Here’s Rusbridger on that. I hadn’t known that Rusbridger, desperate for support on the story, actually phoned Bill Keller to encourage him to get on it; Davies then briefed the Times reporters:
If the majority of Fleet Street was going to turn a blind eye, I thought I’d better try elsewhere to stop the story from dying on its feet, except in the incremental stories that Nick was still remorselessly producing for our own pages. I called Bill Keller at The New York Times. Within a few days, three Times reporters were sitting in a rather charmless Guardian meeting room as Davies did his best to coach them in the basics of the story that had taken him years to tease out of numerous reporters, lawyers, and police officers.
The Times reporters took their time—months of exceptional and painstaking work that established the truth of everything Nick had written—and broke new territory of their own. They coaxed one or two sources to go on the record. The story led to another halfhearted police inquiry that went nowhere. But the fact and solidity of the Times investigation gave courage to others. Broadcasters began dipping their toes in the story. One of the two victims began lawsuits. Vanity Fair weighed in. The Financial Times and The Independent chipped away in the background. A wider group of people began to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was something in this after all.
They “took their time.” There has to be room for this in today’s hamster-wheel environment of sped-up news productivity requirements. (For contrast, read Reuters’s harrowing look inside NotW, the hamster-wheel of evil. Seriously, these are news-productivity requirements run amok.)
Is this a knock on new media? Not at all. In fact, academics should examine the News of the World story as a case study in how social media amplified the power of the Guardian’s recent scoops to a deafening pitch around the globe, to a degree the Guardian could never have achieved on its own. There may be a new model in this.
But for now, let’s pause a moment and give it up, just once, for the old school. Another investigation changes the world.
An exceptionally useful report, Dean. (The Guardian's website is perhaps more successful than its print version, in penetration). I would like to know which journalism schools in America are best at teaching live news blogs--the Guardian's are good, but the gold standard seems to be at the Telegraph:
Telegraph: News of the World phone hacking scandal: live
All the latest on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal which has engulfed Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation media empire and the Metropolitan Police.
By Emily Gosden and Andrew Hough 3:30PM BST 18 Jul 2011 6678 Comments
[...]
16.30 The four key elements of police action as set out in Theresa May's Commons speech just now: • Review of IPCC powers:
IPCC chief executive, Jane Furniss, has told the Home Secretary she has the power she needs for now but the Home Secretary has "commissioned work to consider whether the IPCC needs further powers, including whether it should be given the power to question civilian witnesses during the course of their investigations".
Ms May said: "Given that the IPCC can at present only investigate specific allegations against individual officers, I have also asked whether the Commission needs to have a greater role in investigating allegations about institutional failings of a force or forces." [...]
10.56 American police were so wary of the Met Police's cosy links to the media that they would not share information with them, the Daily Beast reports:
The flood of disclosures about close—and almost certainly corrupt—ties between Scotland Yard and British tabloids is not a shock to many senior American law-enforcement officials.
In fact, the FBI, U.S. Customs, and other American law-enforcement agencies have been wary for years about sharing details of some transatlantic criminal investigations for fear they would end up slapped on the front page of News of the World, The Sun, and other newspapers at the heart of the scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, several U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast. [End]
One lesson that I draw is that America should have a National Media Council with "further powers," with the ability to initiate investigations and compel testimony. What I do not mean is a "nocturnal council" that would arbitrarily infringe upon the liberties of the media, but a council that would become aware of The Daily Beast's information, for example, and coordinate with a national British Press Council so as to ask relevant structural questions.
The Telegraph live blog news model is slightly limited in that it does not run 24-hours a day taking advantage of time-zone partners in Australia and the US. (The Guardian awkwardly does not accept comment until the morning British time).
The flood of live news blog reader comments is, nonetheless, intimidating. I would prefer two streams: one in which validated full names are used; also, comments should be either general or specific to a blog post. Telegraph website design is far in advance of our Washington Post's. (The latter is a design embarrassment). CJR might consider:
[The (Daily Telegraph) site, which has been the focus of the group's efforts to create an integrated news operation producing content for print and online from the same newsroom, completed a relaunch during 2008 involving the use of the Escenic content management system, popular among northern European and Scandinavian newspaper groups.]
#1 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 18 Jul 2011 at 12:34 PM
A malfunction was experienced: [The (Daily Telegraph) site, which has been the focus of the group's efforts to create an integrated news operation producing content for print and online from the same newsroom, completed a relaunch during 2008 involving the use of the Escenic content management system, popular among northern European and Scandinavian newspaper groups.]
A clue to meditate on: "Sullivan was brought up outside Providence in Rhode Island. He is a keen sailor and owns a yacht called, appropriately, the Mistrial."
#2 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 18 Jul 2011 at 12:49 PM
Great story. Do you think there is this kind of careful investigative reporting looking at Fox News?
#3 Posted by Nancy Bloom, CJR on Mon 18 Jul 2011 at 03:37 PM
I am not an academic or a blogger, but you appear to be both of those things. (Yes, you got schooled by Felix Salmon in that debate. But you managed to get in a few memorable lines of armchair punditry.) Why don't you do it?
Good investigative reporters are skeptical, without fear or favor. They don't owe any allegiances to corrupt guilds or bloated old pensioners. On the contrary: they expose lying, creepy sketchballs wherever they lurk, at NoTW or elsewhere.
#4 Posted by Murdoch shares your AARP card, not my journalism, CJR on Mon 18 Jul 2011 at 09:44 PM
Great article. Have to note that everyone has health insurance in the UK, the NHS.
#5 Posted by Galoot, CJR on Tue 19 Jul 2011 at 03:09 AM
Good investigative reporters are no different than tabloid theme reporters all of them chase the tale at by any means necessary...
#6 Posted by Greg Thrasher, CJR on Tue 19 Jul 2011 at 11:07 AM
As usual, you are confusing the message for the medium. Investigative reporting happens on plenty of independent blogs too, there's nothing special about print or the corporations that fund the presses. Of course, investigative reporting costs more so more of it is still done at the established print media, subsidized by the demand for the very tabloid material you disdain. I think what we'll see online is that there will be investigative reporters who write long pieces and there will be a devoted audience that pays a higher price for that, say $2 for a long investigation piece, while most news blogs will charge a cent or two for lighter fare like celebrity interviews or daily news. The minority of readers who want investigative journalism will have to pay more for it, as it won't be subsidized by the rest of the newsroom going forward. I'm fairly certain we will see a lot more and better investigative journalism in that coming online environment, but there's always the possibility that Davies goes jobless online, as there might not be an audience for it. I would bet on the former, but there are no guarantees: we will have to run that experiment and see how it turns out.
#7 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Tue 19 Jul 2011 at 04:25 PM