The New Public-Interest Journalism

Lately, there’s been a lot of coverage of well-known journalists launching their own Web sites or going it alone with their existing ones: Glenn Greenwald, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, and the All Things Digital crew come to mind. Now there’s an unlikely addition to the field: Bill Keller, the former executive editor and columnist of the Times. On Sunday, Keller announced he was leaving the paper to lead an online startup devoted to covering the criminal-justice system.

The news about Keller came hours before Greenwald’s new site, The Intercept, went live. It launched with an exclusive and disturbing story about the N.S.A.’s role in selecting targets for drone attacks, which, it claimed, contributes to the killing of innocent civilians in places like Pakistan and Yemen. The story relied on an unnamed source who used to operate U.S. drones, and it also quoted from documents that Edward Snowden leaked, which discussed drone operations. (Greenwald and Laura Poitras, one of his colleagues at The Intercept, were two of the journalists who broke the Snowden story.)

Keller’s baby, the Marshall Project, will be strictly not for profit, in the mold of ProPublica, the investigative news site that launched in 2007, under the leadership of Paul Steiger, a former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and has since received many journalism awards. The initial financial backing for the Marshall Project will come from Neil Barsky, a former hedge-fund manager who was also a reporter at the Wall Street Journal; it will also seek tax-deductible donations from charitable foundations and other sources. The Intercept represents the initial rollout of a larger venture funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, which will have both a charitable and a commercial aspect. The journalism operation will be organized as a nonprofit, with editorial independence, and the technology side will be a regular business. Last fall, Omidyar said he would commit two hundred and fifty million dollars to the over-all venture, First Look Media, which is looking to launch a range of “digital magazines” and other media products.

Despite their differing origins and sources of funding, however, the Marshall Project and First Look Media share one thing in common: a commitment to high-quality, independent journalism, which tackles serious subjects and, when necessary, upsets powerful interests. In an era when it’s widely believed that online journalism has no place for in-depth reporting and muckraking, these developments caution against blanket statements.

Public-interest journalism is still under threat, especially at the local level, where cutbacks in editorial budgets have decimated many newsrooms. But it’s not finished yet. The Internet, while it undercuts the traditional media model, opens up interesting new possibilities. An explosion of information from official and unofficial sources has provided more raw material for reporters and commentators, especially in specialist areas such as finance, technology, and the law. And part of what the Internet takes away in advertising revenues it gives back in lower production costs, new formats for telling stories, an expanded potential audience, and alternative sources of funding.

In any case, we shouldn’t let nostalgia color our thinking. In days of yore, some big newspaper companies diverted part of the industry’s monopoly rents to finance investigative journalism, but it was always a small part. Apart from a few major titles, such as the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, a willingness to support long-running investigations, some of which invariably lead nowhere, was the exception rather than the rule—and that was hardly surprising. Investigative reporters cause trouble. And, in most American towns and cities, the relationship between the local newspaper and the political and business establishments is very cozy.

Greenwald, who was a lawyer before he turned to blogging, is squarely in the troublemaking tradition; Keller, less so. But both of their ventures seek to exploit the opportunities that online publishing offers. They appear so far to be narrower in scope than ProPublica, which covers a number of different areas, and that may be a good thing. One of the paradoxes of the Internet is that, although it rewards celebrity stories and videos of kittens playing with yarn, it also rewards sites that go narrow and deep. The reason is technological. While there aren’t as many people interested in the details of N.S.A. surveillance or prison conditions as there are people interested in sports or pop singers, the Internet allows them all to gather in one place. And, when they do, the readership can be a substantial and influential one.

To engage such readers, you need genuine news breaks and high-quality analysis provided by writers who are expert in their fields. The Intercept has assembled a small but experienced group of journalists. Apart from Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Greenwald’s collaborator on the Edward Snowden story, it includes Dan Froomkin, formerly of the Washington Post and the Huffington Post; Peter Maass, who has written for the Times Magazine and The New Yorker; and Jeremy Scahill, the author of “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.” (In another recent move, First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, recruited Lynn Oberlander, The New Yorkers general counsel.) Keller isn’t at the hiring stage yet, but, according to the Times, he will be putting together a staff of about thirty. On its Web site, which is already up, the Marshall Project says that it will combine “conventional investigative reporting and opinion writing” with the “new technologies currently transforming the media, including interactive graphics, immersive digital stories, short video documentaries and content generated by our readers.”

There can be no doubt that both sides will be covering stories that need telling. In the post-Snowden world, intelligence, surveillance, and online privacy are all big issues with broad implications for everything from national security to the law to life-style decisions. (Are you content with Google and other technology companies tracking your movements on a second-by-second basis?) As the Marshall Project’s Web site notes:

The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. From spiraling costs, to controversial drug laws, to prison violence, to concerns about systemic racial bias, there is a growing bipartisan consensus that America’s criminal-justice system is in dire need of reform. As traditional media companies cut back on enterprise reporting, the Marshall Project will serve as a dynamic digital hub for information and debate on the legal and corrections systems.

Doesn’t that sound like a worthwhile journalistic mission?

Obviously, the new public-interest journalism has its shortcomings. The most obvious one is that it depends, for financing, on optimistic entrepreneurs and civic-minded philanthropists, such as Herbert Sandler, the banking billionaire who, through his family foundation, committed about ten million dollars to get ProPublica up and running. Relying on rich funders is obviously a challenge, especially in the long term, but it isn’t necessarily impossible, especially for narrowly focussed not-for-profit ventures. Since distributing journalism via the Internet is cheap, the sums involved are pretty modest. According to the Times, the Marshall Project is looking for donors to help sustain it a budget of five million dollars a year.

Omidyar’s venture is obviously more ambitious, and it raises some additional questions: Does he have a political agenda he is trying to promote? Given the harsh economics of online publishing, can the commercial side hope to make money? And to what extent will The Intercept depend on Snowden’s documents, which he released to alert the public rather than to benefit an individual news provider?

Still, the fact that somebody like Omidyar is willing to invest a large sum is encouraging, as is the ease with which Ezra Klein found a backer for what is now being described, in a job ad, as “the world’s first hybrid news site/encyclopedia.” Evidently, Silicon Valley luminaries like Omidyar, and the venture capitalists who are backing Vox Media, Klein’s partner, have more faith in the future of serious journalism than a lot of journalists do.

That wouldn’t be surprising. After a decade of layoffs and wage freezes, many journalists, particularly the older ones, are shell-shocked. But the trends aren’t all negative. Today, at least, there is some good news to report.

Above: Bill Keller. Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty.