Resurgent watchdogs could help save news media

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: Resurgent watchdogs could help save news media : Phil Rosenthal | Tribune Media : July 26, 2009 : If the media business has gone to the dogs, perhaps dogs will save it. : Watchdogs, as in watchdog reporting. : It's a concept as old as journalism itself, older if you count Ogg ratting out Grog around the fire for stuffing an unearned extra bite of that day's kill in his maw. "Next up, our Pleistocene weather," some Anderson Quartzite might have grunted to his cave-potato audience. "Will it ever warm up? We'll have an answer for you." : Old media, new media -- this is what news operations across the country do, what they're supposed to do, anyway, and it's what they must do because it's the least of what's expected of them by their customers, be they consumers, advertisers or some other funding source. : The ability to deliver on that basic promise will play a huge role in determining who and what survives the media's current frosty epoch because it is what gives their content value. : Curiously, as citizens have grown wary of their government because of what the media have reported, so too have they grown wary of their media. : Politicians and others who campaign against the media argue news outfits don't have the population's interests at heart and willfully ignore the population's point of view. This seems an unlikely marketing strategy for an industry otherwise accused of being so cynical. : What is more likely to have happened in both cases is that the electorate/audience isn't getting what it thinks it has coming. : On the broadcast and print side of the equation, audience and ads once concentrated in a finite market are now scattered across the Internet, weakening them in every way. As a result, exposes, though costly, are more important than ever, for their intrinsic news value and as a powerful reminder of the media's valuable role in society. : This is what creates an opportunity for someone like Andy Shaw, the retired former political reporter for WLS-Ch. 7 who's now executive director of the Better Government Association. : In the independent, non-partisan BGA, which traces its roots to efforts to drive Al Capone's influence from local government in 1923, Shaw has inherited a proud legacy and a noble mission to battle waste, fraud, and corruption. Beyond that, the cupboard is largely bare, with just two employees and a budget of $350,000 a year. : Shaw knows what he would like to do to help the community. But there is a cost. Either he raises grant money or other donations and creates a media entity of his own on his BetterGov.org Web site -- providing a forum for people to talk about corruption they see in their midst, post pothole pictures and shots of work crews not working, and a place for BGA to report its investigative findings -- or he partners with other media outfits, in the now fashionable manner of a Pro Publica or the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Maybe, in the end, he and the BGA will do both. : "The goal is basically to engage this enraged electorate," said Shaw, who got his journalistic baptism at the City News Bureau. "The real key is to give people a place to go to engage in a dialogue on what the problems are. : "This Web site could be a place where people can visit five times a day, and it will almost be like Internet talk radio because we'll get blogging going and interaction and I'll have an active role in it myself from a contact standpoint," he said. : So he is looking for funds, writing pieces for the Tribune and Sun-Times, going on WFLD-Ch. 32 and WLS-AM 890 and pitching local media outfits on "Good Government Guy," a persona he thinks could be like "Dr. Oz" or "Click and Clack," only dealing with government shortcomings rather than health or cars. : At a time when everyday news can be instantly shared without regard to its original sources, you are what you own. : Investigative journalism -- like commentators' voices -- is proprietary journalism. Others can quote it, but they cannot claim it the way they can a news conference, an announcement or some other occurrence in the public eye. : It's the watchdogs that hold the key to the media's future, paper-trained or not.

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