Out With A Bang

Clearly this is very good news…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jul/17/investigative-journalism-cityuniversity

And congratulations to all concerned.

It does, however, beg one question. And it’s a question that we’ve asked before of the J-Schools both here and abroad. For if the playing field is starting to empty, why don’t they fancy being a player…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=117

Because as much as that “£2 million” figure will dominate the headlines, there was a line in that story that might deserve as wide an airing.

‘According to Grey, the bureau will not be a publisher. It will operate instead as a journalism “production house”. It will sell its stories on to papers and magazines…’

Which, for me, seems slightly odd.

Because if one of the principal motivators behind the launch of the Bureau of Investigative Reporting was the fact that traditional – and ‘big’ – media now lacked the resources to fund the proper investigative journalism that the world is, indeed, crying out for…

… are they, by the same token, going to have the resources to buy in epic investigative tomes at the level required to sustain the BIR beyond the first tranche of the Potter money?

And if said ’scoops’ were merely auctioned off to the highest bidder – as commerical sense would, surely, dictate – then in terms of who has the deepest pockets, both The Guardian and The Telegraph are going to struggle to compete with News International…

Is the danger then, therefore, that the BIR simply becomes The Sunday Times’ re-modelled ‘Insight’ team? With a video feed button into Sky?

It’s just been re-housed in City University and what’s left of what once-was such a lofty operation is merely side-lined in favour of an ‘out-sourced’ deal?

Why this fear of becoming a publisher?

Why not step out on the playing field and be a player?

What are your costs? As a web publisher? Presumeably, there are any number of City kids who could design you a website; there are any number of City business studies kids who might be able to think up an online advertising model or an Apple iPhone app that delivered the latest from www.BIR.com – or whatever website that they get to work – straight to the palm of your hand…

Why do you need to engage with a middle man to distribute your content?

If on the back of the #MPsExpenses experience, why would you want crowd-sourced investigative reporting to be driving traffic over someone else’s platform? Why not drive such engagement over your own?

For people who have earned their spurs in the back streets of Sangin, it seems strange to find such reticence when it comes to striking out on their own publishing-wise…

In fairness, they’re quite right. Google AdSense won’t support the BIR long-term; ‘Hotels in Sangin’ are unlikely to do much by way of a click-through trade if it were Stephen’s latest embedded report from 2 Rifles that was the day’s work.

But what if appropriate contextual advertisers could be offered the opportunity to bid for a slot next to that report…

That kind of kit is there to be taken off the shelf today. I’ve got one here, funnily enough. And so have the boys on www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk .

So you’ve got the 2010 equivalent of MPsExpenses en route – and given the societal shift towards poking our noses into the darker recesses of such failed, ‘big’ institutions, more such revelations are stacking up in Stephen’s in-tray as we speak… – why not drop the nod to potential advertisers?

This is coming out on Monday… right who wants a sky ad… start bidding…

DIY.

The reporting is now DIY. Why not the publishing?

Why stop when you’re almost there? Why the fear of becoming a player?

Particularly now that one or two new tools are there… Do it.

Make the leap. Don’t look back.