Weekly news articles

An economist makes the case for saving investigative journalism (Poytner)

This article discusses the advantages and the disadvantages of investigative journalism and how it contributes to society such as whether investigative reporting that saves lives is adequately valued. The article highlights some of the earliest forms of investigative journalism such as the Frank Leslie's 1858 expose of the swill milk trade in New York City to the Flint water crisis. The article then continues to show the price of investigative journalism. "What's hidden is hard to unearth, with denials and cover-ups to be expected. That's why big investigations of systemic issues take months and years — not weeks — and can cost tens or hundreds of thousand dollars."

• According to News Observer editor John Drescher, it’s not unsual for the paper to spend $150,000-$200,000 on a single reporting project.

I personally believe that investigative journalism should be valued and also admired as it can bring positive outcomes and even prevent corruption. However, the fact that it comes with such a high price such as putting others at risk and also the fact that it can take months/years which unsurprisingly can cost tens or hundreds of thousand dollars, therefore not every media outlet can afford or even want to take part in investigative journalism.

I'm with you on the digital revolution, it's the lack of journalism I can't face (The Guardian)

This article discusses the implications of a reduction in the number of news-gatherers after another newspaper title is withdrawn from publication. The article mentions how some readers use the remark 'I don’t read newspapers. I get all my news from Twitter’. Which is almost discrediting the writers of these articles, that someone read the document or produced the report — gathered the news — that we repost or tweet or link to. The growth in the numbers of newspaper-based news-gatherers in those former times when print profited from its advertising revenue is also mentioned. "People listening didn’t get their news from the radio. Ultimately, they got their news from the newspaper reporters". The article states how that social media reacts to news rather than finding it, and the fall in the numbers of news-gatherers is a genuine concern.

I personally believe that the fact that users don't credit journalists and the fact that the majority of users get their news on news-aggregation sites is true and also unfair on the journalists.