Increasingly, Michigan is a place without watchdogs, Phil Power writes this week.
He’s not talking about rabid, drooling dobermans guarding junkyards, though his subjects (newspaper reporters) have been called much worse. He’s talking about the decline of Michigan newspapers, which grew worse this month with the announcement of big cutbacks at the Booth Newspapers in Ann Arbor, Bay City, Flint, Jackson, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, and Saginaw.
The main question is, who will tell the people? Who will keep government honest? Who will ask the tough questions.
Steadily, the answer may emerge from new kinds of journalism funded through the help of philanthropy.
Consider, for example, this investigation of the federal air marshall service which dominated the front page of USA Today. The byline comes from ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization funded by foundations.
Consider, too, this recent New York Times story profiling local shoestring journalism operations springing up in places like San Diego, New Haven, Conn., and Chicago.
Or, check out the Ann Arbor Chronicle, a new publication launched by Ann Arbor News refugee Mary Morgan.
We’re also catching wind of neighborhood news bureaus possibly cropping up in other Michigan cities very soon.
Who will tell the People? It might be up to philanthropy and the People themselves.
2 Comments
I’m a huge fan of the Chronicle, but this is a community newspaper, moved online – not citizen journalism or philantrophic journalism, both of which often come with a point of view.
These new forms will require that readers apply a very skeptical filter to what they read online. The online ‘news stories’ about Pres. Elect Obama’s religion, personal friendships and related posts should be an early warning for this new ‘journalism.’ They sure didn’t pass a Society of Professional Journalists ethics test, but folks certainly believed them.
Reader beware in the new world.
Recently in conversations with a recent Ph.D. graduate and then two educated retirees, they all said that they don’t subscribe to newspapers! The Ph.D. said he gets his information from internet and the retirees said they borrow newspapers or go on line. None of them had an answer when I asked them what the source of the internet information?
Newspapers, in my opinion, are a necessity in a free society to gather,investigate and report/diseminate information to the public.