Luke Ford

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler writes:

Although most people get their news from television, and the Web is growing steadily, and bloggers and citizens with cell phone cameras are all contributing in some way to pieces of news, it is newspapers that provide the overwhelming body of news that is made public in this country. It is the newspapers — with experienced, trained reporters and editors who steadily cover city councils and the White House, who uncover scandals and report things you would never know about otherwise — that drive the news agenda for television and much of the Web. So they always have been, and remain, at the heart of what we know about lots of things and how we know it.

There are still several good, and profitable, small and medium-sized newspapers around the country that perform tough, and often courageous, reporting about local matters. But it is the handful of big, serious and tough-minded newspapers that are central to so much of what is important to uncover in this country and the world. We need these papers because they are committed to no-punches-pulled journalism and because they are big, which means they have the resources to keep bureaus around the world, to support teams of investigative reporters here at home, to withstand pressures from big advertisers and to fight the legal challenges and political pressures from government, politicians and industry.

There are two primary reasons why I disagree with Getler.

First, basic economics. If a profit-seeking enterprise such as The Los Angeles Times, cuts staff, that indicates that there is insufficient demand for their services and that the money that went to employing such staff could be more efficiently used elsewhere.

If the staff have valuable journalism skills, it will be in the interest of some other profit-seeking enterprise to employ them, be that a newspaper or a blog or a magazine.

Second, my own example. In the subjects (movie and television producers, Jewish journalism, the sex industry) that I know best, the most important work has been done by a blogger, me.

I got 1135 on my SATs (and that was representative of my learning). I’ve taken many IQ tests and have never scored above 130. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I am only literate in one language.

If you look at where I live and how I live, I’m slovenly. Yet I’ve managed to do the most important work in the subject areas of my five books (and that material showed up first on my blogs). For instance, in the Spring of 1998, I broke the news on a string of HIV-infections in the San Fernando Valley’s porn industry. The mainstream media did not pick up that story in depth until January 2003 in The Los Angeles Times. Even then, the Times did not significantly advance the story.

There’s been one person over the past ten years who has broken more news stories than any other writer/journalist — blogger Matt Drudge.

Joe, a MSM journalist, emails:

Actually, he hasn’t broken stories through his own reporting; he’s broken them by finding out what MSM journalists are working on and writing about them before they see print (Clinton sexual foibles/Newsweek being the most famous example).

Anyway, there’s a difference and one that sort of proves the worth of the journalists that Drudge and other bloggers “borrow” from or comment on.

There is a difference between doing the hard work of ferreting out information, digging through records, talking people into telling you their secrets, and being handed all that work because another publication won’t publish it.

Drudge broke the Lewinsky story by finding out what Newsweek had and publishing it four days before Newsweek bothered to publish. However you cut it, Drudge broke the story.

How did Newsweek get the story first? They were given it, just as Drudge was given the story.
I broke the the Antonio Villaraigosa marriage story by getting it from MSM journalists who knew that the somnolent L.A. Times, LA Weekly and LA Daily News wouldn’t want to break such a story.

Drudge broke some stories by finding out what MSM journalists were working on just as MSM journalists steal stories from fellow MSM journalists. Drudge broke some stories that were given to him just as MSM break stories that are given to them.

If Drudge didn’t break Lewinsky because he did not come up with the original information, then Watergate was not broken by Woodward and Bernstein. Those two Washington Post journalists were given info from a grand jury investigation and other investigations.

Journalists rarely break stories (as documented by Edward Jay Epstein’s essay in Commentary circa 1974 and in Epstein’s 1975 book on journalism Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism). They are given them by interested parties (a la Judy Miller).

All the best stories I’ve ever had have been given to me.

I deserve credit because they were given to me and not someone else.

Why were they given to me? Because I took the time to ferret out and publish middling stories that caught the attention of people with great stories who knew that if I was given these great stories, I would publish them, no matter the cost.

Most great stories are controversial and come with a heavy price (usually to the one publishing them as well as to others). Unlike most journalists, I don’t hold back on publishing something I know will antagonize people who can hurt or help me.

Good journalists (be they MSM or bloggers), like bad journalists, are given their best stories. The difference is that the good journalist recognizes a good story, and pursues the story given him.

A distinguished journalist does enough work to gain himself notice and credibility. He can charm people and increase the likelihood of being given good stories. A good journalist then verifies the information he is given.

Just as MSM journalists take from each other, they frequently take, often without attribution, from blogs. When producer Edgar J. Scherick died, The Los Angeles Times and other media took quotes he gave to me but without crediting me. In my first few posts to newsgroups, I did this shoddy thing (in early 1997 but not afterwards) and many bloggers and MSM journalists have done this (taken information and quotes without attributing their source). Some mainstream journalists are ethical and some bloggers are ethical. Neither side owns honesty or reporting.

I don’t mourn the decline of newspapers because I know that other sources of information will take their place. There’s always going to be a strong demand for information and numerous people who will want to meet that demand and profit from it.

Brian Doherty, an author and editor at Reason magazine, emails me: “Your post on why you don’t care about decline of newspapers was very wise and perceptive, one of the truths about journalism that self-important pros with all their talk of teeth-gritting and shoe leather don’t like to stress to the hoi polloi.”