After the newspapers die, who will watch the police?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022703591.html

by mhb • 17 years ago

83 109 17 years ago

Anon842• 17 years ago

Bloggers and the twitterati

Read the article. I don't see bloggers and twitterati having the same social impact as a crime beat reporter with a circuit court judge's card in his wallet. All you're going to get from that is photos, opinion, and a lot of waving and yelling. Stuff like "secret police videos". I don't see much crime analysis, deep reporting, and investigative news from those formats. I might be wrong, though. Does anybody know of serious in-depth crime reporting that's come from blogs? (I'm not even going to use "in-depth" and "twitter" in the same breath)

lacker5• 17 years ago

Talking Points Memo has done some good in-depth reporting. For example they helped expose a lot of the scandal around U.S. attorneys being fired. I think they also started the scandal around Trent Lott at Strom Thurmond's birthday party.

I guess this is not "crime reporting" in the Baltimore Sun sense. A lot more bloggers will go after national news, since it's more common for blogs to have a national audience. Blogging just isn't organized around the city level like journalism is.

sachinag3• 17 years ago

I'd suggest that things like the Innocence Project actually are in-depth crime reporting, but with a point of view and with a purpose. And with tools like EveryBlock, citizens are going to be able to have access to CompStat-like data. We're going to have a more informed and empowerd police reporting.

randallsquared2• 17 years ago

To some extent, investigative reporting is necessary because we don't have video of all the events. As video recording becomes more and more pervasive, it will become less and less likely that a crime or the immediate surroundings were not caught on record. Of course, criminals will go out of their way to avoid recording (as according to the author's fictional crime series, The Wire, they avoid cellphones), but only criminals and privacy weirdos will do that, and there are a lot more criminals than privacy advocates.

Of course, some investigations will still be needed, but even if there are currently no investigative reporters who blog as their primary outlet, other types of reporting has successfully made the jump. I couldn't find him in google just now, but there was a blogger from several years ago who was embedded in Iraq and made his living off of his blog and occasional freelance stories sold to other outlets (newspapers? Dunno).

One objection to this might be that governments will just legislate against cameras recording their workings, which they're already trying, but in the long run, as cameras and other recording devices get smaller and become more integral to everyone's life, this will have no more effect than Canute's courtiers' plans to roll back the tide.

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

I don't see much crime analysis, deep reporting, and investigative news from those formats.

I don't see much from newspapers, either. That's the point of this article: The guy is telling us that newspapers are already dead, and the problem is visible right now.

I don't see any reason at all why a blogger couldn't be just as effective as a crime reporter. Except for one: They need to have enough money to survive. We're going to have to work that out somehow. But I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter turns out to be a part of the solution. People use the tools they have.

Of course, even if we work as hard as we can, the future won't be perfect. But neither was the past. Despite the best efforts of folks like the author of this article, police brutality and corruption weren't exactly unheard of even in the newspaper-reporting heyday of the 1940s and 1950s.

Anon842• 17 years ago

What do you think all those newspaper reporters are going to do after the newspapers are gone? Move online and continue what they have always done without the inconvenience of an editor telling them what to look in to (or not).

Death of newspapers != Death of investigative reporting

whughes• 17 years ago

Then we'll wait. Give it 20 to 30 years and the blogger generation will become the circuit court judges. Then the problem will be solved. Many of the generational disconnects which make bloggers less capable than old-media journalists can be resolved given time.

tomjen• 17 years ago

Alex Jones.

And it is not like the newspapers are aggressive against the government, they let them get away with way too much.

vaksel3• 17 years ago

Hardly, noone knows of Alex Jones except for his small group of followers on the internet, and since he is known for exaggerating the crap out of things, noone else takes him seriously...so he can report that a cop executed a 5 year old girl, and people would need video proof before they believe him

unalone3• 17 years ago

Alex Jones? The man who decides his point of view and gathers evidence to prove it, ignoring all evidence to the contrary?

The article isn't about "the government," it's about the impact local newspapers have.

showerst• 17 years ago

I would make the argument that police are becoming more accountable, not less, as a result of technology (particularly cell-phone video) and common knowledge of FOIA statutes (at least in the US). The cases of the man shot on Seattle transit and the abusive officer in Saint Louis that were both caught on video and punished (and otherwise may not have been) come to mind.

It's probably better that responsibility for tracking cops is more widely disseminated, so that one or two lazy (or corrupt, or ideologically motivated) reporter(s) can't set the tone for an entire city.

On the other hand, it does help to have these things spread by someone seen as neutral, and willing to do some leg-work. Perhaps we need something like a consumerist for police? (I could see this being generalized to local governments too). Or perhaps it will fall into the purview of hyperlocal sites like everyblock. Right now most of these seem to use a highly automated approach, although I imagine they'll evolve into a more user-contributed model.

We need something more than the patchwork "Hope someone catches it on video and it makes youtube's front page" model for accountability than we have now, but I'm not sure that local newspaper reporters are the best solution going forward.

There's been talk for years about getting a standardized accessible electronic format for crime data across the US (John Udell in particular has discussed this at length) but I think we're a long way from any real implementation of that, sadly.

jws• 17 years ago

We may not be talking about the same St. Louis officer, but the tape that caught the one I am thinking of was illegal. In many places it is illegal to record video and audio of strangers. It is probably an unintended artifact of old wire tapping laws, but law enforcement agents have been more than happy to exploit it to suppress videos of malfeasance.

lacker5• 17 years ago

Unfortunately I don't know of any profitable way to provide local news without having it subsidized by classifieds, car ads, real estate ads, etc. Newspapers used to be profitable because they dominated all these things. But on the web, they become detached. Ebay and craigslist can efficiently serve many places and scale up effectively. But it's hard to watch the police in 100 major cities at once.

How much money would people pay to provide the service of watching the police? I'm afraid the answer is... not much. It has to be tied to something else, or to have a nonprofit structure.

randallsquared2• 17 years ago

I would expect that many cities could support a dozen independent crime/police bloggers, either via ads or direct donations. Smaller municipalities probably wouldn't be able to support any full-timers, but they may only need part-time watching, anyway.

alecco3• 17 years ago

The structure for controls is there. It just needs a fix. Write your representatives.

Journalism backed by advertisement pushing consumerism isn't a valid democratic institution, IMHO. It doesn't represent anything. As a control system it is a travesty, you don't vote them and you have to pay for access. And then it forces candidates to be press-visible with the same marketing machine, with the same backers.

Full government transparency is required, not just rhetoric. The technology is available already.

0xdefec85• 17 years ago

It depresses me sometimes how almost everything in society can be be reduced to the question "but how will this generate money"? On the other hand, maybe the sooner people are honest with reality and start asking that question first, the sooner we'd get solutions to problems like this one. At least that seems to be the libertarian take on things. It just concerns me that the end result of the invisible hand given absolute power is something out of a William Gibson nightmare.

lacker5• 17 years ago

The reason we got all this great investigative reporting in the first place was because newspapers were making money.

Journalism needs to have its own source of power besides the government. You can't simultaneously depend on the government for funding and make it your mission to expose the government's shortfalls. Profit provides that power.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

The money question is critical. It's how we get food/shelter/consumer electronics to those people who do this task? Money's just* liquefied labor, after all.

* Yes, I'm really, really simplifying here.

Eliezer2• 17 years ago

Money is the expected utilons of human existence. If society doesn't give something money, it doesn't care. If you don't give it money, you don't care either.

Herring• 17 years ago

Motives are irrelevant. The only important question is whether outcomes are socially beneficial. I assume we evolved to look at motives because they're a good predictor, but today's society is somewhat more complex than the african savannah.

JulianMorrison3• 17 years ago

If something's not making money or breaking even, then it's losing money. It's taking something good - raw materials, capital, the effort of employees - and producing something less good. It's a drain on society, a parasite.

We produce enough surplus that society can survive a great many parasites (the entire public sector, and all the loss-making businesses) but every little is a brake on potential, particularly the potential for compounding growth. It retards the future.

olefoo• 17 years ago

A friend and I had a long discussion about possible models for local investigative journalism online.

The best we could come up with was something along the lines of a modified subscription plan with a low yearly rate (n < $40 usd) funding automated collections of government data with a very small cadre of reporters writing stories and editing each other.

Either that or beg-a-thons like public radio.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

Make the paper a weekly or a monthly. Eliminate fluff, abandon breaking news and provide deep insight.

That's the same model used by magazines like the economist and the atlantic, and I think they're doing well.

This would not be the end of the tabloid, the are so cheap to produce they can go on forever. It would not be the end of local news, it would not even be the end of local daily or breaking news. It would just be the end of of printed daily local news.

sachinag3• 17 years ago

For fuck's sake, the Huffington Post asked a question at President Obama's first presser. There will always be a vigorous press in this country - it's just a matter if the legacy media wants to get their act together enough to be a part of that in the future.

At the very, very least, new organizations free of legacy costs will step up. In Chicago, the Chi-Town Daily News (http://www.chitowndailynews.org/) is one of them. They've got a bunch of citizen journalists, supplemented by a handful of paid staff.

Journalists are called to the vocation the same way that artists, musicians, priests, and others are called to theirs.

swombat3• 17 years ago

Obama's press conference is national news. This article is arguing about the lack of local coverage.

The Huffington Post doesn't have the desire nor ability to chase up on some local police shooting, unless it really, really stands out as a potentially big, national story.

A local daily newspaper, with a staff of investigative journalists some of whom are dedicated to watching the police, does. None (or almost none) of those stories will make national headlines (and so they're not suitable for national papers), but they most certainly make a huge difference to local life.

Personally, I don't think the solution is to have newspapers watching the police. I think the solution is that all police officers at work should be permanently under watch via a justin.tv kind of system. Maybe with one day of delay (to prevent "the bad guys" from being able to tell that the police are on their way to their place), but no more. And this should most likely be administered by a third party with the power to have police officers docked if they refuse to hand over full recordings (so probably by a sub-department of the DoJ).

sachinag3• 17 years ago

No, it's about recognizing that online-only organizations are worthy parts of the reporting infrastructure. Some day - and hopefully soon - Mayor Daley will call upon a reporter from the Chi-Town Daily News.

The HuffPo is fascinating - they provide an outlet for 9/11 truthers and their own paid reporters on the same platform. And the President of the United States recognizes such a brand as worthy of engagement. People run for local school boards for a reason - don't underestimate local citizen journalism just yet.

And cops already have cameras in their squad cars; many cities are already awash in CCTVs.

But there's something that David Simon says that's really interesting - he's fighting for a document. A paper document. That's the sort of stuff that EveryBlock and Public.Resource.org are fighting to free. And Carl's trying to get the GPO job: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=498610

unalone3• 17 years ago

I dispute your notion that people are "called" to vocations. It's not that easy, never that easy. People may move in some directions more quickly than other people, but that doesn't make it some sort of preternatural thing. David Lynch is regarded as possibly the foremost filmmaker of this generation, but he started off as an artist, and he still paints in his free time, and in the meantime he's recorded music and written stories. So is "painter" his calling? Or is it "director", even though that's not what he's most interested in?

I'm biased reading any David Simon article because I use the context of The Wire as sort of an opening to Simon's points in any article. One of the big themes of The Wire was how people don't easily care about things immediately outside of their own frame of reference. That means that cops don't care about anything beyond cophood, politicians only care about relevant political issues, and so on.

The Huffington Post doesn't care about local news. They don't care about issues in Baltimore specifically. They care about big generic things, and as such they miss the point more often than not. They're a pretty poor source even for online reporting. Even the best ones, though, don't focus superlocally like actually local papers do.

Simon's argument isn't that newspapers are wonderful and magical, though. His argument is that newspapers also failed us, after they started chasing sensationalism and yellow journalism. His second point, made here, is that too few bloggers care about things like this. A local blogger doesn't have the instant influence that a journalist for a paper does. As a result, the local stuff gets even more ignored, beyond the basic cheap local news that everybody knows and nobody cares about. That's a major problem, and it's not one that's easily fixed.

gojomo• 17 years ago

If asking a question at an official press conference is considered sufficient evidence of a 'vigorous press', we're in trouble.

alecco3• 17 years ago

Press is show. Single anecdotal cases make headlines. What doesn't make a headline doesn't get reported. "Crime is down everywhere" doesn't sell. Some "news" like fear mongering with terrorism or a cute lost child get full.

It's time for a change.

katz6• 17 years ago

Really? I can think of numerous cases where the press uncovered corruption. Investigative reporting is extremely important - and there is no alternative to that.

anamax7• 17 years ago

> I can think of numerous cases where the press uncovered corruption.

And I can think of numerous cases where the press "uncovered corruption" that wasn't. I can think of cases where the press helped with/caused corruption.

Never confuse ideals with reality.

alecco3• 17 years ago

Yep, I didn't say they don't work. But as a watchdog it's a very bad system of influence with the wrong goals and backers.

Tichy3• 17 years ago

Doesn't the author refute his own point when towards the end of the article he admits that it has become very rare for reporters to actually research those things? Also, he only provides anecdotal evidence when he says "no blogger was trying to cover this". There are probably countless other offenses that no newspaper reporters are trying to cover, either.

I wonder if newspapers and other media overestimate their power? They would like to think that they can sway public opinion, but maybe ultimately they are simply forced to write scandalous stories, but they can not manufacture them. Like they can make a lot of money out of "Britney Spears cut her hair", but maybe if they tried to make a big fuzz about that police incident, nobody would care and nobody would buy the newspaper anyway.

unalone3• 17 years ago

He's making the point that newspapers don't do this anymore, either, and that there's very little chance of newspapers starting to do things any better, which is a problem.

scott_s3• 17 years ago

The implication of stating that it's rare for newspaper reporters to research these things now is that they don't have the resources to do so.

vaksel3• 17 years ago

The TV stations? If a cop shoots someone in the back I want to watch the video. If a cop beats the crap out of a 15 year old girl I want to watch the video. If a cop knocks a bicycler off his bicycle I want to watch the video.

+ Its not like the newspapers do anything about it, they just report it. Its the redditors and 4channers and youtubers who go on a crusade to hold these guys accountable

Eliezer2• 17 years ago

Why is this comment being voted down? Just because it contains the word "4chan"? The notion that the lowly and despised 4chan is actually holding the Government accountable is a perfectly fair point.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

I just voted it down myself but I'm sure it will be voted up again.

The unexamined fallacy that I saw in the post was the idea that TV stations engage in hard hitting news at the level of the local newspaper reporting. Internet outlets can publicize local stories if the original stories exist. The original article's point remains: without newspaper digging there would be no local story, especially no credible local story.

The problem would be worst in smaller cities like Baltimore.

Tichy3• 17 years ago

What if there is no video?

vaksel3• 17 years ago

Those incidents usually don't get reported. In a situation where its your word against a cop's, the cop is always given preference. I can honestly say that I don't think I can remember reading a single "bad cop" story that didn't have video evidence

d0mine• 17 years ago

It is illegal to take a photo of a police officer in the UK, isn't it?

gaius• 17 years ago

No.

http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php

lacker5• 17 years ago

Redditors getting outraged because of a video showing police brutality is great. But it doesn't scale to cover things like fact-checking the police, like the article is talking about. If there isn't a shocking video, TV news and Reddit won't really care.

Consider the article's example of Baltimore. How often is there a reddit, 4chan, or youtube outrage relating to Baltimore? Whereas the Baltimore Sun can have crime reporters there every day.

netcan• 17 years ago

That's true to an extent but.... (I apologise for the terminology)

There are already great examples of 'new media,' amateurs supported by new technologies & online communities doing things that would not have gotten done under a 100% old media regime. Exposing police brutality, war crimes, or other issues we associate with heavy duty press. That is, there are circumstances that involve more then a flood of commentary where new media does a better job then old media.

On the other hand, New Media is not going to fill all the wholes old media leaves behind. I think that's clear already.

But we don't really know what, how deep or how many these holes are going to be. Currently, reddit/youtube supplement exixsting media because existing media exists. If we take professional media out of the equation, it will evolve differently.

There might not be that much of a long term net loss from newspapers going out of business. There are some shocking videos going to be produced outside of conventional media. It's still not clear how many or what quality.

colins_pride• 17 years ago

And look at how great the Baltimore Sun has made Baltimore.

My point: the idea that the old order has to be preserved because the new order is not up to the task carries a lot more water if the old order is functioning effectively.

ShabbyDoo2• 17 years ago

One problem (of many) is that police abuse disproportionally affects those of lower socio-economic status. So, those who have the power to do something about it have below-average personal motivations. Certainly, Bill Gates isn't at great risk for contracting malaria, and he's still doing something about it. However, the average upper-middle class American probably thinks police misconduct is a much less serious problem than someone living in an inner-city housing project.

As a teenager, I was always shocked at how rude police were to me; they seemed to have no respect for the laws they were supposedly there to enforce. However, as a 30-something, even when getting a speeding ticket, the police are generally polite. Have the police changed, or have they started treating me as someone who might have some power to keep them in check?

zandorg• 17 years ago

Or because you're older?

At the age of 14, I used to carry a Commodore 64 to my friend's house, and once the police stopped me thinking I was a burglar, and I showed them this thing with circuit boards hanging off, and said 'Would I steal THIS?'. It was pretty funny. I also ranted on about being a 'law-abiding citizen', which helped.

anthonyb• 17 years ago

Of course nowadays you'd be arrested for being a terrorist.

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

I think it was Philip Greenspun who originally said it, but I could be wrong. "How you're treated by the police is primarily determined by their expectation of you having access to a lawyer."

ShabbyDoo2• 17 years ago

I have often wondered what the impact would be of assigning some journalism students along with a mentor to cover the politics of a small town in gratuitous detail. Scrutinize every action of the city council. Cull through the police reports. Examine who wins and who loses when zoning policies are changed (one of the main bastions of wealth transfer via politics, IMHO). Would citizens care enough to read about this stuff? Would politicians become more accountable?

This seems like it would be a cheap (< $500K) experiment to conduct in a few towns. Perhaps some foundation interested in government transparency could fund it. However, I don't see how it would scale out without a revenue model behind it.

mixmax2• 17 years ago

video and pictures from mobile phones spread by bloggers.

Not a day goes by on Reddit without a video of someone being beaten by the police in the street, and thousands of bloggers pick it up instantly.

If I were a corrupt officer I would fear a horde of a thousand angry bloggers with video as proof more than a single journalist that has the home number of a local judge.

swombat3• 17 years ago

Until they make filming the police illegal, like they have in the UK...

mixmax2• 17 years ago

Would an amateur clip of someone being beaten by the police be inadmissible as evidence in court?

newt0311• 17 years ago

I have always found this curious: In general, criminals cause significantly more damage than police. Then where is the outcry against politicians who are soft on crime and thus allow these increased rates of crime?

Thats what I am really worried about. That without good newspapers, politicians who allow an increase in crime through their policies will go unaccountable. (Whether that is already a problem is a matter of much debate).

jwb119• 17 years ago

http://baltimorecrime.blogspot.com/

omnivore• 17 years ago

Online news can be localized. Forums like these can be easily retrofitted for the hyper local and give people lots of things relevant to their area, rather than having to sift through the trash of news to find the morsels you want.

nir• 17 years ago

Why, Reddit will! (for visiting Redditors: </sarcasm> :)

hapless• 17 years ago

Correlation/Causation problem: The police are getting away with these policies not because journalists aren't there to watch them, but because ordinary citizens no longer give a damn.

The newspapers are desperate for a reason to exist.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

There is good work being done by internet writers. For example, Radley Balko's stories have gotten more than one corrupt prosecutor fired. His efforts at exposing phony forensic experts in Mississippi could lead to many freed innocent men:

http://reason.com/blog/show/131954.html

I've rarely seen newspapers conduct that kind of journalism, especially on the national level. Another example: Balko has been almost single-handedly raising awareness about the death and violence that occurs from the military-style raids that many police departments use to arrest suspects of non-violent crimes. I haven't heard any newspapers tracking that story:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

This website has exposed more corrupt police practices than any newspaper I know about:

http://www.theagitator.com/

But regardless, the death of the newspaper is going to cause a lot of change in our society. Not all the costs will be easily dealt with.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

the police only "need to be watched" because the police have no incentive structure to serve the people. their paycheck does not rely on how well they serve your community. It relies on how well they comply with federal regulators.

njharman• 17 years ago

The power here seems to be the district judge who was willing to actually do their job.

When just the reporter tried after the judge had retired reporter was ignored like everyone else.

FlorinAndrei• 17 years ago

Millions of citizens with camera-equipped cell phones linked to Twitter. ;-)

arran• 17 years ago

I think the best model at the moment for funding journalism is to allow people to contribute part of their tax contribution to a news organisation of their choice. Then the only cost you would incur is the effort of filling in a form. The news organisations become responsible to the population instead of advertisers whilst some sort of market forces remain. Effectively you'd be saying to anyone who contributes taxes "here's $100 dollars, which news organisation do you want to support".

Effective journalism is important to a democracy and it should be funded in as democratic manner as possible.

int2e• 17 years ago

It looks like some newspaper replacements are doing a fine job watching the gov (and the gov's money): http://www.tmz.com/2009/03/01/tmz-story-forces-bank-to-retur...

MaysonL3• 17 years ago

People like this organization: http://www.chitowndailynews.org/

After the newspapers die, who will watch the police?

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