Peter Griffin - Future News

Peter Griffin has written a great piece about the Scoop Foundation Project for his futurenews blog - the introductory section only repeated below, so to read it in full please go to Future News.

Peter provides a great explanation of what we have in mind and his views on the challenges, opportunities and threats inherent in a project like this accord very closely with project initiator Alastair Thompson.

Scoop Foundation – how it could work

Media entrepreneur Alastair Thompson and journalist Alison McCulloch were on Media3 [SCROLL BELOW] last night outlining their plans for a public interest journalism venture – the Scoop Foundation.

This is an exciting development for journalism, though will be greeted with a measure of scepticism.

Respected journalist Bernard Hickey last year attempted a similar venture on a smaller scale, but it did not attract sufficient financial backing and failed to get off the ground.

The challenge for the Scoop Foundation‘s founders and supporters – of which I am one – is to get this thing over the line and operational – hopefully within a few months.

Here’s what the Scoop Foundation has in its favor:

• Support from a range of experienced journalists and people with online media experience.
• Ability to leverage off the Scoop infrastructure – from its offices, staff and technical resources to advertising on its website and potentially through the Scoop Cartel ad network. Scoop is providing $100,000 worth of in-kind services per annum.
• Established relationships with the likes of AUT University’s School of Communications Studies, the Pacific Media Centre and my own Science Media Centre.
• Nothing like this exists in New Zealand and there is a wealth of overseas experience to learn from and apply where appropriate.

Media3 item - first screened on 10 April

On Wednesday, April 10th Media 3 screened an item about the Scoop Foundation. This is available to watch via www.tv3.co.nz/OnDemand or just go here: www.tv3.co.nz/MEDIA3-Season-2-Ep-8

We will upload a transcript of the interview in the near future.

MEDIA 3 intro: Making journalism pay is a problem that’s dominated many a boardroom and newsroom conversation over the past decade. The search for a viable way to “clip the ticket” in a world where newspapers began by giving news coverage away for free on their websites still goes on, with pay-walls seeming to be the only answer to the problem. Meanwhile newsrooms are shrinking as the cost of employing professional journalists becomes a casualty to the funding model. One answer might be “Public Interest” or “Public Good” journalism.

As stated in the TV3 website Media3 is a place for lively, intelligent discussion about media matters with the people who produce media in New Zealand — and the people who find themselves the subject of media stories. Presenter Russell Brown and the rest of theMedia3team believe in being both intelligent and entertaining — and creating more light than heat. During its season Media3 is broadcast on TV3on Wednesday nights, around 11.20pm after Nightline and is replayed at 10.25 Saturday mornings.

Pacific Scoop / report by Daniel Drageset

Pacific Scoop: Report – By Daniel Drageset COMMENT HERE

Pioneering online media journalist and publisher Alastair Thompson has embarked on a mission to save public interest journalism in New Zealand.

“We are basically facing a crisis with no solutions in sight,” says Thompson, who is editor and general manager of the independent Scoop Media.

He launched the Scoop Foundation Project at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre on Wednesday.

Thompson says the new project is “mainly seeking to try and preserve some of the culture and some of the professional standards which lie behind the practice of journalism.

“Because they don’t really exist in textbooks and they don’t exist in institutions, the culture of journalism is something that previously existed in newsrooms and fairly soon we won’t have them anymore.”

Worsening situation
Thompson, who has worked in journalism since the late 1980s, has seen the conditions of news media in New Zealand deteriorate during his career.

Now he says that the government is showing “a lot of evidence of not really understanding what the limits of their ability to try and obfuscate and refuse to answer questions about matters of public policy.”

The situation is exacerbated by the lack of investigative and in-depth reporting by the New Zealand news media.

“The people who are empowered with questioning [politicians] and questioning their authority is this group of people called journalists who are increasingly under threat.”

The negative trends Thompson is referring to include layoffs of editorial staff and a concentration of media ownership.

More and more layoffs lead to less experience in the newsrooms, which has led to an erosion of journalistic practices, according to Thompson.

A concentration of media ownership has had a negative impact on competition in the news media.

Giving hope
Alison McCulloch, who is the co-spokesperson of the Scoop Foundation Project, hopes the project can contribute in reversing the trend New Zealand news media is in:

“I hope so … [I]f nothing else, maybe it can give people a bit of hope, it can provide a bit of direction, people have somewhere to look for a possible future, so that’s all good.”

McCulloch has worked as an editor in The New York Times and thinks the American news media is better equipped than the New Zealand, simply because of the big market in the US:

“There is a philanthropic tradition [in the US], there are a lot of big foundations that can support some media. Because of the economies of scale it is really a lot harder to support in-depth journalism here, so I think we in some ways got a harder road than for example the United States and probably also the UK.”

Scoop editor and general manager Alastair Thompson talks to Pacific Scoop:

Scoop editor Alastair Thompson … “new way of funding journalism”. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

We’re hoping to start to create the conditions for a new way of funding journalism in New Zealand. At the moment we basically are facing sort of a crisis with no real solutions in sight, and so the idea is just to begin start experimenting with those solutions. There is charitable money available, but a lot of it is locked up in organisations which can only provide it to philanthropic entities and currently there are no philanthropic entities involved in journalism that can really very easily take on that task.

DD: Tell me exactly how the New Zealand news media is under threat?

AT: Print media has ever declining revenue numbers, and their new digital revenue streams are growing, but they’re not growing nearly fast enough to convince anybody that they will be capable of supporting news operations that the existing media companies have. We have seen downsizing in newsroom continuously since I started in journalism more than 25 years ago.

I arrived in the Dominion in the late 1980’s and we had the first round of redundancies I think six months after I arrived, and there’s been rounds of redundancies at all the major newspapers pretty much every year, two years or so thereafter ever since.

DD: How can the media foundation contribute in reversing the trend?

AT: We don’t really expect to be able to reverse the trend. We are mainly seeking to try and preserve some of the culture and some of the professional standards which lie behind the practice of journalism. Because they don’t really exist in textbooks and they don’t exist in institutions, the culture of journalism is something that previously existed in newsrooms and fairly soon we won’t have them anymore.

DD: What is your fear for the coming decades when it comes to New Zealand news media?

AT: I have reasonable level of hope that in the next four or five years we will see some enlightened government action in this area. And perhaps the creation of some organisations which provide some basis levels of democratic media coverage. But in the absence of proper media holding governments to account, you see public officials’ understanding of the rule of law and how they are supposed to behave has eroded.

And we’re already seeing that, we’re already seeing officials who have very little knowledge of what is to be expected of them. And this government is showing a lot of evidence of not really understanding what the limits are on their ability to try and obfuscate and refuse to answer questions about matters of public policy. These people are our servants, and the people who are empowered with questioning them and questioning their authority is this group of people called journalists who are increasingly under threat, I suppose. That’s really the issue.

Alison McCulloch, a former editor with The New York Times and co-spokesperson of the Scoop Foundation Project, talks to Pacific Scoop:

Co-spokesperson Alison McCulloch … fostering in-depth journalism. Image: Bay of Plenty Times

I think it can, we hope, help foster an in-depth investigative journalism because of the strains on the media at the moment. That is one area that is really suffering at the moment.

DD: You have been working overseas. How would you describe the New Zealand news media compared to other countries?

AMC: I think because New Zealand is, for example I was in the United States, and there is a philanthropic tradition there, there are a lot of big foundations that can support some media. Because of the economies of scale, it is really a lot harder to support in-depth journalism here, so I think we have in some ways got a harder road than for example the United States and probably also the UK.

DD: With the current development of New Zealand news media, where do you think it’s headed?

AMC: I think the news media is in complete turmoil, and anyone who thinks they know where it’s headed, well; they’re more knowledgeable than I am. I really don’t know where it’s headed, but I think one thing one [we] can do, is to try to keep to, I guess, the foundations of good journalism and plant the seed of something that could be good. It will change, it will keep changing, but if you have something there that can change too, we have to do it now.

DD: And do you think this new foundation can help reverse the situation?

AMC: I hope so. I mean, as I said, things are changing so fast it is hard to know what impact it can have. But, you know, if nothing else maybe it can give people a bit of hope, it can provide a bit of direction, people have somewhere to look for a possible future, so that’s all good.

END

10 April: A New Foundation For Public Interest Journalism In New Zealand

<Media Release: Wednesday 10 April 2013>

In a push to offer new support and momentum for public interest journalism, the country’s leading independent news provider, Scoop Media, is lending its weight to two initiatives being announced for the first time today.

The first initiative, the Scoop Foundation Project, brings Scoop.co.nz together with a group of New Zealand’s leading practitioners of public interest journalism to create a charitable trust to fund investigative journalistic work.

This coincides with today’s launch by Scoop of a $5000 Pacific Scoop internship being awarded in conjunction with AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre (PMC). The first recipient will be named at the School of Communication Studies Awards event being held at the newly opened Sir Paul Reeves Building at AUT between 6-8 pm this evening.

Funded from syndication revenue, the internship will enable a School of Communication Studies postgraduate student journalist to research, report and edit content for the jointly run Pacific Scoop project which is now entering its fifth year of publishing at http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/

Scoop Media’s General Manager Alastair Thompson, who along with veteran journalist Alison McCulloch is co-spokesperson for the Scoop Foundation Project, says he is delighted the project is being announced in conjunction with the internship which serves as a concrete example of the sort of work the foundation hopes to support.

Thompson says the idea of a Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism has been percolating for some considerable time. He says the project is a natural extension to the role Scoop has played in the New Zealand media scene since it first arrived in June 1999.

“A new foundation for public interest journalism is a natural fit for Scoop, and there certainly appears to be a call for one,” says Thompson. “Supporting a community of journalists in pursuit of public interest reporting has always been at the core of what Scoop is all about.

“In recent months the need for a charitable organisation to support news gathering with a larger brief has become very obvious. The hollowing out of experience in newsrooms is only gaining pace.

“Recently the gap in the New Zealand media scene for funding of public interest journalism has been highlighted by commentators such as NZ Herald columnist Chris Barton and the Science Media Centre’s Peter Griffin, recently returned from a Fulbright-Harkness journalism fellowship in the USA.

Over the next two months the Scoop Foundation Project hopes to broaden its base of support in preparation for applying for charitable status and commencing fund-raising activities.

“We have a strong agreement among the core team that the institution we create should be shaped by journalists, and work for journalists with a firm eye on the changing conditions under which journalism is being practised, and in the interests of creating a broader, stronger base for sustainable public interest journalism”, says Alison McCulloch.

“Today’s announcement is about seeking as wide a response as possible from people who might want to be involved in this initiative,” says McCulloch.

“We will be welcoming all expressions of interest and all offers of assistance to ensure that the purpose, vision and focus that is set for the foundation is meaningful and progressive”. [A draft outline is attached to this media release and is also available at http://scoopfoundation.org ]

The Scoop Foundation Project has established a steering committee which will guide the process over the next few months. The current members of this are Alison McCulloch, Alastair Thompson, Scoop’s Chair Margaret Thompson, Gordon Campbell and Stephen Olsen. In the process of preparing to publicly announce the project they have been joined by the Science Media Centre’s Peter Griffin, and Christchurch based writer and author Amanda Cropp.

A wider group of journalists is involved behind the scenes as a sounding board including David Robie of the Pacific Media Centre, BusinessDesk’s Pattrick Smellie and Jonathan Underhill , former Listener editor and broadcaster Finlay Macdonald, former Scoop Editor Selwyn Manning, journalist Jeremy Rose and Russell Brown of Public Address.

Thompson noted that it was appropriate that commencement of the Scoop Foundation Project was being announced at AUT given the university’s role in hosting the international Media, Investigative Journalism and Technology conference in 2010.

Contact for further information:

• Alastair Thompson, [email protected] or phone 021 707 044
• Alison McCulloch, [email protected] or phone 021 111 3853
• Stephen Olsen, [email protected] or phone 021 266 4427