June 8, 2011

PressThink
“I’d give us a C-,” writes Jay Rosen. “We should, but we don’t have worldwide pro-am investigations into, say, human trafficking or climate change. That’s frustrating.”

Consider: There were enough readers of the financial press who knew from direct experience about the mortgage mess to put that story together a year or two before the crash of 2008. Real estate agents. Home buyers. Loan officers. Mortgage bloggers. Drones on Wall Street. They knew something was rotten. Collectively, they knew way more than the financial press did. The story wasn’t hidden. It lay uncollected. That knowledge could have alerted the nation well before the crash of 2008.

Rosen gives other grades, too, including:
* Andy Carvin: Twitter anchor and distributed verification wiz: A+
* Social media helps the newsroom locate good sources: B+
* Community-assisted reporting at hyperlocal sites: B-
* Pro-am election coverage: C-
* Pro-am investigative journalism: F

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From 1999 to 2011, Jim Romenesko maintained the Romenesko page for the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based non-profit school for journalists. Poynter hired him in August…
Jim Romenesko

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