Saving journalism

Jack Shafer makes a very interesting point:

Advocates of participatory democracy and government accountability might be smarter to invest their time directly in reforming government. For instance, wouldn't the passage of tough sunshine laws that required Web publication of all nonclassified government information and proceedings do more for accountability than preserving the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Detroit News?

Web-enabled transperency will help newspapers cover govenrment more efficiently. It also makes it easier for amateurs (i.e. bloggers) to do reporting.

In the Duke lacrosse case, bloggers did more than just opine and bloviate. KC Johnson and others provided original reporting and and incisive analysis that put the NY Times to shamel. Johnson, in his book, explains why:

A steady diet of meaty new factual content-- which kept the blogs engaged and interesting-- was publicly available and accessible to an unusual degree. North Carolina's open discovery law gave defense attorneys physical possession of the state's files (such as the photo lineup transcript script and statements of Magnum, her 'driver,' and Kim Roberts) much earlier in the process than in most states. When defense attorneys released key documents , usually as attachments to motions, anyone with Internet access had the tools to provide informed commentary.

UPDATE: This is an innovative example:

A lot of these policy groups, known for their wonkiness (wonkishness? wonkability?) in the past, have initiated government transparency projects and also hired their own investigative reporters (until recently I was one for the John Locke Foundation's Carolina Journal), often from the ranks of the recently unemployed traditional journalists. ...

What's great about this story is that NPRI did not seek all the glory for itself, but instead sought to get maximum exposure, so it worked with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to release the documents and findings. NPRI did reports on its analysis of the documents and LVRJ did interviews and wrote stories, which then led to attention from broadcast media also.