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As long as citizen journalism proponents have been pumping its merits, skeptics have been bothered by one question: Where will the funds come from? NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen thinks he has an answer, and is launching a website to test it. He tells Bob how NewAssignment.net will attempt to harness the experience of ordinary people to mount investigative projects that mainstream media just aren’t up to.
And we thought our jobs were safe. New technology has always made easier some of the more menial tasks of the journalist, especially those of market and wire reporters? But at Thomson Financial in New York, machines are now journalists, too. Bob speaks with Director of Content Development Andrew Meagher about the efficacy of computers that take the job into their own virtual hands.
Fordham University law professor Hugh Hansen is an advocate of strong copyright laws. But even he concedes that for low-budget filmmakers, copyright can be more of a burden than a blessing. Brooke speaks with him and with Duke law professor James Boyle, who thinks copyright holders have ushered in a “permission culture” that ignores the laws governing fair use.
Getting a candidate elected has its rewards, but losing isn't bad either. A media consultant for a congressional candidate, for instance, may get as much as 10-15% of the total spent on TV ads. Salon Washington bureau chief Walter Shapiro tells Bob that Americans might not fork over as many campaign contributions if they knew how much the consultants were taking.
It used to be quite common for presidents to reach into the ranks of the press corps to find their spokesmen. But for almost three decades now, press secretaries have come with P.R. bona fides – not journalistic ones. Bush’s appointment this week of Fox News TV and radio personality Tony Snow to the job reverses that trend. ABC News political director Mark Halperin tells Brooke that it’s a step in the right direction for the Bush team.
Two months ago, a historian in Washington discovered that intelligence operatives were secretly re-classifying documents in the National Archives. This week, an internal investigation at the Archives concluded that about a third of the records pulled from the shelves should not have been reclassified. Brooke speaks with J. William Leonard, who oversaw the audit of the secret program.
Barely a week into his new job, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is already under pressure to rewrite the media ownership laws that allowed outgoing P.M. Silvio Berlusconi to build a media empire. Berlusconi kept a tight leash on the media, and often fired journalists, commentators, and even satirists not to his liking. Megan Williams reports from Rome on the troubled past and future prospects of political satire on Italian TV.
The Big Apple is powered by gossip, but the electrical grid nearly overloaded last week when the best gossip was about the gossips themselves. The case continues to be fought in the court of public opinion as nearly every paper spills ink bemoaning our lurid fascination with those who live and die by the dirt. Reporter Jessica Seigal looks back a few years to the cautionary tale of a Page Six gossip-monger who couldn’t help telling the truth.
