Another reason why real journalism matters.

Toronto Star uncovers major problems with a Ontario hospitality charity. Don't think your average blogger would have the time, resources, contacts or knowledge to do this kind of work.

Congrats to The Star. One of the few remaining Canadian newspapers who believes, practices and pays reporters for investigative journalism.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1076631--star-gets-action-oshawa-hospital-charity-fires-boss-calls-in-the-cops?bn=1

 

Can't we just applaud a journalism job well done rather than use it as a platform to make counterproductive attacks on "bloggers"? There are good bloggers and bad bloggers, just like there are good journalists and bad journalists (indeed given the "time" and "resources" I'd say your "average" journalist couldn't pull this off, either). As long as its a good piece of journalism, who cares what medium or story form the writer chooses to use?

 

Um, you have a reading comprehension problem.

I wasn't attacking bloggers.

I was saying that the majority of bloggers wouldn't have the time, resources, or expertise to uncover this kind of story. The Star worked on this story for over a year.

And I have no idea what you mean by (indeed given the "time" and "resources" I'd say your "average" journalist couldn't pull this off, either) What's with the quotation marks?

If you're a bona fide journalist working for a major newspaper like the Toronto Star, of course you could pull this off. If you couldn't, you'd be unemployed.

 

An attack on bloggers was strongly implied by your statement: you flat out say most don't have the contacts or knowledge to write a story like this. Further, most newspapers reporters don't have the time or resources to write these stories, yet they're omitted from criticism in your opening paragraph. There's absolutely no reason for you to mention bloggers, specifically, unless you meant this to be derogatory. But since I'm apparently the one with a reading comprehension problem, perhaps you can more clearly deconstruct my analysis of your paragraph to prove to me the implication isn't there.

My point was that it's unfair to compare really good work of a newspaper reporter to the work of an average blogger. Your "average" newspaper reporter doesn't work at a major newspaper like the Toronto Star. Your "average" newspaper reporter also lacks, at the very least, the expertise to cull through the financial records I'd guess were required to write this story (even given the time and resources-in quotes originally simply because I was quoting you).

 

He's right, you're right. Real journalism does matter, is out of the realm of the average blogger, and the average newspaper reporter. Sports more than most domains should be aware of this since Yahoo's been killing everyone for three or four years when it comes to actual news-breaking. The format really doesn't matter, just the content.

 

Well, to further derail this thread, and with complete respect to some excellent people at Yahoo -- some of them friends/acquaintances -- Yahoo hasn't been "killing everybody for three or four years when it comes to actual news-breaking." And maybe this is simply a nitpick. They've done the some of the best project sports reporting anywhere over that time period, and since this is a thread about a project, maybe that's what you meant.

And JR: This is kind of a tempest in a teapot, because I think stringofconsonants took offense where none was really intended, but I really think you'll find in the future that bloggers will be the people who are doing more of this work than newspapers are, given the drain on newspaper resources. And perhaps the best investigative resource in my area right now is a blogger.

 

Most papers couldn't pull this off.

 

Wait, what do you mean by "Most"? "What" are you "implying" there?

Sorry, it's late, and I'm feeling loopy, which tends to make me counterproductive.

 

Most papers would only look at whether a story like this would help the bottom line and the fact is stuff like this doesn't. It's expensive, time-consuming, and labor intensive.

More and more papers are going to a model where if you can't get info online or by phone, it's not worth printing.