Media's future

New York Times story--“Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash” by freelance writer Lindsey Hoshaw--looks like a normal Science Times clip, but it’s not.  Publicly funded to the tune of $6,000, the article is the first collaboration between “crowdfunding” journalism site Spot.Us and the Times: “a milestone for a model of news funding that has been the subject of much optimism since Spot.us announced itself,” according to...Go to full story

Unemployed journalists, check it out. Want to do enterprising, investigative journalism and get paid for it? Freedom, a magazine published by the Church of Scientology since 1968, is looking to hire experienced journalists to further their mission of "Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest," according to news site TrueSlant. The ad has been joke fodder for TrueSlant and Reddit among others, but it also raises a serious question; is Freedom actually journalism,...Go to full story

In response to failing economic models, some pioneering newsmakers are coming at the problem from a different angle: non-profit journalism.

Last Tuesday The Texas Tribune, a new online-only, non-profit news site, joined the handful of journalism outlets already working with a non-profit model: the Voice of San Diego, The New Haven Independent, Propublica, and the MinnPost, which just marked its second anniversary, are a few of the most successful.

If Paul Carr meant to start a debate, he succeeded. Over the weekend, Carr, who writes for Techcrunch, penned a criticism of citizen journalists at the Fort Hood shootings that picked up quite a bit of traction online.

Aside from his many Twitter mentions, other social media critics responded to his critique and while most felt his post didn't have the substance to sustain a convincing argument, Megan Garber writing at the Columbia Journalism Review was more...Go to full story

To combat economic pressures, Kimberly Abbott, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, explains that news organizations are increasingly turning to NGOs to provide everything from contacts and guidance for field reporters to story ideas and even funding. In addition to detailing the nature of these relationships, Abbott discusses the ethical issues raised by an NGO/journalism partnership.

Apropos the subject, Abbott is herself an NGO/journalist: she works as...Go to full story

We recently wrote about the ethical issues that arise when blog posts are replaced with a different version or removed from websites altogether. When the content of a post exists only online, removing or correcting without providing the original content seems, at best, misleading.

But a situation at the Guardian is now raising questions about how a print publication should handle the ethics of maintaining, in perpetuity, print content online. Last week the...Go to full story

If you were wondering why we need ombudsmen (or even what the heck ombudsmen are), Jeffrey Dvorkin, formerly of NPR has the answer for you in an October 13 post at the Common Ground News Service.

In his essay, Dvorkin discusses the strengths of the position (also called a readers’ representative or public editor) in a changing news environment, and advocates continued hiring of ombudsmen, especially for coverage of the Middle East. Dvorkin, Executive...Go to full story

In his new book, The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News, former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Gene Foreman, takes a new approach to journalism ethics: the case study.

And he's not alone. Two other upcoming books, Making Hard Choices in Journalism Ethics, by David E Boeyink and Sandra L Borden (which will be released this coming February), and a book put together by the Society of Professional Journalists (which...Go to full story

On October 27, a story posted at the Huffington Post announced the news “Scalia on Brown v. Board of Education: I Would Have Dissented.”

The post described how in a University of Arizona talk, Supreme Court Justice Scalia had apparently said that if he had been on the high court in 1954, he would have disagreed with the historic decision ending school segregation. It turns out, Scalia didn’t say that at all (more on this later).  Megan...Go to full story

Last month, at the fifth annual Poynter Kent State Media Ethics Workshop, Poynter Institute colleagues discussed the role of traditional media, frequently referred to as the Fourth Estate, and new media, which has been given the sequential moniker, the Fifth Estate.

In the first session of the event, a panel looked at the Poynter Sense-Making Project, an ongoing study that began this year and examines "the influence of the Fifth Estate, described as...Go to full story