Mar
03

Tech Blog Post #6

Filed Under (COMM 361, Professor Klein) by on 03-03-2011

Is investigative journalism still alive today even with our current technological advances in social media?

Investigative journalism can be described in many ways: “uncovering the hidden”; “expensive”; “difficult”; “requiring dedication”; “has impact”; “holding power to account

    The hidden

  • So does journalism become investigative when that newness involves uncovering the hidden?

I would argue that it is anything that our audience couldn’t see before – it could be a victim’s story, a buried report, 250,000 cables accessible to 2.5 million people, or even information that is publicly available but has not been connected before.

A journalist that is able to uncover the hidden and provide his target audience with a breaking news story is subject to individual perception.

Narrative and authority

  • it takes an established media outlet to get official reaction

But this does not mean we need journalists – it means that we need publishers and broadcasters. There is a difference.

Demystification

  • If we can swallow our pride long enough to stop debating the membership requirements of who and what can be in ‘our club’ – whether that’s investigative journalism, watchdog journalism, or just ‘journalism’, we might just have time to help those students – and those who can’t afford to be students, or indeed journalists – do it better.


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