Tag Archives: Firedoglake

Blogs and Investigative journalism: fundraising

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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. Continue reading →

Blogs and investigative journalism: publishing

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Part four of this draft book chapter looks at how blogs have changed the publishing of journalism through its possibilities for transparency, potential permanence over time, limitless space, and digital distribution systems (part one is here; part two here; part three here) . I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.

Publishing

Traditionally, news has always been subject to the pressures of time and space. Today’s news is tomorrow’s proverbial ‘fish and chip paper’ – news is required to be ‘new’; stories “have a 24 hour audition on the news stage, and if they don’t catch fire in that 24 hours, there’s no second chance” (Rosen, 2004). At the same time, part of the craft of journalism in the 20th century has been the ability to distil a complex story into a particular word count or time slot, while a talent of editors is their judgement in allocating space based on the pressures of the day’s competing stories.

In the 21st century, however, new media technologies have begun to challenge the limitations of time and space that defined the news media in the 20th. Continue reading →