Mary Walton over at the American Journalism Review does some, um, investigating:
"The bad guys get away with stuff."
Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. (Investigative teams) are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them. In Washington, bureaus that once did probes have shrunk, closed and consolidated.
The membership of Investigative Reporters and Editors fell more than 30 percent, from 5,391 in 2003, to a 10-year low of 3,695 in 2009. (After a vigorous membership drive, this year the number climbed above 4,000.) Prize-seekers take note: Applications for Pulitzers are down more than 40 percent in some investigative categories, a drop reflected in other competitions.
"There is no question that there are fewer investigative reporters in the U.S. today than there were a few years ago, mirroring the overall loss of journalists at traditional media outlets," says IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit. ...
Walton goes on:
The shrinking rosters (of media and news outlets) represent a two-front assault on investigative reporting. Investigations take time, lots of time. With much smaller staffs doing much more work in a multimedia era, it becomes harder to spring reporters from their day jobs to tackle important but labor-intensive probes. And with fewer reporters to go around, news outlets are much more likely to abolish investigative slots than the City Hall and police beats.
In the army of the Fourth Estate, full-time investigative reporters have always been the elite special forces. Frequently, though, investigations have been carried out by the foot soldiers — beat reporters who come across a good lead...
Few trends in media frighten me more than this. I'm sorry, but hack sites like The Huffington Post (which thrives on sexualized linkbait and refuses to pay its writers) are in no way an acceptable replacement. Investigative reporting is a craft, not an aggregate.
It's worth noting that the investigative journalism that persists is doing extraordinary work--see, for example, The Washington Post's "Top Secret America" project, or ProPublica's investigation on caregivers who harm (and get away with it), or WBEZ's This American Life examining "the giant pool of money." Many local newspapers, too, have done great reporting. But standouts aside, this work needs a shot in the arm -- and you can help make it happen. Please consider joining me in donating to at least one of these amazing organizations (to say nothing of subscribing to the publications that are committed to investigative work):
- ProPublica
- The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute
- The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
- The Center for Investigative Reporting
- The Center for Public Integrity
- The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Your support goes directly into telling the untold stories that are critical for an accountable society. This matters, folks.
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