| Who Is the Enemy of the News & Observer?; ?Liestoppers-Drescher on Content Sharing | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 29 2009, 08:48 AM (566 Views) | |
| sceptical | Jan 29 2009, 08:48 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4685 From American Journalism Review: snip Even investigative reporting is not off-limits. After McClatchy, which already owned Raleigh's News & Observer, acquired the Charlotte Observer in 2006, the state's two largest and most competitive dailies merged their capital bureaus and sports staffs and began running each other's top investigative reports. Gary Schwab, who for seven years directed the Charlotte Observer's investigative reporting, wrote a piece for the Fall 2008 Nieman Reports exploring what happens when fierce competitors join the same team. The psychological switch did not come easily for Schwab and his counterpart at the Raleigh paper, Steve Riley. Telling each other what they were working on "was like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox exchanging strategies for an upcoming three-game series in the midst of a heated pennant race," Schwab wrote. From the beginning, there were steadfast rules: When one paper hears what the other is working on, it can't go out and do its own two-day version of the story. Each newspaper must run the investigative pieces as prominently as if their own staff produced them. In February 2008, the Charlotte paper produced a six-part series, "The Cruelest Cuts," examining the human cost of bringing poultry to the dinner table. It showed how one large North Carolina company masked the extent of workplace injuries. That month, the N&O began a five-part series on the state's failure to reform mental health services, wasting at least $400 million on ill-conceived and poorly executed plans. The two papers showcased both series. Schwab concluded that readers were better served when one newspaper handles an assignment for both. "This arrangement frees other reporters' time for other enterprise and watchdog work," he wrote in the Nieman piece. Legislators vowed reform in response to both investigative series. U.S. Senate and House committees held hearings to focus on work safety in response to the poultry stories. Schwab points out that the papers don't always agree on reporting standards. In the poultry series, Raleigh editors decided not to run some information the Charlotte paper published and attributed to unnamed sources. In a Raleigh series on the University of Duke lacrosse rape allegations (see "Justice Delayed," August/September 2007), the Charlotte paper chose not to include some graphic details of the investigation. When Schwab asked News & Observer Executive Editor John Drescher about the advantages of the papers collaborating, Drescher admitted that at first it seemed strange, but then a heavy dose of reality sunk in. "Faced with the thought of cooperating with The Charlotte Observer, a lot of the staff really recoiled. But I think our folks realized that The Charlotte Observer isn't the competitor anymore," Drescher responded. "Our competitors are everybody else... We're not going to lose this game to The Charlotte Observer. If we're going to lose, it's to some upstart Web site." Edited by sceptical, Jan 29 2009, 08:50 AM.
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| abb | Jan 29 2009, 09:05 AM Post #2 |
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And the thing of it is, they've ALREADY lost...
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| Quasimodo | Jan 29 2009, 10:05 AM Post #3 |
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Don't overlook that the British journal The Economist is doing great, and expanding its circulation in America; while Time and Newsweek are downsizing and on the verge of going out of business. There is a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with the NET. People who buy magazines (or newspapers) are consumers of news and information. And if they are not provided with that product in sufficient quantity and quality, they will look elsewhere. The NET was probably a SECOND-CHOICE for people at first. It was more awkward to use and less familiar than the morning paper or the news magazine. It took a bit of getting used to. But consumers were forced to adopt to it, if they wanted to be provided will good quality information. If the editors and publishers of papers and journals that are fading want to find the reason for their failures, they have only to look in the mirror. Any paper in NC could have been the paper of record for the lax case--a landmark civil rights case which has become the second Scottsboro. Instead, they chose to follow the crowd instead of printing the truth. And as a result they are not considered purveyors of quality information anymore. |
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| Kerri P. | Jan 29 2009, 10:20 AM Post #4 |
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They already lost to the websites and they know this & deserve it.
Edited by Kerri P., Jan 29 2009, 10:21 AM.
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