails from experts of all kinds around the country, supplying additional information. And we kept updating our post with that information through the day.” (in Allan, 2006: 95).

Read the next part – on publishing – here.