UPDATED
Good grief. Look at the members of ProPublica’s Journalism Advisory Board:
Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times; Martin D. Baron, the editor of The Boston Globe; David Boardman, the executive editor of the Seattle Times; Robert A. Caro, historian and biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson; John S. Carroll, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun; L. Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal; David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Center for Public Leadership; Shawn McIntosh, the director of culture and change at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Gregory L. Moore, the editor of The Denver Post; Priscilla Painton, the new editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster; Allan Sloan, a senior editor at large for Fortune magazine; and Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Board will advise ProPublica’s editors from time to time on the full range of issues related to ProPublica’s journalism, from ethical issues to the direction of its reporting efforts.
Great people and journalists, every one of them. But what a disappointing list in one major respect.
This is not a group with any serious understanding of the Web, nor a board that will instantly grasp why the new digital platforms are made to order for melding traditional investigative journalism with what technology enables. Not one of these people is a digital native, or even close to it.
That’s a stunning oversight, and the journalism will almost certainly reflect it.
UPDATE: Paul Steiger, ProPublica’s editor in chief, replies via email: “Understood and anticipated. Watch whom we hire.”
on Feb 11th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Dan,
Actually, I think this is far darker than that. If you follow the money (i.e. the funders), I think you’ll find that this is an extension of the Clinton operation, like Media Matters and Moveon.org. This will be a vigilante political operation hiding behind the credibility of the respected image of investigative journalism and the respected name of mainstream journalists and the center-left Beltway establishment. Most don’t even know they are being used, in my opinion. Watch for anti-McCain and anti-Republican hit pieces in the 60 days before the election.
Steve Boriss, (TheFutureOfNews.com)
on Feb 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Marty Baron may not be a digital native, but I think he gets it about as well as anyone editing a major metro. Now that I think of it, Dan, you and I aren’t digital natives, either. I started on a Smith-Corona manual.
on Feb 11th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
re: “That’s a stunning oversight, and it the journalism will almost certainly reflect it.”
Speak about stunning oversights. (ok, I concede: “Let he who has not flubbed it his own copy-editing cast it the first stone…”)
On a serious note, Dan G. What does it mean to have a serious understanding of the web? Start with the NYT, it still has one of the leading websites, it practices every corner of online/interactive/multimedia journalism. In light of Marc Andreesson’s protests, just what are they doing so wrong besides holding onto the Globe and other loss-eating publications? And may I echo Dan K., the Globe‘s balance sheet aside, they’re no slouches either.
Onto the list. If circumstances were different, I could have spent the last four years fully trying to be an independent investigative journalist. I’ve merely dabbled in this stuff, and I’ve still been able to meet just about all of the major online journalism impresarios and had extended conversations with them (present company included). On the other hand, I’ve been lucky to merely shake the hands of Abramson, Baron, Caro. These individuals are giants in the field, and any budding investigative journalist should be lucky to have their advice.
Ok, there’s one superblogger web know-it-all I haven’t met, who didn’t make this board. Then again, Mark Cuban’s already funded his own investigative effort— and endured much criticism for it. But it’s not like ShareSleuth has produced a pile of journalism– three investigations in 18 months. And it’s not like Chris Carey’s articles actually benefit from anything webby. Cuban the editor is very strict, according to the Wired profile. (which I’m not linking to since your spam filter will moderate me for it.)
on Feb 12th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Steve, I don’t agree with your assessment of this organization. These are great journalists and they will not let themselves be used that way.
Dan, I studied programming in high school and have been online in one way or another since the 1970s. But I agree, I’m not fully native to this. If this was my organization I’d bring aboard someone like Adrian Holovaty, not because he’s a great investigative journalist (he wouldn’t claim to be) he grasps the power of data in a profound way.
Seth, big oops, and thanks for the copy edit. (Everyone needs an editor…)
These folks are indeed giants in the field of journalism. But ProPublica needs giants as well in field of bringing journalism — practice and business — into the digital world. For all that the Times and Globe have done (and they’re pretty good; I’m defending the Times’ blogging on a private mail list at the moment), they aren’t going fast enough in my view.
Mark Cuban’s venture has semi-flopped, sure. So what? It was an experiment. We need a thousand more like it.
on Feb 12th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I don’t know if Jon should be flattered or insulted (being mistaken for me).
Dan, you might recall a certain conference a while back on, I think it was, Flogging, Journalschism, and Credulity (something like that …). And the vocal commentary that it seemed to exclude anyone who had any practical experience (and the ironies afterwards, but that’s subtle).
Keeping that in mind, I’m actually skeptical that hiring an A-lister (because that what this means in practice) would be such a smart idea. Further, a more cynical take would be that “native” are for exploiting.
on Feb 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Double whoops…
I’m not sure what you mean about that long-ago conference. It was full of traditional media folks and a few nontraditional folks, and way too much of the discussion was about whether bloggers could do journalism, and vice versa. I thought we were past that now.
on Feb 12th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Somehow I figured you were going to drop Adrian’s name.
Now, Adrian’s a talented guy (we’ve met; had dinner together). But I can’t imagine that what he’s doing is so foreign to Abramson, Baron et al. Infographics is a skills and an art, but it’s pretty accessible. Did you spend hours (like I did) playing with the NYT interactive graphics for election 2006. That’s the work of Shan Carter and Amanda Cox. Ms. Cox keeps a low web profile, but from googling Shan Carter, it appears like you may have overlapped for a year or so at the Merc.
And, obviously, Adrian’s not fit for a board. He’s a doer. He has his own project.
Seth/Jon — no worries, just chuckes, that’s life…
on Feb 13th, 2008 at 3:03 am
The point was an analogy from that conference situation to this situation – i.e. using an example which you’d be familiar with, in order to illustrate potentially similar social dynamics. The analogy was on the insiders/outsiders/who-has-anything-of-value-to-say conflicts, rather than the specific subject matter.
And that it’s not at all obvious that web-evangelists (again, what it means in practice) should be considered a fount of wisdom, apart from their domain of marketing web-evangelism.
on Feb 16th, 2008 at 9:20 am
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on Mar 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am
[…] prospects. Then I meant to post them when it announced its advisory board last month; at that time, Dan Gillmor pointed out that the Pro Publica board isn’t exactly topheavy with digital […]