ProPublica

Sometimes, a source will ask when a piece I’m writing will appear in the newspaper.

“I don’t get the paper,” they say cheerfully. “Can you send me the link when it runs?”

This started happening four or five years ago. Now, rarely a week passes without a source asking me to e-mail them a story. I can’t recall the last time I mailed someone a news clipping.

Sources are quick to call when a story fails to appear on the Web, too. “I can’t e-mail it to anyone,” a local politician recently grumbled to me. I transferred him to the online newsroom, which posted the missing story in minutes.

Every week in class, we see another graphic showing how newspapers are hemorrhaging readers, at least readers of the print product. In total, though, readership is up: The Washington Post has several million online readers, many of them living outside the D.C. area. Arguably, the journalism of U.S. media outlets is reaching more people than ever before.

So Americans are consuming news—they just think it should be free. Or, free after they pay their Internet provider.

But I don’t think the mainstream media will ever disappear. I do think it will look something like ProPublica.

ProPublica is a non-profit organization that does what most national newspapers already do: investigative journalism. But ProPublica will not answer to shareholders. It will accept donations to finance the long, expensive, difficult work of being a public watchdog. Then, it will allow major print and TV outlets to air their work. An article in the July 9, 2008, Time Magazine elaborated on ProPublica's mission:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1821376,00.html?cnn=yes

I have not done much investigative reporting, but the little I've done was maddening. I've spent hours sitting on a metal chair in a court clerk's office, hunched over boxes of documents. I've been paralyzed by the enormity of trying to explain a complicated problem to the public in a readable way. There's no Robert Redford, no midnight chats on the lawn at Ben Bradlee's house. Just you and way, way too much information. It's also solitary work. Other reporters in the newsroom start to wonder why you've been given a week or two to write a single story, when everyone else is cranking out five government stories a week.

ProPublica's founders, philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, understand that investigative journalism is waning as newspapers seek to increase productivity and shed staff. It has hired some of the best investigative reporters away from major papers. Leading the effort is Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

What does this mean for PR practitioners? I think it means we still have to pay attention to the mainstream media, along with the blogs and emerging forms of social media. The mainstream media may move online, but groups like ProPublica will be capable of cranking out blockbuster investigations that can prompt a crisis for any organization falling under scrutiny. ProPublica is fairly new, so many of its investigative pieces are underway. I imagine once they are posted to the Web site, ProPublica will be linked from many blogs.

I'm excited to read their work. As Steiger said in the Time piece, "We're going to try to do stories such that, by shining a light on an abuse of power, we'll give the public the information it needs to effect change."