The Biz: Nonprofits Hope to Fill Gap

Philanthropic foundations are stepping up to help address the crisis in journalism and especially critical reporting, according to a new report from the University of Southern California's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. "The collapse of the traditional economic model has increased both the need for nonprofit journalism and also the receptivity toward it," says Geoffrey Cowan, dean emeritus of USC's j-school and director of its CCLP. Thanks to Bilbo for a tip about this study.

TAGS: the biz

Interesting: Building an Investigative News Network

My top-secret source in the world of non-profit investigative journalism, Bilbo, writes of an event that apparently has all the world of us investigatorial sluggos abuzz - the "Building an Investigative News Network" do happening this week at the Rockefeller family estate in Westchester County, New York. Read all about it here.

UPDATE (Thurs., July 2): And now, here's the declaration that came out of that conference. They've agreed to form a new non-profit entity to promote investigative journalism. Notable is the absence of ProPublica in the list of supporters. It'll be curious to see what kinds of funds these folks raise - and what direction they end up taking. Good luck!

Interesting: Hersh, Bamford On Cultivating Sources

Interesting discussion of cultivating high-level sources for investigative projects on Cecil Rosner's blog. Cecil, a CBC investigative vet, attended the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Baltimore and reports on a discussion on sources by renowned journalists James Bamford and Seymour Hersh, who have broken some of the decade's best stories on the intelligence world.

TAGS: intelligence, sources

Congats To Us!

Congratulations to us! The Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (of which I'm v-p) has just gotten word from the Canada Revenue Agency's charities directorate: We now have charity status - the first media organization of this kind to be granted the status in Canada.

Congratulations first and foremost must go to our tireless and dogged executive director, Bilbo Poynter.

Stay tuned to the CCIR website and Facebook page for more exciting centre news and programming soon, including a fundraiser-slash-panel discussion in Toronto in August.

Tools: What's the Meaning of Life? Ask Google's Freaky New Brain

Just added three cool sites to my "Resources: Tools & Search" bar of links in the right-hand column. Wolfram, Google's freaky new artificial intelligence sideline, offers two really interesting new tools I've linked down there:

- Wolfram/Alpha, a searchable artificial intelligence tool that computes answers to your questions (including, for example, "What is the meaning of life?") Some say Wolfram/Alpha is so smart it'll change the internet.

- The Wolfram Mathematica Online Integrator, an engine that performs computations using 2,500-plus math functions

The third site is WordReference.com, a professional-quality online translation and definitions tool that includes a searchable and query-able forum where linguists discuss tricky translation questions.

TAGS: tools, online journalism

Web 2.0: Divining the Collective Brain

Great idea from this item at the Online Journalism Blog, one of my regular RSS reads through iGoogle. (If you don't know what iGoogle is, go here pronto. It's a very cool aggregator tool you can customize to scan all your fave sites.) OJB suggests that journalists and news organizations should make a habit of creating "datastores." These are simple spreadsheets and other databases linked from their stories that give raw data for the public to chew on.

One benefit from such datastores for news workers is reeping the bountiful harvest of "distributed journalism," OJB says in this other interesting item. That's the idea that the public can participate in journalism by finding new patterns and connections and giving tips and feedback for stories. Datastores give the public more tools to do just this.

I'm a big fan of this idea. Us journalists like to think we're so smart and no one else can do our jobs. But blogging here and especially at my market site has opened up an amazing world of "distributed knowledge" for me, from which I've learned an immense amount. It's actually, in my opinion, one of the main reasons to blog.

TAGS: tools, CAR, online journalism

Awards: Amnesty Media Prizes Recognize Investigations of Killings, Torture

WikiLeaks reports that its editor Julian Assange has won Amnesty International's 2009 New Media Award for his work exposing the involvement of Kenyan police in hundreds of recent extrajudicial killings and disappearances. See more on the atrocities here. An Amnesty Media Award also goes to The Guardian for its investigation of how Britain's MI5 outsourced torture of British citizens to Pakistani security agencies. See more on these and the other Amnesty Media Awards here.

TAGS: human rights, awards, torture

Web 2.0: Help Me Investigate

Is crowd investigative journalism a new model for the business? Can it help spread democracy? Or is it just a gimmick that sounds all digitally and cool but really has limited potential? A UK experiment hopes to find out. Leading UK investigative journalists have teamed up with Channel 4 to create Help Me Investigate, a platform that lets people team up to investigate local and broader issues. A parallel program is Talk About Local, which aims to spread digital literacy in marginalized communities, says this item in the Birmingham Post.

TAGS: the biz, future of journalism, online journalism, Web 2.0

The Biz: Learn Lots at MagNet Conference

Magazine writers, editors, authors and publishers are putting on quite the conference this year at the annual MagNet event in Toronto June 2 to 5. A prominent line-up of speakers will talk about feature writing, pitching, the biz of freelancing, new media, creative non-fiction - and that's just some of the writing-related workshops. Other workshops will cover digital media, publishing, circulation, copyright and lots more. See more at the MagNet site.

TAGS: the biz, tools

Investigations: Canadian Financial Advisors Steer Clients to High-Fee Funds

Canadian mutual funds scored last for their high fees in an international ranking by research firm Morningstar, says this item. While Canadian funds got an overall B-minus grade, they earned a failing F for high management expenses and other charges. One of the chief reasons is a rather troubling conflict-of-interest among financial advisors. They typically get an annual "trailer fee" of 0.5 to 1 percent for each year they keep clients in a particular fund, the study found. The trailers are unique to the Canadian market. Morningstar raised questions about the integrity of some advisors, saying they direct clients to funds that pay out higher trailer fees.

TAGS: markets, investigations

Awards: Deadline for Dave Greber Social-Justice Award

The deadline for submissions for the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Awards fast approaches: June 12. The $2,000 award for Western Canadian freelancers is intended to support social-justice reporting.

TAGS: awards

Tools: Search Traffic Offers Crystal Ball

An interesting New Scientist story says searching real-time web activity - like Twitter - can help predict trends in the economy, travel, home sales and more. This could be a fascinating tool for journalists. The story says car-related search queries cut the error rate of forecasted sales of autos and vehicle parts by 15 percent. Search query data came from a cool site called Google Trends, which allows you to explore search traffic for various keywords, including by country and date. Also interesting is the new Google Insights for Search, which allows advanced searching. I've added both tools to my resources links to the right.

TAGS: tools, research

FOI: U.S. Military Intel Bulletin Back Online

The U.S. Army has agreed to put back in the public domain its Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Federation of American Scientists. FAS's Secrecy News blog reports in this note how a growing body of military and intelligence documents have gotten shifted out of the public domain. Past issues of the MIPB are now available at the FAS site here.

TAGS: military, Freedom of Information, secrecy

Awards: Congrats to Us!

The Canadian Association of Journalists and National Magazine Awards Foundations have announced their annual journalism and writing awards. Click here for the finalists for the CAJ prizes for investigative reporting and here to see the NMA prizes for that and a bunch of other stuff.

Big self-congratulations to us here at Investigate This! - yes, I am now referring myself in the third person; see how big my head has gotten? - for a nomination from each of these groups for my story titled The Pill Pushers - about how pharma sales reps court doctors with meals, honoraria and other freebies.

The story came out in the Vancouver weekly The Georgia Straight, where editors Charlie Smith and Martin Dunphy (love you, guys!) are some of this country's most ardent supporters of the kind of investigative reporting that's fast becoming an anachronism in most dailies, mags and broadcasting. But here's another antidote to that: the Pulitzers have also been announced. Check them out here.

TAGS: awards, investigations, pharma

Tools: Site's Expert Volunteers Answer Questions Free

Trying to figure out how to set up an Excel spreadsheet to crunch some city hall data? Can't understand a coroner's report or scientific paper? Surf to AllExperts.com. A volunteer expert there just wrote a Macro in Excel for me that will save me hours of time. I got my answer back in under an hour and a half, and it was free. Amazing. (Thanks, Tom Ogilvy. You rock.) This site has thousands of top experts in numerous fields waiting for your questions. You can also check out a database of previous answers and seek out specific experts based on reader ratings or their profile. The site claims there's no catch (though when you ask a question you are prompted to sign up for various commercial offers; these you can decline). I've just included these folks on my "Search" resource list in the links column on the right.

TAGS: tools, Web 2.0

Awards: Ridenhour Prizes for War on Terror Whistleblower, Vietnam Exposé

Journalists and whistleblowers who exposed warrantless wiretapping, Vietnam-era massacres of civilians and U.S. constitutional violations in the war on terror were recognized in the sixth annual Ridenhour Prizes. These awards, established by the Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation, celebrate truth-telling and investigative journalism in honour of late Vietnam vet whistle-blower and investigative journalist Ron Ridenhour. I first saw something on the latest awards at the blog of the Project on Government Oversight, an interesting D.C.-based nonprofit that works to expose government corruption and waste.

TAGS: awards, Vietnam, corruption, investigations

Depression 2.0: Your Guide to Bailout Gloom

Can't keep all the multi-gazillion-dollar bailouts, caved-in banks and failed policies straight? Was it this complicated during the '29 Crash? Don't get depressed about trying to figure out Depression 2.0. Check out ProPublica's nifty new Bailout Guide webpage. It includes search features for specific institutions and states, updated items on who got how much, in-depth features on the programs, links to other stories at other sites and "a breakdown of every taxpayer dollar spent."

TAGS: Depression 2.0, financial, market, bailout

Depression 2.0: $100B Hedge-Fund Bailout May Skirt Law

The Obama administration's $100-billion bailout of hedge funds skirts U.S. law in order to keep regulators from shutting down insolvent institutions, says this report from Mother Jones. "Now take a deep breath and let's boil it all down," writes Zach Carter. "Our treasury secretary hopes to circumvent laws enacted to protect the economy by subsidizing a bunch of multimillionaire investors—ostensibly to help regulators fulfill their most basic job description—in a bid to prop up bankers who cooked their books to support a gambling binge and still refuse to admit they lost. Or maybe they haven't. In a game thus rigged, there are only two sure-fire losers: you and me."

TAGS: investigations, market, finance

Interesting: Nuclear Dumping Gave Rise to Somali Piracy

Amid the fast-growing Somali piracy epidemic, here's a different take from Johann Hari writing in The Independent. He writes of a little-known crisis of nuclear and chemical dumping that has exacerbated the woes of this already-afflicted nation. The dumping prompted Somali fishermen to take to speedboats to dissuade - and "tax" - the ships depositing barrels of waste from Europe off-shore, Hari writes. And so were the pirates born. Hari also provides some interesting context on pirates of yore.

Investigations: Pulitzer Winner Documents Vietnam Atrocity Cover-Ups

The U.S. Army ignored confessions by its own soldiers about massacres and atrocities they committed during the Vietnam War, says Pulitzer winner Deborah Nelson, who documents the abuses in her new book The War Behind Me. The book centres around the slaughter of 19 Vietnamese civilians, including babies and an old man, according to this account of Nelson's talk at a book signing.

TAGS: books, investigations, military

Awards: IRE '08 Winners Announced

The group Investigative Reporters and Editors has announced its 2008 award winners recognizing the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year. Read more here.

TAGS: awards, investigations

Investigations: Huffington Post Starts New I-Fund

Here's some positive news for the times. The Huffington Post and Atlantic Philanthropies are giving a boost to investigative journalism with a new $1.75-million fund for investigative projects. Read more here. Thanks to Bilbo for the tip.

TAGS: investigations

In the Courts: Jury Sides With First Nations Scholar in 9/11 Firing

Interesting series of stories on the court victory of First Nations scholar Ward Churchill over his politically charged termination as a professor at the University of Colorado. Churchill's firing came after he wrote an essay blaming 9/11 on U.S. policies, which resulted in Colorado's governor calling for his dismissal. Here is law prof Stanley Fish's take on the sordid affair in a New York Times opinion piece. And here is one of the initial news reports on the jury ruling. Churchill will be in Montreal Wednesday, April 15, to speak at Concordia University at 7 p.m. (room H-110). Email scott.montreal@sympatico.ca for more information. Thanks to Mike for alerting me to these stories.

TAGS: Aboriginal, law

Back From the Break

Sorry for my lack of posts for the past few weeks. I'm back from an extended family vacation in sunny Spanish Wells, the Bahamas. Beautiful place and beautiful people! (See more in this piece I did after our first trip two years ago.) I'll be resuming my regular posting schedule.

Documents: Inside the CIA's No-So-Public Archives

"In a quiet, fluorescently lit room in the National Archives' auxiliary campus in suburban College Park, Maryland, 10 miles outside of Washington, are four computer terminals, each providing instant access to the more than 10 million pages of documents the CIA has declassified since 1995. There's only one problem: these are the only publicly available computers in the world that do so."

So starts an interesting story by Bruce Falconer in Mother Jones on the CIA's semi-secret horde of declassified archives: "Inside the CIA's (Sort of) Secret Document Stash."

Stephen Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists also writes about the collection at his Secrecy News blog. His post Monday mentions an interesting journal paper in Intelligence and National Security that reviews the documents.

TAGS: intelligence, FOI

Tools: IRE Launches Training Blog

Learn about cultivating a "watchdog culture" in your newsroom, computer-assisted reporting and the art of interviewing reluctant sources at the new training blog launched at the website of Investigative Reporters and Editors. If you haven't been at this site before, check out other cool features like IRE's calendar of workshops around the U.S., its voluminous database of investigative stories, tipsheets, beat guides and research resources, and its job centre. Tambien en español.

TAGS: tools, investigations

Investigations: Canada Drops in Transparency Ranking

Canada has gotten a downgrade in its ranking for government and judicial transparency and integrity from watchdog group Global Integrity. The group says in a report that Canada "continues to struggle with controlling the influence of money in the political process." It's critical of secrecy in financial contributions to political candidates and loans to candidates and parties.

Also problematic: "a revolving door effect between lawmakers and lobbyists" because of a lack of a cooling-off period for post-government employment; lack of personal asset disclosure of Canadian Senators, which the group calls "a bizarre exception for one of the world's wealthier and more developed democracies"; and weak judicial accountability. Canada's legal framework is rated as strong, but there is a "large" gap in the actual implementation of laws, which has slipped. Canada's ranking was downgraded from "strong" to "moderate" since the 2007 report.

Thanks to Democracy Watch for its notice about the report; its press release about the report is here.

TAGS: transparency, investigations, corruption

Investigations: NYT on Russian-Backed Chechen Ruler's Dark Ways

Vlad Putin's man in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is the subject of a harrowing tour de force of investigative journalism by C. J. Chivers in this New York Times item. Chechen strongman Kadyrov's slain exiled former bodyguard, Umar Israilov, gave accounts of atrocities extraordinary even by the dark norms of this blood-soaked territory, Chivers reports.

TAGS: Russia, investigations

Intelligence: NSA Claims It's Blind to VoIP... Okaaaaay

Thanks to Bilbo for bringing this curious story to my attention - an interesting item from the tech publication The Register about the U.S. National Security Agency's supposed difficulties in surveilling Skype. Hmm. Can't imagine those folks have any problem at all accessing Skype. Perhaps they are really looking for some kind of vaster data-mining surveillance capacity. Or perhaps they just want Osama to THINK they can't overhear him. Does it not seem strange that they would announce such a big hole in their capabilities? Spies are so tricky!

TAGS: intelligence, surveillance, NSA

Da Biz: Online Nonprofit Focuses on Investigative Stories... And Thrives

As the financial imbroglio continues, the Voice of San Diego, an online nonprofit, is showing how investigative journalism can work in the new digital era. And how the news business can actually succeed. And, no kidding, even pay a decent income. All in this item in the LA Times.

TAGS: future of journalism, the biz

Investigations: Lead-Footed FDA Stalls on Lipstick Safety Report

More than a year after a consumer-safety group reported that most lipsticks it tested contained lead, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to reveal results of an investigation of the problem, says this AlterNet.com item from Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry. Malkan reports that Health Canada is also conducting its own review of chemicals in cosmetics.

TAGS: investigations, health, FDA, safety

Investigations: Army Neglect Blamed for Soldier Suicides

The suicide rate in the U.S. Army has skyrocketed, thanks in part to official neglect, says a Salon.com investigation. Four years after Salon uncovered medical neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center - sparking a national scandal - Salon finds army health care still failing soldiers. Many of the suicides were preventable, it says.

TAGS: investigations, military

In the Courts: Appeal in Confidential Informant Case

Case law about the protection of confidential sources continues to evolve in Canada. One of the latest cases went to appeal last month. It involves a Hamilton Spectator reporter, Ken Peters, who was fined $31,600 for refusing to reveal the identity of a source, says this item from the Canadian Association of Journalists, which is intervening in the case.

TAGS: legal

The Biz: Can Investigative Reporting Save the Media?

What hope is there for investigative journalism amid the news of media layoffs and cuts to editorial budgets? Actually, lots, says Phil Williams, board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors. In this piece on the IRE blog, Williams, chief investigative reporter at the CBS affiliate in Nashville, Tenn., says some smart media managers are actually beefing up investigative reporting during the tough times because it's a proven way to get more viewers and readers. The item also talks about how reporters can deliver this message to their higher-ups.

These issues will get a good airing at the IRE annual conference in Baltimore June 11 to 14, which Williams plugs. And a plug from me: the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (of which yours truly is v-p) is working on a panel discussion/fundraisier on this very issue in Toronto in the coming months. Stay tuned.

TAGS: future of journalism, Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting, the biz

Books: Age of the Terminator

The Age of the Terminator is here. The science fiction-y era of killer robots hunting down bad guys, with nary a human input, is more upon us than we realize, says military analyst Peter Singer, who was coordinator of President Obama's defense policy task force during his campaign. In this interview at MotherJones.com, Singer talks about the scary developments he uncovered while writing his new book, Wired for War.

TAGS: military, investigations, books, technology

Tools: Aviation Story Research Databases and Resources

Following the U.S. Airways crash in the Hudson River, Investigative Reporters and Editors has posted a link highlighting its great aviation-related webpage, which includes plenty of databases on aircraft types, accident records, airline regulatory info, tip sheets and aviation-related investigative stories.

TAGS: tools, aircraft

Investigations: Doctors Keep Pharma Ties Secret from Patients

Cozy doctor ties with pharmaceutical companies are little-known to their patients or the public, reports this ProPublica item, based in part on this investigative series in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Fourteen of 20 doctors interviewed by the newspaper said they didn't disclose financial ties with pharma companies to their patients when prescribing drugs. The series also found dozens of doctors have side employment with these firms.

TAGS: investigations, pharmaceutical

Interesting: How Obama Put Meltdown Engineers In Charge

Barack Obama has placed the architects of the U.S. financial meltdown in charge of saving the country, writes Mother Jones cofounder and investigative journalist Jeffrey Klein in this interesting item. "This is a Ponzi scheme far beyond Bernie Madoff's imagination. Simply put: The government is breaking the rules of capitalism to reward the most reckless capitalists," Klein writes.

TAGS: interesting, markets

The Biz: Web News Surpasses Print, But Papers Grow in Popularity Too

The web surpassed newspapers as the source of most Americans' news in 2008, but the news is not all horrible for traditional media, according to this survey by the Pew Research Center. Forty percent said they got most of their national and international news from the internet, up a whole bunch from 27 percent in 2007. TV is still the main source, cited by 70 percent. But despite lots of talk about how print is dead, newspapers are holding their own. Thirty-five percent cited newspapers as their main source, up a percentage point from the previous year. This interesting earlier Pew report talks about how various segments of media consumers integrate online and traditional news sources.

TAGS: future of journalism, the biz

The Biz: Why New Orgs Are Failing to Harness Online Ads

Happy New Year! Hope you had a good, restful holiday. This interesting item from Newsosaur on how news organizations are failing to harness online advertizing properly isn't about investigative journalism, but I think it's appropriate for the times. Best wishes in 2009!

TAGS: future of journalism, the biz

Investigations: Loan-Modification Scams Prey on Struggling Homeowners

The latest scam to hit burdened homeowners: loan-modification companies that charge exorbitant fees to help them negotiate better loan terms - a service that consumers can get for free from non-profits. The scam can actually make it harder for struggling homeowners to get help, says this Washington Post piece on the growing problem.

TAGS: fraud, housing, investigations

Awards: P.U.-litzers for Stinkiest Media Performances

Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2009! Time for the annual P.U.-litzer Prizes for worst media performances. See the 17th edition here. The Hot-For-Obama Prize went to MSNBC's Chris Matthews for this hilariously weird remark the day Obama swept a primary in Feb. 2007: "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

TAGS: awards

Investigations: Post-Katrina Race War

"Katrina's Hidden Race War," published in The Nation Dec. 17, reveals the little-known story of a dozen African Americans shot in post-hurricane New Orleans. The Nation's A.C. Thompson found in a lengthy investigation that a militia of gun-toting white men ran amok in the city. The story reports police haven't fully investigated many of the crimes committed against African Americans in the hurricane's aftermath.

TAGS: investigations

Da Biz: The Media's Subprime Debt Bomb

Amid the soul-searching about the media business and tough times ahead in the internet age, there's been little focus on one of the key fundamentals: massive debt. Many of our industry's problems aren't the result of the business model being screwed up per se, but rather because of really bad business decision-making - a fascinating parallel to subprime borrowing, in fact. This interesting article from Silicon Valley CEO Alan Mutter explains more.

TAGS: the biz, future of journalism

Tools: Free Legal Search Engines

Just posted links to three cool free legal search engines in my resources blogroll for "the law, justice, organized crime and policing" (see right-hand bar): Justia, AltLaw and Public Library of Law. Use these babies to search for court decisions, regulations, law blogs, research and laws. Thanks to Bilbo for bringing this Wired story on these sites to my attention.

TAGS: law, search, tools