Investigative Journalism: Will It Survive?

"If the leading newspapers lose their capacity to report and conduct inquiries, the American public will become even more susceptible to the manipulations and deceptions of those in power." --Michael Massing, "The End of News?," New York Review of Books, Dec. 1, 2005

It's not easy to be in the newspaper business these days. I probably don't need to provide the details why. If you're a regular reader of Editor & Publisher, you know all about the staff cutbacks, circulation declines and threats by shareholder groups angry about poor stock performance.

Are these just short-term troubles? Will the newspaper industry bounce back? The long-term trends don't look pretty: young people not picking up the print habit and using the Internet for news; advertisers moving bigger chunks of their spending online and taking away from traditional media like newspapers; classifieds getting hammered by free sites like Craigslist; etc.

The industry well may figure out a new business model to prosper in the Internet age (by developing a healthy revenue stream online to replace print revenues almost sure to decline in the coming years), but that still looks years out.

Meanwhile, what about investigative journalism as practiced by newspapers? It's what has, in large part, set newspapers apart from competing media. In a period of staff and budget cutbacks, can investigative or enterprise reporting survive unscathed? And if newspapers falter when it comes to funding it, who will fill the gap?

Well, if newspapers take the shortsighted, short-term approach to tighter budgets by whittling away at investigative reporting, others outside the industry likely will take up the slack -- and newspapers' decline will accelerate. What once was primarily the domain of well-financed daily newspapers might become that of such players as public radio, foundations and non-profits, independent journalists working on the Web, and even the likes of Yahoo!

Decision Time

Whither investigative reporting? Is it in danger? Probably, but only if editors and publishers make the wrong decisions