You can also see opportunity in the growing number of community news sites — such as the muckraking Voice of San Diego, which just one an IRE award. Some of them may choose to make muckraking their mission.

The problem isn’t so much “replacing” the work of I-teams. It’s the much larger category of watchdog journalism, which is a more pervasive kind of reporting that provides regular checks on power. I don’t buy the argument that this is a tiny fraction. But I do agree there’s ultimately much promise in the digital world to, one way or another, uncover information somebody does want the world to know.

Will it prove a better way than what we’ve had? Hope so. But nobody knows.

As a news veteran of the days of apartheid South Africa, I cannot imagine what the results would’ve been had opposition reporters been dependent on foundation handouts to do their job.

Sure, everything costs money today and lots of it. In my experience, most investigative pieces were uncovered by newspaper journalists doing the job for which they were paid – investigating. (And, one should add, often paid abysmally.)

Right, an orgy. But a secret one.

Of course, Murdoch can fund a similar project, but there would be no shortage of legal obstacles put up to disrupt it.

While I’ve never turned down an investigative pitch in my career as an editor or manager, and am proud that our newsroom continues to develop great ideas of its own initiative, I have wondered if the immense agenda of staged information has served as the largest damper on enterprising journalism in the craft.

When it is relatively easy to fill pages and broadcasts with material from staged events — material that almost always delivers some sort of conventionally framed story — I wonder if some operations retreat into that instead of risking the dry well in digging for something else.

The publicity seekers have gotten very smart in learning how to frame their stories for market. For many newsrooms, it’s a safety net.

Kirk LaPointe,
Managing Editor,
The Vancouver Sun.