In the good old days, investigative reporting was the loss leader of quality American journalism. In these new hard times, it’s a tempting place to cut costs. Your next inside story can always be a little quicker and cheesier than your last one, less substance but a bigger headline. Or you can shut off the spigot entirely and tell your expose specialists to look for work.
“Our initial operating plan calls for a newsroom of 24 working journalists, all of them dedicated to investigative reporting on stories with significant potential for major impact,” the Web site reads. That number encompasses everyone from Steiger down to the lowest researcher. “Each story we publish will be distributed in a manner designed to maximize its impact. At the outset, at least, that means that many such stories will likely be offered exclusively to a traditional news organization, free of charge, for publication or broadcast.”
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And if Pro Publica sets its sights on national stories, the temptation to keep offering them to the same handful of national news outlets will be hard to resist. Yet those are the outlets that need help the least and are most likely to reject stories they don’t originate.
Tofel says Steiger is looking for a managing editor, who will then begin hiring staff. Only then will Steiger know exactly what he has, a newsroom culture being the volatile product of its reporters’ sources, agendas, and wills to prevail. “We don’t see it as exactly a top-down thing or a bottom-up thing,” says Tofel, speaking of lines of authority. Like any news shop–only more so because of the nature of everyone’s work–it’s likely to be a heady mix of camaraderie and competitive paranoia.
The AIA members decided they wanted more. This week they’re getting it. A lot of the editorial housekeeping is being moved to the AIA Web site, allowing Focus to emerge as a journal with airs called Chicago Architect. “Essentially it’s a trade magazine about architecture,” says Dennis Rodkin, the new editor. “But we hope it’ll be with a lot more style and panache than a trade magazine.”
