Pulse of Publishing: WikiLeaks, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Everyday someone in the online media world is weighing in on the “future of publishing.” My Google Alert updates can testify to it. Sometimes it’s even one of the team members here at Perfect Market.
This post is the first of what will be a weekly feature on the Perfect Market blog entitled “The Pulse of Publishing.” The idea is to take in all the buzz related to the newest developments in the media sphere, distill it, connect some dots and draw some conclusions.
Hopefully, readers of this feature will take an active part in this discussion (itself an act of content creation, the esteemed Jeff Jarvis noted this week) and point out to us any relevant stories or issues we may have overlooked.
WikiLeaks: Game Changer?
If we were to play doctor and take look at the publishing industry’s EKG this week, we would observe two huge spikes. The first big spike could be traced to the release of the iPad—and all the excitement and controversy about the tablet’s potential that went with it.
The second big spike, perhaps with broader implications than the iPad, would be WikiLeak’s release of the 2007 video of the U.S. military killing of two Reuters journalists and multiple Iraqi citizens in Baghdad.
Jonathan Stray of ForeignPolicy.com described the groundbreaking event as a point of departure for online news: “This week marked the international coming-out party for a new media organization that could upend the sacred cows of traditional journalism.”
WikiLeaks is a still some-what secretive online investigative journalism organization, the very citizen journalists or “Fifth Estate,” who I argued in Tuesday’s post “will become better equipped, more experienced, nuanced and expansive” as time goes on.
The founders and editors of WikiLeaks (formed in 2006) would argue that their time has already come. Stray quoted Julian Assange, a co-founder, that with the over a million documents in their possession, “The mainstream press is, per capita, not competitive with WikiLeaks in terms of sourcing.”
The BBC shed some light on the site’s unique approach to news gathering and reporting: “Anyone can submit to WikiLeaks anonymously, but a team of reviewers – volunteers from the mainstream press, journalists and WikiLeaks staff – decides what is published.”
With its stunning Iraq War scoop this week, WikiLeaks has landed a pivotal role in the emerging citizen-journalist-traditional media hybrid. Citizen journalists appear to operate independently but when it comes time to publish, seasoned journalists vet the content for news value and accuracy.
In contrast to the WikiLeaks expansion of citizen journalism, Eric Pfanner of the NYTimes reported on the newest developments in traditional media toward “deep reporting” led by Elaine Potter, a British investigative journalist, in the story “Investigative Bureau Tries to Make Up for British News Cutbacks.”
Potter, who made a name for herself uncovering the side-effects of thalidomide, a morning sickness cure, is seeking to reinvigorate her profession with the creation of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. One of Potter’s impetuses for forming such an organization is that “‘hollowed out’ newsrooms [have had to] scramble to fill their pages with articles generated by press releases and photos snapped by celebrity-chasers.”
The founders of WikiLeaks and Potter have much in common: both are seeking to address the fact the newspaper crisis has hurt publications’ abilities to do in-depth reporting. Of course, where Potter is looking to save journalism from within (giving newspapers a reliable source they can turn to for investigative reporters), WikiLeaks is freed from working within the established margins of traditional media. Which side will prevail?
Inside the Laboratory
Increasingly, Britain has been a hub for the newest developments in publishing. Iain Overton, the managing editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, told Pfanner that the Bureau is “an experiment. We are not promising to reinvent the wheel. But we might show that there is another way of rolling it.”
From innovative social news experiments, like Guardian’s Zeitgeist, to viral videos like DK’s “The Future of Publishing,” the British are determined to figure out how to make publishing work.
In a separate New York Times article, “Britain, a Laboratory for Newsprint’s Future,” Pfanner reports that even as some papers, like The Times of London decide to erect a pay wall, other British publications like The Southern Reporter of Selkirk, Scotland and the Daily Mail have decided to offer their content for free.
Pfanner quotes Vanessa Clifford, head of print advertising at a media buying agency in London, as to why developments in Great Britain are such a test for the publishing world at large: “The U.K. still loves newspapers, despite the talk of decline. If you can’t get people to pay for them here, then you might not be able to get them to do so anywhere.”
In “laboratories” around the world, from newspapers in Britain, to Steve Jobs’ office in Cupertino, to this start-up in Altadena, California, the search for the “salvation” of journalism is in full force. With so much time and energy focused on the issue, it’s hard to imagine that lots of interesting solutions won’t soon be uncovered.
— Lee Glandorf
Related reading:
The Wikileaks Incident: How Social Media has Changed Warfare Coverage (Huffington Post)
Profile: Who Are Wikileaks? (BBC)
Whistleblower Report: Leaked Video Shows U.S ‘Coverup’ (Wired)
The Focus Falls on Wikileaks (The Atlantic)
Is This the Future of Journalism? (Foreign Policy)
In Britain, a Laboratory for Newsprint’s Future (NYTimes)
What is content, then? (Buzzmachine)
Few See Crisis in Future of News (Journalism Crisis Coalition)
Campaign: Newspapers Alive, Well (Times Union)
Earlier Posts
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Lifeblood of Publishing: 10 Best Journalism Works of Decade
06 April 2010 -
The iPad is Risen—Hallelujah?
05 April 2010
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