Newspapers Now: Balancing Citizen Journalism and Investigative Reporting
Scott Gold – Staff Writer, LA Times
The national media has fallen short on a number of occasions. And I think we do have shortcomings. This is an imperfect business. It’s imperfect from a macro view, it’s imperfect on a day-to-day level. And that’s what makes it sort of so magical and also so frustrating at times.
James Rainey – Reporter, Los Angeles Times
I think the concept and the idea of citizen journalist is a fantastic one. How can you be against the idea of your fellow citizens going out and helping each other and helping you find the truth?
Scott Gold
I mean, you can make an argument that citizen journalism has been around since at least the Zapruder film. You know, that was citizen journalism.
James Rainey
It’s just, it’s a fantastic concept. The reality of it is sometimes lives up to that or comes close to living up to that. And it sometimes falls far short of that.
Scott Gold
So the question becomes, what can we offer that can’t necessarily be offered in the blogosphere and by citizen journalists? And the answer to that I think rests largely in what I’m lucky enough to do, which is in-depth, original source, enterprising local journalism.
[Interview begins]
Are you comfortable telling me a little bit about what your prison term was for or…?
Interviewee #1
What do you, write articles in the Times or—
Scott Gold
Yeah, yeah, in the Times. It’s an ongoing series about South Los Angeles.
Interviewee #1
Uh-huh.
Scott Gold
So it’s not just about crime. It’s not just about police. It’s not just about, you know, gang violence. It’s also about community issues, economic development, health care, you know, all sorts of facets.
[Interview ends]
A story like this, there are so many cross-currents of politics, of city politics, of racial politics, of ethnic politics. There is so much history, there is so much distrust of outsiders. There are so many crosscurrents that you’re working against all the time.
James Rainey
You probably aren’t going to get that kind of information from a citizen journalist. It’s not impossible, but I mean, the fact is that it’s usually going to be from an old-school journalist or a new-school journalist using the old tools, which is going out and doing interviews, looking at documents, and often having a base of expertise in a subject matter.
[Interview begins]
Interviewee #1
Did he tell you about a peace treaty?
Scott Gold
Right.
Interviewee #1
We got a peace treaty and we started over here.
Scott Gold
So that was shortly after the riots?
Interviewee #1
Yeah.
Scott Gold
Unity one, that was Bo Taylor?
Interviewee #1
Yeah. Yes. You work with them.
Scott Gold
She’s an attorney, right?
Interviewee #1
Yeah.
[Interview ends]
Scott Gold
There are days routinely in South Los Angeles when I do not take a pen out of my pocket and write a word on a piece of paper. There are days when the photographer that I work with does not take a single image. We spend those days, you know, maybe sitting on somebody’s stoop all day waiting for them and they don’t show. Or we spend those days, you know, just talking to people and explaining to them look, we just want to talk. We’re not going to write anything down and we’re not going to take your picture. We’re not going to jump out of a bush. We are not the paparazzi. We just want to talk.
You have to work tirelessly just to get in the door before you can start asking any questions.
[Interview begins]
Interviewee #2
Who, who, who have you all doing this?
Scott Gold
Well, I mean, I work for the Times. I’m on staff with the Times.
Interviewee #2
Why’s you all doing a documentary in our projects?
[Interview ends]
Scott Gold
Those days are expensive for the paper. That’s a lot of time. That’s an enormous investment to have two, you know, full-time staff members on the story for a year, is an enormous investment.
If you don’t have the backing of an institution like the Los Angeles Times, who’s going to pay for that? Who’s going to pay for those days? If you don’t have a lawyer who will defend your right to do some of these things in court, who’s going to pay for that? You know, these are important questions to ask when people suggest that the role of a newspaper can somehow be supplanted. I just think it falls short once it gets to that level.
James Rainey
Sometimes I think there’s sort of a triumphalism about the new journalism, citizen journalism, that it’s all going to be solved by technology. But there’s still a lot of gumshoe reporting that gets to the bottom of the truth.
Scott Gold
And I don’t see that being replicated with any other model right now. And without that you don’t get the story.
Bedford/St. Martin's Video Transcript