This may seem like a minor thing, but a couple of months ago I wrote about just how goddam stupid it was that places like the Ford Foundation were giving “innovation grants” to the Washington Post and the LA Times. Here’s why that sucks:
[…] Consider the fate of the Web site Homicide Watch DC. When it popped up out of nowhere with a way of tracking every murder in Washington, it seemed likely that a big news organization would snap it up or that foundations would trip over themselves to shove money at them.It hasn’t turned out that way. Two years after it began, Homicide Watch is on hiatus and its founders, Laura and Chris Amico, find themselves with the tin cup out on Kickstarter looking for money to sustain the site.
At the heart of Homicide Watch is its mission statement: “Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.” It’s a remarkable thing to behold — part database, part news site, it also serves as a kind of digital memorial for homicide victims in Washington. Their pictures are published, their cases are followed and their deaths are acknowledged as a meaningful event in the life of the city.
One of the worst possible things that could happen to journalism is having foundations prop up media dinosaurs that refuse to adapt and change, while they ignore sites that could do much more with a fraction of the money it takes to keep the incumbents in business.
Update: Homicide Watch got their $40K on Kickstarter (via) so they’re funded for another year, and will train journalism students to run the site. $40K to run the site for a year, versus $500K from the Ford Foundation to the Post for 4 reporters. Which is a better investment, I wonder?
c u n d gulag
This is just another example of, “It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know.”
LGRooney
@c u n d gulag: Beat me to it. The Amicos clearly don’t run in the right circles.
c u n d gulag
@LGRooney:
And if you don’t run in the right circles, they make you run IN circles, just trying to get by.
Sly
There are two sides to the equation of a profitable news business (indeed, any business); revenue and cost. Much of modern journalism is the way it is because of intense cost-cutting that comes with everything from corporate consolidation to the elimination of dedicated subject journalism (i.e. “beat” reporting). It’s cheaper to produce insubstantial fluff because doing so doesn’t require the kind of expertise entailed in an education beyond a journalism degree.
As an example, the general public still has virtually no idea what’s in PPACA because the institutions that should be an outlet for that information don’t have people with the necessary expertise to discern bullshit from objective fact, so all claims are constantly suspect and the superficialities of the lawmaking process are given priority.
So when I read this:
I understand why no major news outlet wanted to pick it up. Homicide Watch is a long term, in-depth reporting tool that requires a commitment in terms of both dollars and educated manpower that big news organizations had abandoned decades ago. Given the myopia of corporate culture, why should the Washington Post do that when they could just pay another Jennifer Rubin, for a fraction of the cost, to generate page-clicks with “provocative” mealy-mouthed calls for ethnic cleansing?
Dennis SGMM
Newspapers also require a readership that’s curious enough and involved enough to read them. They require people to turn off the idiot box and read.
amk
Caught a Obama 2012 car sticker in Nairobi today.
Solid proof that he is a kenyan, muslin, socialist, fascist, corporatist, communist who will destroy ‘murka singlehandedly.
jheartney
The bigger picture wrt journalism is that the old economic model that sustained newspapers is failing, and if we are to have anything like the network of in-depth news organizations that we used to have, we’ll need to fund them either through grants or taxpayer subsidy. And if we try to do it with grants, the money will come with explicit or implicit ideological strings attached.
Micro-news organizations like Homicide Watch are nice, but the fact that they are atomized means they will always be shoestring operations, without the scale or the audience reach to function for a mass readership. You can talk about media dinosaurs, but a horde of tiny single-issue sites is no more a replacement for thriving newspapers than a swarm of insects is a replacement for megafauna.
Villago Delenda Est
@LGRooney:
They’re 99%ers. Fuck them.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
You left out atheist.
I’m sorry, that’s five wingtard demerits for you.
MattF
Homicide Watch is an admirable project, but it isn’t something the WaPo would ever be interested in, even back in the day when the Post was a relatively good newspaper. Not something that would attract regular advertisers or, for that matter, regular readers.
LGRooney
@MattF: I would think realtors would be interested in sponsoring something like this.
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: My bad. I thought being muslin is worse than a fucking atheist.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
The thing is, if you listen carefully to the wingnuts (warning: brain damage may occur if overexposed) he’s both a Muslim AND and atheist, at the same time.
If he’s a muslin, of course, that’s a coat of a different color.
LGRooney
@amk: As an atheist, let me say, we are much worse than muslims. It may be the wrong god, or the wrong interpretation of god’s ‘love,’ but at least they have a god. We atheists have no moral compass whatsoever because shut up!!!
nevsky42
Here’s the Kickstarter link for those interested (they’ve already made their goal with 3 days left):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368665357/a-one-year-student-reporting-lab-within-homicide-w?ref=search
scav
@LGRooney: Realtors? Truthful reporting of actual neighborhood (or nearer) conditions? no no no no no. They’d likely interfere and not to the missions’ advantage.
KPH
In Buffalo, as the Buffalo News shrinks despite continued profitability (Warren Buffet owns it), early-retired investigative reporter Jim Heaney started Investigative Post last year. Knight Foundation just granted them $100k for the next two years. Tom Toles supports it, also. Link.
Part of the business model is to provide investigative reporting services to other local media outlets, radio, press etc. This is the kind of thing I personally support with my meager money.
catclub
@MattF: You would think the bail bondsmen and the funeral directors would find their audience there.
What is the Amico’s revenue model?
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: “that’s a coat of a different color”
I believe that is a sheet of a different color. And probably not white, with holes.
Or as the politician in The Wire put it shee-it.
weaselone
@Sly:
I would agree that this could be a significant contributor for print media, but it doesn’t really explain major network and cable news. Jennifer Rubin and a real reporter could probably be had for the about the same price, but one would need muliple real reporters and some decent research interns to fill up the same number of pages each day.
That’s not the case for a David Gregory. You could carve positions for several real journalists and research staff out of his salary. Plus he already has a team behind him that could be repurposed to perform or support actual journalism. That this has not been done suggest that some combination of viewer, owner and advertiser preference creates David Gregories, not a lack of cash flow.
Cris (without an H)
William Blake FTW
Brachiator
The worst possible thing has already happened, that any newspaper needs a foundation’s money to survive.
If anyone thinks that any kind of journalism can long survive using the public radio/public TV foundation begging model, you are fooling yourselves.
The delusion after this one is the Kickstarter begging model.
@Dennis SGMM:
Which idiot box is that? TV, the Internet, game consoles, smartphones?
There is no lack of sources of information. The new media has yet to find the most effective (and proftitable) way of organizing and presenting information.
LanceThruster
Depends on what the Ford Foundation is trying to accomplish.
Brachiator
@amk:
I think that the Catholic Church says that it might be OK to be an atheist if you remain celibate, but a fucking atheist is not allowed.
Last Sane Person in America
@amk: @amk:
Your comment is totally irrelevant to the topic of this article. Blogs provide a unique opportunity for legitimate discussion of current events which in this instance is funding priorities and a site that tracks homicides in our nation’s capital.
Rather than disrupt the topic at hand, why don’t you take your comments to a more appropriate blog where your ignorant, racist, lunacy is more appreciated.
amk, if these comments reflect your true beliefs you need professional help. Unfortunately your pre-existing mental defect will not be covered by medical insurance of Romney is elected and fulfills his promise to eliminate ‘Obamacare’>
Soonergrunt
@Last Sane Person in America: You need to recalibrate your snark-o-meter.
Seriously. You should probably take a double shot of whatever calms your nerves, too.
stormhit
@Soonergrunt:
Or just click once and look at the rest of amk’s twitter feed.
LGRooney
@scav: Bad news for those in the area where crime is bad, good news where it is not, and can be used as a marketing tool for housing the “right” areas.
scav
@Soonergrunt: @stormhit: I just want to know what dour, regimented, colors-within-the-lines, faints-at-jokes, consistently wears the proper trousers to all the best occasions, topic-ubër-alles blog the Sane(tm) one has been reading and confusing with BJ.
scav
@scav: Damn! misplaced my umlauts. I am clearly not worthy of this fine blogspace.
scav
@LGRooney: That’s exactly why they’d try to muddle with the results: protecting their prime real-estate territory. They’d be pushing to under-report in certain areas where they’ve got houses to push. Just another statistic to manipulate.
trollhattan
If WaPo were to declare Ruben, Krauthammer, Will and Dick-Whisperer “reporters” and semd them to Somalia on a four-year assignment to imbed with and profile the pirates, then I’d approve. They can learn, firsthand, what life is like in the kind of free-from-pesky-gummint country they dream of.
No sat phones for them, either.
Brachiator
@KPH:
What? Really?
From 1996:
From February 2012:
Yeah, the paper is still “profitable,” but the grave digger is measuring coffin space in the boneyard.
Sadly, the News, like other papers, is considering a paywall, which will only accelerate its demise.
trollhattan
Speaking of insufferable WaPo scribbles, mister anti-everything since Reconstruction George Will says football is for hippie-commie Lenin-worshippers.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/george-will-is-not-ready-for-some-football.html
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
He’s either got his tongue in his cheek, or his head up his butt.
pseudonymous in nc
As I said in the original thread, the problem here is often that the people with good small projects don’t have the grant-application chops of the big orgs, and many big foundations are more comfortable signing off on half a million to a known entity than $40k to an indie.
Path dependency and institutional small-c conservatism at work.
KPH
@Brachiator:
One of the very few profitable papers in the US, but yes, declining profits. And yes, they’re putting up a paywall. Idiots. They’ve been shedding their good, experienced reporters for years.