Hello Romenesko readers, to learn more about Representative Journalism go here and to see our Rep J experimental project in Northfield, MN go here.

Welcome Current.org readers too. You might want to read the attached comment about the possibility of PBS and NPR forming a partnership.

Starting today, registered United States voters can share their voting experiences via the Video Your Vote YouTube Channel. Some of the best videos will be showcased on PBS television, as part of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’s Election Day broadcast.

I love this sentence fragment: “In the first presidential election since YouTube’s inception…” Can you believe that YouTube has been around less than four years? Any how, the press release continues:

In the first presidential election since YouTube’s inception, this program aims to gather massive amounts of polling place video, with the Channel serving as an online library for Election Day footage.

Go here to learn more about the project and the legalities of shooting video at polling places in your state. Here is a Judy Woodruff video:

In addition, we are now aiming to have a Representative Journalist start on the ground at Locally Grown  in Northfield, Minnesota to test if a community, starved for in-depth news, will rally around a reporter proving high value news and eventually begin to underwrite that journalist. We’ll be providing more news on that front very soon. It is an experiment that will work best if there are Rep Js everywhere.

That’s why I am emailing, on the phone and buttonholing everyone who will talk to me in PBS land. The time is ripe. There is a void in national TV news; it’s mostly a bunch of wrongheaded, loudmouthed pundits yelling at each other. I believe there is a contingent of people all across America willing to pay out-of-pocket for really compelling news and information in print, audio and video. National Public Radio has filled the audio piece. Everyone is looking for a new print model, probably the hardest to fill because it has no strong nonprofit tradition. However, Ruth Ann Harnisch was good enough to provide funding  via the Harnisch Family Foundation so we can give the print piece a test in Northfield.

The video side is ripe for the picking. PBS has the national fundraising apparatus, the video expertise and the physical infrastructure. New technologies have lowered the costs. What I am trying to find out is if PBS has the will. Right now I have a proposal filled with assumptions which I am circulating one contact at a time.

PBS should start now to test those assumptions. However, someone in that vast bureaucracy has to be willing to take the lead. I am determined to find that person. In the last few weeks, I have talked to a couple of dozen people who understand PBS. When I tell them PBS can become a News Powerhouse, they look at me as if I have lost a few marbles. But by the time I walk them through the whole concept from production to funding, they think, maybe, just maybe, I am on to something

As this unfolds, I will reveal more. If you are PBS person, especially one with some power, contact me. I will reveal all. I an enjoying this because I feel certain somewhere the connection will be made and soon enough PBS will become a News Powerhouse. Remember, you read it here first.    

Then on Monday, the New York Times  reported on how Sam Zell was about to cut “500 pages of news each week from the company’s dozen papers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. ”

The story added:

The one thing everyone seems to agree on is this: Newspapers around the United States have tried a lot of approaches, newsy to fluffy, parochial to international, voluminous to sparse — and all are in trouble.

Moyers referenced all this in his speech. Of course, we have been chronicling it here for months and months. I am worried as is everyone that quality journalism might disappear, but in the last week I have been to both  the Media Reform conference  and the Journalism that Matters conference which preceded it. At both there were dozens, maybe hundreds of people trying to reinvent journalism, to preserve its best qualities. To tell truth to power.

To me it is the American Dream at work. Each of us has the power to participate in the Democracy and to work to save it, despite all the forces that want to consolidate power into the hands of the few. Each day we have to stand up to them and look for ways keep the spirit and reality of journalism alive. But listen to Bill Moyers he says it better than I. It is truly a great speech.

One final note think of people like Sam Zell and people like Bill Moyers. Which of the two would you want in charge of your most precious democratic institutions? We have to take action now.

Public radio thrives because it is so much cheaper and because we spend so much of our time in cars; indeed, public radio insiders talk of the tent poles where listenership peaks on the drives to and from work. Of course, there is plenty of other radio options, but if you want to hear news there are none. So it thrives. To get  where it is today, public radio, in many cases, had to cut back on its classical or other music programming. It got a younger, news passionate audiences with money to contribute.  

Of course, anyone who watches television knows there is a real news void on television. We are stuck with a bunch of talking heads blabbering away, Sunday morning “Gasbags” as Calvin Trillen calls them. But now it is seven days a week. So why doesn’t PBS turn to producing real news. The kind where a reporter goes out and gathers information. Yes, they do it on local commercial TV, but really it is all about blood and gore with no depth. I am talking about news that will make a difference in people’s lives. 

Of course, television is expensive, if you have all those big trucks and million-dollar editing stations. But what if PBS news turned to the television eqivalent of Cinema Verite, hand-held cameras, no big sets, just people out in the trenches collecting information. A kind of professional journalism YouTube, supplemented by the people’s contributions when needed.

Form a community around saving PBS by helping it create better, more impactful news oriented television.  Use that news to boost audiences and push them to better general programming.

Take chances, one chance might be to kick government financing out of bed and then really do some hard hitting journalism with some of it aimed at the scoundrels in government while praising the good guys. Instead of walking on your knees with hat in hand to collect the government subsidies, stand tall and if you go out, go out with a scream and not a whimper.

 I used to love to watch TV news, now it is a waste of time. Bring on real news and bring me back with my donations in hand. Better yet, find out how I and all the folks with cameras in hand can add to your content. Everyone else is trying it, but you already have the brand as in P-u-b-l-i-c Broadcasting. Watch what is about to take place at the Media General station WNCN-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, which we hear is hiring 40 community embedded reporters plus teaching citizens how to shoot video, imagine that for our local PBS programming here in Georgia.

Come on PBS, stand up, brush off the dust and charge into the bright new future.