Representative Journalism

 This from the State of the News Media 2008 report produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Important issues get little attention as reporting resouces shrink:
…consider the list of the domestic issues that each filled less than a single percent of the newshole: education, race, religion, transportation, the legal system, housing, drug trafficking, gun control, [...]

Things are moving forward for our Representative Journalism trial project in Northfield, Minnesota. First big news is a job opening. As you will see, it is a temporary, part-time gig, but could grow into something more permanent — but we can’t make any promises. Here is the job description, spread the word:
Northfield, Minnesota has [...]

Let the Representative Journalism begin, here is what I posted at the PJNet.org:
Hello Eric Von Hippel and thank you for convincing me that “free revealing” works.Several months ago, as regular readers of the PJNet.org know, I started freely revealing my idea of Representative Journalism to the world. Ruth Ann Harnisch, a former TV, print [...]

The New York Times has an article today on how Consumer Reports online survives from paid subscriptions, while the prevailing wisdom is that people will not pay for online information. Here is an excerpt:
For a decade, however, Consumer Reports has charged Internet readers the same price as print subscribers, currently $26 a year (or $5.99 for a [...]

Back at Jeff Jarvis’s Networked Journalism Summit as I was networking with Lisa Williams of Placeblogger.com and telling her about Representative Journalism and about a grant I was writing aimed to it. She took a look at my grant proposal and then wrote in it:
 Journalism is becoming a high-tech profession.  And like other high-tech professions such as software [...]

At my sister site, PJNet.org, I have been running a series of videos on the future of journalism. Today I decided to run one of the videos here instead because it plays into the Representative Journalism concept so well. At ConvergeSouth 2007 I did an interview with Anton Zuiker of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of [...]

I have touted the idea of hiring super journalists, who provide so much good and new information that they create value for their Representative Journalism communities. However, these excellent reporters will need excellent editors — and often they will need excellent editors who understand the issue or discipline underlying each Representative Journalism community. If the [...]

The New York Times has a story about the nonprofit St. Petersburg Times, with this key excerpt:
 “We don’t put out a newspaper to make money,” says Paul C. Tash, the chief executive of the Times Publishing Company, which oversees the paper. “We make money so we can put out a great newspaper.”
Still the St. Petersburg Times [...]

Using Robert Picard as my touchstone, earlier I wrote that too many journalists lack value. They are all but cogs in a machine.  However, my idea of a Representative Journalist is someone who would provide plenty of value for a Representative Journalism community. So much value that rather than hiring a kid right out of college, the [...]

 Saul Friedman, a 1963 Nieman Fellow and  former White House correspondent for Newsday and Knight Ridder newspapers, writes at Neiman Watchdog Blog:  
Why can’t reporters who cover their beats well and who become as expert as possible in that field–the law, courts, medicine, consumerism, politics, the Congress, even the presidency–write for their newspapers as if [...]