Voyages of Discovery Into New Media

Voyages of Discovery Into New Media

Spring 2009: Introduction

By Melissa Ludtke• Technology• March 15, 2009

At the crossroad of old journalism and new media, digital news entrepreneurs lead us on voyages of discovery into new media. From MinnPost to MediaStorm, these entities are using visual media, interactivity and social media to watchdog government abuse and the justice system, identify environmental dangers, and tell enduring stories. In doing so, they illuminate possibilities. —Melissa Ludtke, Editor Read more

The New Front Page: The Digital Revolution

By Joel Kramer• Technology• March 23, 2009

A former newspaper editor figures out how to fund serious digital journalism with an annual budget less than what newsrooms sometimes spent on one investigative project. Read more

Watchdog Analysis: Offering Context and Perspective Online

By Margaret Wolf Freivogel• Technology• March 15, 2009

At the Beacon in St. Louis, reporters attempt to ‘provide context to illuminate why something is happening, explain what’s at stake, and assess what might—or what should—happen next.’ Read more

Defining an Online Mission: Local Investigative Reporting

By Andrew Donohue and Scott Lewis• Technology• March 31, 2009

At the nonprofit voiceofsandiego.org, ‘From our first day our job has been to fill the gaps between what people want from their local media and what they have.’ Read more

Crowdfunded Reporting: Readers Pay for Stories to Be Told

By Alexis Madrigal• Technology• March 23, 2009

‘Reporting for Spot.Us, where money directly changes hands, is the same as reporting any story for Wired.com. For Spot.Us, the ethical promise inheres in the transparency of the funding.’ Read more

A Digital Vision of Where Journalism and Government Will Intersect

By Bill Allison• Technology• March 23, 2009

‘… the journalistic process of assembling information and connecting the dots to inform tough questions will be easier.’ Read more

Tracking Toxics When the Data Are Polluted

By James T. Hamilton• Technology• March 23, 2009

How computational journalism can uncover what polluters would prefer to hide. Read more

An Investigative Reporting Partnership: A Serendipitous Collaboration

By Walter V. Robinson• Technology• March 30, 2009

‘At Northeastern University in Boston, where I joined the faculty in 2007, students in my investigative reporting seminars have produced 11 Page One stories for The Boston Globe in just 20 months.’ Read more

Long-Form Multimedia Journalism: Quality Is the Key Ingredient

By Brian Storm• Technology• March 15, 2009

As a producer of social documentary projects—viewed on digital platforms—Brian Storm talks about the excitement of doing journalism in this way, at this time. Read more

Video News Reporting: New Lessons in New Media

By Nick Penniman• Technology• March 15, 2009

‘What would it take to create good video journalism for online audiences, inexpensively and in an idiom that looked neither too homemade nor too much like TV?’ Read more

Using Social Media to Reach Young Readers

By Julia Luscher Thompson• Technology• March 15, 2009

In reporting on a case of a police informant who’d been murdered, the Tallahassee Democrat relied on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and text messages to get its reporting to young readers. Read more

The Web: Fertile Ground for Investigative Projects

By Maud Beelman• Technology• March 24, 2009

‘Digital journalism could not be the sole domain of breaking news and blogging, and it had to be more than the repository of electronic reprints.’ Read more

Using Multimedia to Tell an Investigative Story About Innocence

By Christine Young• Technology• April 14, 2009

‘Two departments within our newspaper—editorial and new media—had to work closely together to construct the project.’ Read more

Reliable News: Errors Aren’t Part of the Equation

By Craig Silverman• Technology• March 23, 2009

In the transition to digital journalism, accuracy—as an indicator of quality—must maintain its place at the top of the list of essential ingredients. Read more

21st Century Muckrakers: Investigating Medical and Health Issues

Investigating Medical and Health Issues: Introduction

By Melissa Ludtke• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 20, 2009

If data talked, oh, the stories they could tell. Today, enterprising reporters are “listening” to what data can tell them. By harnessing technology’s tools, they dig with increasing speed and thoroughness through stacks of numbers and reams of documents, and … Read more

Diving Into Data to Tell Untold Medical Stories

By John Carey• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

‘The U.S. press seemed to accept as established truth that cholesterol lowering is vital and that statins are the closest thing to wonder drugs. I’m not any smarter than my colleagues, I worried. Maybe I’m just wrong.’ Read more

Investigative Reporting on Medical Science: What Does It Take to Break Through the Commercial Spin?

By John Abramson• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 15, 2009

‘… it is almost impossible to get the story right when the fundamentally commercial goals for which the study has been done are covered up with so much industry-sponsored expertise.’ Read more

Silenced Words: An Op-ed That Couldn’t Find a Home

By Jim Wright, John Abramson and Merrill Goozner• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

John Abramson, Jim Wright, and Merrill Goozner, author of “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs,” coauthored an op-ed about the JUPITER trial that was rejected by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The … Read more

Changing the Drumbeat of Typical Health Reporting

By Gary Schwitzer• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

At HealthNewsReview.org ‘… we are on the lookout for those stories that include unsubstantiated claims made in the course of reporting about health.’ Read more

Examining Water Supplies in Search of Pharmaceutical Drugs

By Richard T. Pienciak• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 15, 2009

‘Secrecy, it turned out, was our biggest enemy, but not for the reasons investigative reporters typically encounter ….’ Read more

A Water Trail of Antibiotics in India

21st Century Muckrakers• March 30, 2009

Margie Mason, an AP reporter then based in Hanoi, Vietnam and now a Nieman Global Health Fellow, contributed to the PharmaWater story with reporting about the large amount of antibiotics being spewed from drug factories in India. As reported in her … Read more

Investigating the Pharmaceutical Industry on a Blog

By Ed Silverman• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 25, 2009

‘… evidence itself often emerged as the centerpiece, which has a strong impact on the audience when they see for themselves the incriminating paper trail.’ Read more

Digging Through Data and Discovering a Profitable Handshake

By Marcella Bombardieri and Scott Allen• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team set out to determine why the state’s health care costs are so high and ended up revealing a hidden deal between powerful forces. Read more

Toppling the ‘Big Three’—Medical Care, Behavior and Genes

By Madeline Drexler• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

‘Unnatural Causes’ mixes reporting of research rarely featured in traditional news coverage with visual storytelling in the hope of sparking a health equity movement. Read more

Spreading the News

By Madeline Drexler• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 19, 2009

RELATED ARTICLE “Toppling the ‘Big Three’—Medical Care, Behavior and Genes” – Madeline DrexlerDuring the past year, more than 400 outreach groups and other organizations have convened thousands … Read more

Blogs, Watchdog Reporting, and Scientific Malfeasance

By Alison Bass• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 8, 2009

‘Bottom line is that it takes time and money to do the kind of muckraking that newspapers have always excelled at, and I’m not sure the blogosphere can reliably reproduce this all-important function.’ Read more

Investigating What Harms People—As an Independent Reporter

By Loretta Tofani• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 20, 2009

A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter writes about ‘hurdles to obtain meager funding or to overcome editors’ reluctance to support the stories’—and offers suggestions. Read more

Revealing How Dentists Profit By Abusing Children

By Roberta Baskin• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

In ‘Drilling for Dollars,’ a local TV reporter presented shocking visual and audio testimony about a situation in which children were being needlessly treated and harmed because of corporate greed. Read more

What Happens When No One Is Watching?

By Morton Mintz• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 20, 2009

When Congress relinquishes its oversight role of the Food and Drug Administration, the press reduces its watchdog role when it comes to drug safety. Read more

An Online Database Reveals Health Hazards

By Michael B. Pell• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 15, 2009

Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s data, The Center for Public Integrity finds reason to be concerned about some pesticides found in familiar products. Read more

Probing Toxic Plastics at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

21st Century Muckrakers• March 20, 2009

In “Chemical Fallout: A Journal Sentinel Watchdog Report,” Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, reporters at this metro newspaper, explored in depth the evidence that long-term health effects may be caused by the release of chemicals found in the packaging, … Read more

A Small Newspaper Tackles a Big Investigative Project

By Kevin P. Craver• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 25, 2009

The persistence of two reporters pays off in revealing how local government failed residents who worried about connections between corporate behavior and the high incidence of brain cancer. Read more

The Other Side of China’s Economic Miracle

By Ran An• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 23, 2009

A Chinese reporter describes how he learned about the injuries and illnesses that befall migrants who work in factories where exported products are made. Read more

Medical and Public Health Concerns: Off-Limits in the Russian Press

By Karl Idsvoog and Max Grubb• 21st Century Muckrakers• March 20, 2009

‘The problem facing public health reporters is not the police; it’s a medical system with little transparency and fear of unemployment.’ Read more