Ray Ring

Senior Editor

A leading NewsBiz observer, Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post, shares my high regard for investigative journalism — and my concern for the future of such endeavors.

Kurtz writes that investigative journalists working for newspapers and TV networks:

… May lack subpoena power and eavesdropping authority, (but) they often crack these cases ahead of the cops.

Kurtz lists some of the recent important revelations by investigative journalists. They include the San Diego Union-Tribune forcing the resignation and conviction of corrupt Rep. Randy Cunningham, and the Washington Post’s expose of sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his pet congressmen.

Kurtz sees many traditional news ops cutting staff and newsgathering, to maximize profits for corporate execs and stockholders, and he worries that it will undermine investigative journalism. He points to recent layoffs at many good newspapers, including the West’s leading daily, the Los Angeles Times:

Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson was ousted this month when he refused demands by the paper’s parent, Tribune Co., to cut the newsroom staff from 940 to about 800. Five years ago, the staff numbered 1,200. And anyone who thinks investigative projects are unaffected by such corporate slashing doesn’t understand the business.

Meanwhile, another NewsBiz observer, Gilbert Cranbert at the Poynter Institute, laments that none of the big professional organizations of journalists stood up for the Times’ publisher and editor Dean Baquet in their face-off with the corporation:

When Jay Harris quit in 2001 as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News rather than make cuts he believed would harm the paper, he was invited to speak to the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where he received an enthusiastic standing ovation. When the LA Times publisher and editor recently balked at cuts for the same reason, ASNE was silent. Nor have the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors or National Conference of Editorial Writers been heard from.

While (the journalism organizations) are holding their respective tongues, LA Times staffers by the hundreds have expressed their backing for Johnson and Baquet in petitions.

It took spine for Johnson and Baquet to confront their superiors, and courage in its own way for eye-strained wretches who may be living paycheck-to-paycheck to go on record to support them. Organizations, by contrast, face no peril.

Cranbert hammers it home:

… Courage in journalism, like hard-core pornography, is something you know when you see it.